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Current Planned Changes to the SAT Could Affect Today's High School Freshmen: SAT Blog Excerpt:
 On February 26, 2013, in an e-mail from its new president David Coleman to its member schools, The College Board announced plans to redesign the SAT to "... better meets the needs of students, schools and colleges..."
Many high school students and their families - as well as teachers and
tutors, especially those who are involved with test prep - are
wondering how these changes will impact test prep and subsequent
performance.
One
thing we do know at this point is that we don't know much. The College
Board has announced few specifics about the planned changes.
However...:
- Though
no release date has been officially announced, the earliest that a
revamped SAT would be in the hands of students would be Spring 2015. So the changes could impact today's freshman class. The classes of 2013, 2014 or 2015 will take the same test that is currently in use.
- When
the SAT was last updated in 2005, the PSAT (which is designed as a
"preliminary SAT") changed first. Kaplan rightly points out that it
will be interesting to see if the PSAT changes in October 2014 in
anticipation of SAT changes coming in Spring 2015.
-
What are some predictions about the scope of potential changes? The ArborBridge blog hypothesizes that the structure of the SAT could shift from a paper-based to a computer-based format, as the GMAT and others have already done. This could significantly alter how test-takers approach the test.
For example, if the SAT switches to a Computer Adaptive Test (CAT) format, test-takers will deal with one question at a time - no skipping and going back.
And with each correct or incorrect answer, the test "adapts" by making
itself more or less difficult. Likewise, current strategies to deal
with the increasing difficulty of questions across SAT sections will be
outmoded. In the CAT format, each question must be dealt with entirely
on its own.
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