Eleven years ago, the College Board implemented radical changes to the content of the SAT: an optional essay portion, the removal of the English vocabulary section, and the elimination of penalties for incorrect answers. Years later, the optional essay portion was officially removed, and last year, in 2024, the entire test was converted into a digital format.
The digitalization of standardized tests like the SAT and the Advanced Placement exams comes amidst a growing conversation about the relevancy of these tests. In 2023, over 1.9 million high school students across America took the SAT and 1.4 million took the American College Test (ACT); however, with the introduction of the digitized SAT, millions of students may have to face new logistical challenges. The new Bluebook software on which the digital SAT will take place is easy to install and use on Apple laptops. In contrast, students may only run Bluebook successfully on Chromebooks if “kiosk mode” is enabled and their school manages the device through their Gmail accounts.
One appeal of the digital SAT is that students can easily access the test from the comfort of their own personal desktop, reducing the amount of steps in the preparation process. During last year’s PSAT exam, many students with chromebooks had to be placed in different rooms to use school computers to take the exam, requiring more usage of classrooms and space that schools did not plan to use as standardized testing spaces. It is not a guarantee that every student has a personal computer to access their school-related accounts and that every school has strong enough internet to support hundreds of digital concurrent tests.
Priscilla Rodriguez, overseer of the SAT program for college board, doubts these mandatory technological requirements will pose any serious problems, stating that the digital SAT “requires very little bandwidth during the test and is designed to autosave locally, so students won’t lose work or time if they lose their internet connection.” Proponents of the digital SAT claim that the transfer of the test to digital devices, and the subsequent shortening of the exam, poses benefits.
With the new digital SAT, the test has been shortened from three hours to just two hours and fourteen minutes, containing shorter texts and only fifty-four multiple choice questions instead of nine longer passages with a total of ninety-six multiple choice questions on the old, paper SAT. The math sections now feature an embedded graphing calculator known as Desmos, easily allowing students to not only crunch large numbers, but also easily obtain the solutions to systems of equations as well as the features of functions, without using formulas or multi-step algebra.
Many argue that these modifications reflect a “more practical approach” and style to these concepts, while also benefiting students who may not have the resources to study thoroughly for the SAT by making the test itself easier to study for. Additionally, the new test is “adaptive,” meaning that all students are presented with English and Math modules of the same difficulty, and then, based on how many answers they got correct on that module, are given either an easier, similar, or harder second English and Math module.
While many claim that this method helps students be tested only at their skill level, and thus have a greater opportunity to succeed on the test, others point out that these easier modules contain questions worth less points, meaning if a student were to end up with that module, they would be generally prevented from getting the same scores as their peers with the harder modules, and would end up with a lower score overall.
Others criticize this method due to the fact that it pressures students to aim for perfect scores on their initial modules, which adds to the already great pressures students face taking the SAT in general. Also within the College Board, many Advanced Placement exams, including everything from Computer Science Principles to English Literature and Composition, will be digital starting in the exam season of 2025. Though these exams are digital, the College Board has confirmed that none of the content or timing of the exams will be affected.
For humanities exams, students may type their written essays or short responses, and for mathematics, similar to the SAT, students will have access to a graphing calculator for the entire duration of the exam. Ms. Gannon, who teaches AP English Language and Composition, says that the shift to her class’s exam going digital poses benefits to students. She says that the essay-writing portion of the exam, which would be typed instead of hand-written, will encourage students to become more efficient typists, which would help them write their essays more quickly in college. She explains how a digital essay will eliminate any difficulty for exam graders in reading illegible handwriting.
Additionally, digital essays will allow students to more easily express and organize their ideas for their essays while taking the AP exam, as many students are already used to expressing and organizing their thoughts through text. She encourages students to plan ahead and begin working regularly with an online typing tutor program to improve their speed and accuracy with touch typing.
For many students, this shift to digital AP is not a big deal, as many AP teachers assign practice multiple choice through AP classroom, already simulating the digital multiple choice section of these exams.
Stephanie Perez, a Houston high school student, says she feels indifferent to the shift to digital, explaining how “we’re so used to being on our laptops, like it’s something we do on the regular, in every class.” Director Rodriguez also claims that “today’s students…do a lot of their living digitally, they do a lot of their learning digitally,” making the shift to digital for both AP and SAT a seemingly favorable option to students.
Despite this, the College Board may consider making questions, multiple choice and free-response, on mathematics and science AP exams more difficult to make up for the aid of a graphing calculator for the entire exam, as in the past, only certain sections of these exams were allowed a calculator.
If this digital shift proves anything, it’s that standardized testing, no matter what format, will always have subjective pros and cons. The question of what is definitively the best method to conduct standardized tests, however, remains perhaps even deeper of a question from this digital shift.