Many high school students embrace the all-digital SAT
The Scantron bubbles were gone. So were the pagelong passages and the pressure to speed-read them. No. 2 pencils? Optional, and only for taking notes.
On Saturday, students in America took the newest version of the SAT, which was shorter, faster — and most notably, all online.
Some exams were briefly mired by technical glitches, but even so, many test takers had positive views about the new format. They were especially relieved with the brevity of the exam — which dropped from three hours to a little over two hours — as well as the ability to set their own pace as they worked through the questions.
“It's here to stay,” said Harvey Joiner, 17, a junior at Maynard H. Jackson High School in Atlanta, referring to the digital format. “Computers are what we're more comfortable with.”
Given on paper for 98 years, the SAT was updated to reflect the experience of a generation raised in an era of higher anxiety, challenged attention spans and remote learning. The change comes as the College Board, which administers the test, and proponents of standardizing testing say that the exams still have a place in determining college acceptance and aptitude.
Disrupted by the pandemic and rocked by concerns that the tests favor high-income students, the SAT has had a shaky few years, with many colleges removing standardized tests as a requirement for admission. Some selective universities, including Brown, Yale, Dartmouth and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have since reinstated the test, but at most schools,
it has remained optional.
The current iteration of the test aims to drain some of the intimidation out of the process and evaluate modern students with tools to which they are more accustomed. The test has been trimmed, and students have been given more time for each question. The reading passages are much shorter, and an online graphing calculator is built into the application for the math section, which some see as a way to level the playing field for lowincome students.
The tests also are harder to cheat on, with “adaptive” questions that become harder or easier, depending on a student's performance. Students can bring their own laptops or tablets or use school-issued equipment, but cannot have any other application running in the background, and must take the test at a public test center with a proctor roaming the room.
Sharen Pitts, a retired schoolteacher who has worked for four years as a proctor in and around Chicago, said the main difference she noticed with the new format on Saturday was the shortened test time, which some teachers see as a negative change for students.
Critics of the new SAT have said that the shorter exam and reading passages do not help students develop the greater reading stamina they need amid constant distractions from technology.
But the test's speed was offset by a range of technical issues.
The start of the exam was set back at some test centers, as students had problems connecting to the WiFi. Some test takers experienced 30- to 45-minute delays because of connectivity issues.
On social media, students and parents reported other glitches, including math answers that seemed incorrect and frozen onscreen calculations. In New York, Liba Safa, 15, noticed technical issues such as one student needing a charger at her test center. And she brought her own calculator as a backstop in case the online one felt too unfamiliar.
This is not the first time test takers have encountered glitches on digital versions of standardized exams. In recent years, several high school students taking Advanced Placement tests online have had problems with functions such as submitting their answers and logging in.