College Board, the administrators of the SAT, announced sweeping changes to the college entrance exam Tuesday, including making the test digital and reducing the time required to complete the test from three to two hours.
Test administrators began a pilot of the changes late last year, with College Board citing the now permanent changes as “less stressful” than the traditional exam, according to 80% of students surveyed. Despite being online, College Board has also noted the test will still be administered at testing locations with the oversight of a proctor.
“My first reaction is this is the College Board trying to remain relevant in the college admissions space,” according to Evelyn Jerome-Alexander, who is an independent educational consultant and the owner of Magellan College Counseling.
College Board plans to roll out the digital SAT in the U.S. beginning in 2024. Changes will also follow for the entire suite of college exams offered by College Board, including the PSAT and National Merit Scholar Qualifying Test.
The online exam will alleviate a few logistical concerns, according to College Board, making the exam more secure and allowing students to access their scores within days rather than weeks or months.
“I don’t think the format or the mode in which a test is given is enough on its face to change what a college plans to do in this regard,” USC Dean of admission Tim Brunold said. “I do think, though, at a basic level there’s still going to need to be further discussion and the debate continues about the efficacy of these tests.”
These changes come as colleges across the U.S., including USC, move away from college entrance exams all together. USC currently employs a temporary test-optional policy, first announced in April 2020 that will continue through the fall 2023 admissions cycle.
Accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic, colleges’ move away from standardized tests places greater emphasis on the classes students take and grades received while in high school. Other colleges, including the California State University system, have decided to eliminate the testing requirement permanently.
“At USC, we’ve always put a lot of value into what the data and the research show,” Brunold said. “We don’t make policy decisions lightly.”
The elimination or suspension of the testing requirement by universities has left the once critical element in the hands of a prospective applicant. This includes the decision of whether to submit scores, but also whether to test in the first place.
Testing for college admissions has long created divisions among those who have more immediate access to tests, with College Board noting that “62% of students who took the SAT took it for free in their school on a weekday” compared to traditional Saturday testing options, each of which costs $55.
“One of the underlying reasons that many colleges are doing three or four year pilots with being test optional is that the tests are more difficult for lower income and first generation students, and therefore they are discriminatory,” Jerome-Alexander said.
However, divisions grow when students consider preparing for the test. Brookings, in a 2018 report on college entrance exams, noted that for students who lack “time and resources” from parental units are “largely on their own” when it comes to these exams, including on auxiliary challenges like transportation.
“Transportation plays a huge role in access to resources. Additional to that, there are financial limitations,” said Brandon Washington, president of AcceptED USC, an organization focused on assisting low-income students in the surrounding area in the college admissions process. “I hope that there’s less emphasis on these tests, as we have seen in the past couple of years.”