Ditch the No. 2 pencils: The SAT is now fully digital

With adolescent anxiety surging and attention spans challenged, high school students on Saturday will take a revamped version of the SAT that has been designed in part to reduce stress, according to the College Board, which administers the test.

The exam will be briefer — two hours and 14 minutes instead of three hours — and students will have more time for each question. The reading passages will be much shorter, and test-takers will now be able to use an online graphing calculator for the entire math section of the exam.

And after 98 years of students scratching answers on paper, the SAT will now be fully digital for the remote-learning generation.

The College Board said its piloting of the exam showed it was just as rigorous as the paper test but less intimidating for students. And those with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and dyslexia, as well as those learning English, reported they were “better able to maintain their focus” on the digital test, compared with the earlier format, said Jaslee Carayol, director of communications for the College Board.

Delivering the test digitally will also reduce the possibility of cheating, the College Board said, because few students will receive the exact same exam.

There are critics, though. The switch to shorter reading passages has not been universally celebrated by English teachers, many of whom believe that in the face of constant distractions from technology, students need to develop greater reading stamina.

The latest overhaul of the exam comes at a fraught moment for the standardized testing industry: Most colleges have dropped testing requirements. According to data from Common App, the number of college applicants submitting SAT or ACT scores plummeted from 76% in the 2019-20 admissions cycle to 45% this year.