Latest College Prep News & Tips

By now, you may have heard that the SAT is going to change.  Just over one year from now the new test will be administered.  At some point within the next month, the college board will release full sample tests.  Back in January they released sample questions.  There are a number of changes that have the overall effect of making the SAT more similar to the current ACT.

Key Changes in The Revised SAT Starting 2016

• The score returns to being considered out of 1600 points

  

  One of our Yale educated instructors teaching a small SAT class.

• The essay is optional

• There is no longer a “guessing penalty,” that is you will not get a ¼ deducted for a wrong answer

• There will be science and social science reading passages that require analysis.

• There will be a math section where a calculator is permissible and a section where the calculator is not permissible

• One of the reading passages will be either from a founding document (like the Declaration of Independence or Federalist Papers) or from a document that helps to inspire the Great Global conversation

• The writing section will have questions within a reading passage, as opposed to the current method where you are either recognizing errors in a sentence or trying to improve a sentence

• There will only be 4 answer choices, instead of 5.

• The math will include additional concepts, like trigonometry and imaginary numbers.  In addition, there is more of an emphasis on data interpretation and graphing functions.

The new test will impact the current sophomores (class of 2017) as the first revised PSAT will be given in October of 2015 and the first revised SAT will be given in March of 2016.  The last time the College Board revised the SAT, colleges accepted the old and new versions of the test during the transition.  This may creates some opportunities for current sophomores that we will discuss in next month’s column.