 Hello, my people, my name is Meacham, and today we're talking about the SAT. I'm gonna break down the announcement from College Board about the digital SAT and explain to you everything you need to know, or at least everything we can figure out from this announcement, before you have to start taking this test. Obviously, some of this is speculation. I haven't seen a digital SAT. There's no prep material yet for digital SATs. We're going off of what they said in their blog post and in their formal announcement, which you can see on their website. I have left links in the description below. Let's get to it. When will you be able to take the digital SAT? If you're in the United States or you're abroad, in 2022, you're going to take the same test, the classic paper SAT. College Board has announced that this will start in 2023 for international students. In March 2024, we will all be taking the exact same test. What changes with this new SAT and what can we figure out from the wording that is used in College Board's messages? Want to start with what stays the same. The paper SAT and the new digital SAT will still be 1,600 points for a final score broken down into two categories, English and math. There are no new subjects and the sections remain relatively the same. So the test will still keep its classic two parts worth 800 points each. That's about where the similarities end though. There are some massive changes coming and so we've got to get into those. Obviously going digital means that you're not going to use a paper test anymore, which is kind of nice because now you don't have to remember to bring a pencil or a calculator because everything's going to take place on your computer. Your computer, you can use your own laptop or even a tablet to take the test. College Board has explained that there will be an app that you can download onto your device and you can bring that device to the test center. If you don't have a device of your own or you don't want to bring your own, you can also tell them in advance that you want them to provide a device for you and they will do that. Lastly, you'll still need to take the test at a test center. There is no at home option for the SAT, at least not yet. If you've taken the TOEFL at home, you'll probably be familiar with this style of testing where you download an app and then the app controls your computer to make sure you're not doing anything else and then it'll allow you to take the test directly from your device. But going digital has some other big implications for the test. One of the reasons that College Board gave for making this switch is for test security or integrity. With the paper version of the test, everybody got the same version of the test on the same day and so if just one person in the chain leaked test results, an entire country's test dates could be canceled. This actually happened to several countries last year. So in order to stop that from happening, College Board has said that everyone will get a unique test. That is kind of hard to process. There are hundreds of thousands of people that take the SAT every year on the exact same day. How can they give them all a unique test? The test sections will be divided into two modules. The first module will be the first half of the test for that section. And then the second module will be downloaded after you complete the first. So your second module could be easier if your first half went very poorly and vice versa. It could be a lot harder if you're acing the test through the first half. In order for this to work though, your computer will need to be connected to the internet. They have said though that they will have a fail-safe system so that if you lose connection to the internet or if you run out of battery, the test will constantly be saving your progress. Your time will be stopped and you'll be able to reconnect or plug your laptop back in and continue taking the test without any problems. Now, what's unclear about this is the implications this will have on your score. We'll have to see what grading advice they give and while they maintain that the grades will be comparable to paper test scores, I have a hard time seeing how that's gonna be true. In 2023, you're gonna have international students taking this digital SAT while American students take a paper SAT. What will universities do when they're presented with these two sets of results? I have no idea and I personally think it's a problem for international students that we have to go first. But I'll talk about that more later. The other advantage of going digital is that you should be able to get your results a lot faster. College board says you'll get them in days instead of weeks. College board also explained that there will be some very significant changes to certain parts of the test. So let's get into those. First of all, the math section will be much easier since there will not be a portion where you cannot use your calculator. Right now, if you take the paper SAT, there are two math parts. One part without a calculator and one part with a calculator. Now it's all gonna be a with calculator test. And that calculator will be built into the app that you have to download. So no more bringing a TI86 to your SAT. I miss the TI86. I remember that being a big deal. My dad not wanting to pay for it. Not only that, but they're making it easier by giving you a reference sheet inside the app that'll have a list of common formulas. What they mean by common formulas is up for debate. I don't know if that means that you will have all the formulas that you need to execute all of the questions. But at the very least, you won't have to memorize as many formulas as you did before. You'll just have to know when and where to use them. The math portion will be much easier as a result. No section has had more changes though than the reading section. And I'm still having trouble figuring out what this means. College board says that instead of getting long reading passages with multiple questions, there will be lots of short texts with one question each. If we just do a little bit of back of the napkin math, I think we can figure something out here. College board says that the test will take two hours instead of three hours. Now currently there's a two to one ratio of time between the reading portion and the writing portion. If that holds true, then that would mean that we're probably looking at 40 minutes of reading and 20 minutes of writing. One hour for the math portion and you've got your two hour text. College board has also made it clear that you will have more time per question on the new SAT. So right now you get about one minute and 20 seconds per question on the reading portion. It stands to reason that if the reading portion is only gonna be about 40 minutes and you're only gonna get one question per reading, I think you're gonna see about 20 reading passages. 