5 Most Important Changes You Need To Know About The Digital SAT

Since the test is now delivered online, you will have to take the SAT using College Board’s Bluebook Testing app. There is also no at-home testing option, as you will have to take the test at schools or testing centres.

However, the app itself is available from College Board, so you should definitely install it to get used to the interface.

This is the most significant change to the digital SAT. The digital SAT will now utilise a multistage adaptive testing (MST) methodology.

Reading and Writing Section	Math Section
Two-stage adaptive test design: one Reading and Writing section administered via two separately timed modules (Module 1 and Module 2)	Two-stage adaptive test design: one Math section administered via two separately timed modules (Module 1 and Module 2)

• Module 1: Students are given a broad mix of easy, medium, and hard questions.
• Module 2: Students are given a targeted mix of questions of varying difficulties based on their performance in Module 1.

Since the digital SAT will be two-stage adaptive, your performance on Module 1 of each section will determine the difficulty of the questions on Module 2 of that section.You get an easier Module 2 if your score in the Module 1 is low, and a higher difficulty Module 2 if your score in the Module 1 is high.

This is the most significant change by far, because you can only get a high score if you get the harder Module 2. Therefore, getting almost all questions correct for Module 1 is very important.

The total time of the test is much shorter than before, 2 hours 14 minutes instead of 3 hours

• Reading and Writing section will be shorter. The digital SAT will feature considerably shorter reading passages that reflect a broader range of topics.
• Math section will be shorter. There will also be less wordy questions featured in the Math section.

In conclusion, you will have more time on average to answer each question. This does not mean the test is now easier, however.

	Digital SAT	Paper-based SAT
Reading & Writing	54 questions, 64 minutes ~ 71 seconds/question	96 questions, 100 minutes ~ 75 seconds/reading question ~ 48 seconds/writing question
Math	44 questions, 70 minutes ~ 95 seconds/question	58 questions, 80 minutes ~ 75 seconds/no-calculator question ~ 87 seconds/calculator question

There’s no need to worry – the SAT Essay’s not coming back.

For the digital SAT, there is only one Reading and Writing section. The verbal section is no longer separated into two (1) the Reading Test, (2) the Writing and Language Test.

Additionally, from the sample question pool, we can see the following characteristics from the new question format:

• Many shorter passages: The new verbal questions tend to have more shorter passages instead of long passages of the old SAT. However, these passages till maintaining the same level of rigor in terms of text complexity and grounding in academic disciplines
• Less questions associated with the same passage: A single question is associated with each passage (or passage pair) instead of having several questions associated with a small number of long passages.
• Wider range of topics: the range of topics is now much wider than before.

For the quantitative section, there is only one Math section replacing the separately timed no-calculator and calculator allowed portions of the paper-based SAT.

Additionally, calculators are allowed throughout the Math section, as provided by the test-taking app. Lastly, the average length of in-context questions (“word problems”) has been reduced.

Digital SAT	Paper-based SAT
Reading & Writing Section 54 multiple-choice questions, each includes a very short passage (passages may contain informational graphics) – 54 short passages, 1 question per passage	Reading Section 5 passages with 52 questions Writing & Language Section 4 passages with 44 questions
Math Section Calculator allowed throughout 33 multiple-choice questions + 11 student-produced response questions	No Calculator Section 15 multiple-choice questions + 5 student-produced response questions Calculator Section 30 multiple-choice questions + 8 student-produced response questions