High school students taking the SAT this spring will be the first U.S. juniors and seniors to sit for the newly launched digital version of the College Board’s standardized college admissions test.

In a recent article in Education Week, Priscilla Rodriguez, head of the SAT program explained that while “the test still measures students’ abilities in math, and reading and writing, it is now shorter, more adaptive to students’ performance, and more secure from possible cheating.”

Following are some of the changes students can expect:

• Adaptivity: Students will find there are still two sections on the SAT: math, and reading and writing. Each section is split into two parts. Rodriguez provides this example of how adaptivity works: 

Say a student is working on the first half of the reading and writing section…They can work on all the questions, go back and forth to check their work, or change answers. Once that first half is done, the testing system evaluates what they got right and wrong. Then the system offers the second half of the reading and writing section with questions that are either slightly harder or easier depending on how the student performed in the first half. 

Students are given material in the second half of the reading and writing section and the second half of the math section based on what they showed they know in the first half of those sections, and their score is based on how they perform across all of the questions they answered. We’ve done studies that show that a student’s score would be the same regardless of whether they went to the harder or the easier module.

• Timing: Due to the adaptive format, it now takes less time to complete the test. It’s down from three hours to about two hours. 
• Content format: In the digitized version, students can use their calculators throughout the entire math section instead of only for certain questions. Plus students do not need to bring their calculator as there’s one built into the test app.

Reading passages are now brief with one question attached to each passage. In the paper test students had to read long passages and answer several related questions.

The digital versions of PSAT and the PSAT 8/9 (for 8th and 9th grade students) were launched in October 2023.