20 passages that give you about two minutes per question. How long will those passages be? I'm thinking just a couple of paragraphs at most. They'll probably be much shorter, maybe a fifth of what a usual reading is on the SAT. Does this mean the end of the paired passages? I think it might. The one section that they have not talked about is the writing section. It does not get mentioned anywhere in their announcements, which leads me to believe that it's just going to be a shorter version of the current test. Another advantage that the digital test will give you is the ability to flag questions if you're not sure about the answer. And then when you get to the end of the test, you can quickly go back to any question that you flagged to try to answer it again. They've also mentioned that there will be a built-in timer that you can turn off and on. So instead of staring at a clock on the other side of the room, you'll be able to see your time right there on your screen. So all in all, these changes seem to make the test easier, especially for the math portion, since you won't have a no calculator portion. Overall, the shorter texts should be easier for people since, let's be honest, nobody really has a great attention span to read an entire passage and answer 10 questions. Being a shorter test overall should be better for you as a test taker. Having said that, what does that mean for your scores and what does that mean for the general test taking population? I suspect that people are gonna start doing better on the SAT if the SAT is becoming easier. And that means that eventually they're gonna have to adjust the scores. A lot of people will probably get really high scores early on and they'll need to scale that down to show more balance. Fewer mistakes will lead to bigger changes in your grade. I wouldn't be surprised if just one mistake on this new digital test drops your score from, let's say, 1600 to 1550 because these questions are gonna have more weight since they should be easier and more people should be getting them correct. And the fact that there are fewer questions on the test definitely means that each one will carry a little bit more weight towards your score. So we're gonna have to get a higher percentage of questions correct than we did before on the previous SAT. Why is College Board doing this to international students first? Their argument is that right now there are only five international dates and American students get seven opportunities to take the test and they want to level that out. So they're promising seven dates in 2023 for international students. Right now, Americans can take the test again in June and November, something that foreigners just can't do. So they're hoping to add the June and November SAT to the international marketplace. That's great for students who need an extra chance to take the SAT. It's really great if you wanna take a June and August just like you might do a March and May. So I look forward to seeing seven dates on the international calendar. But I have to ask why international's first. I think that College Board is using you, the international student, as a guinea pig for its test. I mean, the pilot program has been going on in international markets for a few months and I think it makes sense for them to try to test it out on the international students before they test it out on domestic students. I guarantee there will be small adjustments made to this test in that time between the start of 2023 and the start of 2024. This also puts international students at a bit of a disadvantage for 2023. I mean, there's not going to be a lot of test prep material. College Board has promised to put things on Khan Academy just as they always do, but the truth is that if you do an SAT prep program, like the one that we offer, we rely on a lot of other test materials. We use pass papers from College Board. We use test books like from Kaplan or Princeton Review. All of that extra material is helpful for students who are preparing for this test. I don't know if there's even going to be much material for you to get ready in 2023. Now, I would like to think that College Board is already working with different book publishing companies to get some test material out there later this year. And if that is the case, we will be the first to buy those books. It concerns me that the entire international student market is going to be disadvantaged because they won't have as much access to material while the American group is going to have full access to year's worth of SAT content. A student preparing for the 2023 SAT in the United States will have a huge advantage over a student taking that same test digitally abroad. Now, in March 2024, we will all be taking the exact same test all around the world. So there won't be any advantage anymore, but again, I suspect that College Board is trying to use the international students as a way to fine-tune and tweak those settings on the test so that it's perfect for 2024 when it hits the United States. I could be wrong, but this is the same company that holds a boule for a billion dollars in the bank, even though it's supposed to be a nonprofit. So I'm not exactly willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. If you want some help getting prepared for your SATs, whether it's paper or digital, you can hit us up at prepwithscore.com. As soon as we get our hands on some prep material, we will take a good look at it and publish another video here that explains to you exactly what these differences are. Subscribe to the channel so you don't miss that video when it comes out because I wanna make sure that you guys have the information you need to succeed at this test. It is an extremely important test, especially for international students. And if you don't believe me, you should make sure you're subscribed because we've got a video coming out soon about how important it is to take the SAT as an international student. You just can't skip it. If you did a pilot for the digital SAT, leave a comment below because I got questions. I'll see you next week.