Over the last half decade, the SAT has started to lose some of its relevance in the college admissions process as a majority of universities have gone either test optional or even test blind. The SAT is meant to demonstrate how well high school students are prepared for college, but the current format of the test often features questions not related to a student’s college readiness. This is why College Board, the current distributor of the SAT, has decided to change the format of the test entirely in order to more accurately portray students’ knowledge in relevant content areas.

The current format of the SAT, which has been around since 2016, will continue to be the only option offered until the end of 2022 for international students and until the end of 2023 for domestic students, when the test will be scrapped for a revamped version. “I think it’s relatively fair because classes compete between themselves, so freshmen taking the online version has no substantial impact on juniors or sophomores,” sophomore Jai Ahuja said.

Although all of the details about the updated SAT have yet to be announced, it has been announced that it will be a digital test, one hour shorter, and adaptive to a test taker’s previous answers. “The new format seems like a better way for students to achieve a higher score on the SAT,” junior Matthew Serrano said. 

As it currently stands, the test is three hours long with a reading section, writing section, no calculator math section, and a calculator math section. One possible reason for these changes is the rise in popularity of the ACT as it slowly but steadily grows its market share. Another cause of these changes is that the reading section has always been excruciatingly difficult for students, which is why College Board has decided to shorten the passages as well as make them more relevant for students living in the digital age. The math section has also been slightly changed as there will now be a calculator allowed on all portions. “I think that would be a bad idea because some parts of math would be ignored and won’t be tested,” junior Mike Peng said. 

While the test is being digitized, it will still have to be taken in a testing center as has been the case in the past in order to minimize cheating efforts. The digital test will also be permitted to be taken on students’ personal computers, potentially increasing the economic inequality gap as taking a “standardized” test on a Macbook Pro provides a much better and smoother experience than that on a laggy College Board provided Chromebook.

There is, however, some good news for students who are not looking forward to a completely different style of standardized testing than in the past. The ACT has yet to announce any changes to its format so students who are freshmen or in middle school can always choose to prepare for that as an alternative route.