the New SAT
Here’s What It’s Like to Take the New SAT
By Dana GoldsteinMarch 8, 2024
New York Times
Students took a new SAT on Saturday. It's all digital, and the reading and writing sections do away with page-long reading excerpts with eight to 11 questions. Now, there are short passages followed by just one question each.
Try your hand at five sample questions.
1 of 5
The following text is from Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel “Dracula.” The narrator is being driven in a carriage through a remote region at night.
“The baying of the wolves sounded nearer and nearer, as though they were closing round on us from every side. I grew dreadfully afraid, and the horses shared my fear. The driver, however, was not in the least disturbed; he kept turning his head to left and right, but I could not see anything through the darkness.”
As used in the text, what does the word “disturbed” most nearly mean?
Disorganized
Alarmed
Offended
Interrupted
96% of 267,027 readers answered this correctly.
2 of 5
The field of study called affective neuroscience seeks instinctive, physiological causes for feelings such as pleasure or displeasure. Because these sensations are linked to a chemical component (for example, the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain when one receives or expects a reward), they can be said to have a partly physiological basis. These processes have been described in mammals, but Jingnan Huang and his colleagues have recently observed that some behaviors of honeybees (such as foraging) are also motivated by a dopamine-based signaling process.
What choice best describes the main purpose of the text?
It describes an experimental method of measuring the strength of physiological responses in humans.
It illustrates processes by which certain insects can express how they are feeling.
It summarizes a finding suggesting that some mechanisms in the brains of certain insects resemble mechanisms in mammalian brains.
It presents research showing that certain insects and mammals behave similarly when there is a possibility of a reward for their actions.
3 of 5
“An Ideal Husband” is an 1895 play by Oscar Wilde. In the play, which is a satire, Wilde suggests that a character named Lady Gertrude Chiltern is perceived as both extremely virtuous and unforgiving, as is evident when another character says
Which quotation from “An Ideal Husband” most effectively illustrates the claim?
“Lady Chiltern is a woman of the very highest principles, I am glad to say. I am a little too old now, myself, to trouble about setting a good example, but I always admire people who do.”
“Do you know, [Lady Chiltern], I don’t mind your talking morality a bit. Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.”
“[Lady Chiltern] does not know what weakness or temptation is. I am of clay like other men. She stands apart as good women do—pitiless in her perfection—cold and stern and without mercy.”
“Lady Chiltern, you are a sensible woman, the most sensible woman in London, the most sensible woman I know.”
4 of 5
Richard Spikes was a prolific African American inventor known for his contributions to automotive engineering. Between 1907 and 1946, he patented many inventions, an automobile turn signal, a safety brake, and — most famously — the first automatic gearshift.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of standard English?
included
includes
including
will include
5 of 5
While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:
Planetary scientists classify asteroids based on their composition.
C-type asteroids are composed primarily of carbon.
They account for roughly 75 percent of known asteroids.
S-type asteroids are primarily made up of silicate minerals.
They account for roughly 17 percent of known asteroids.
The student wants to emphasize a difference between C-type and S-type asteroids. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?
Planetary scientists classify asteroids into types, two of which are the C-type and the S-type.
Planetary scientists consider an asteroid’s composition (such as whether the asteroid is composed mainly of silicate minerals or carbon) when classifying it.
Roughly 17 percent of known asteroids are classified as S-type asteroids; another percentage is classified as C-type asteroids.
C-type asteroids are mainly composed of carbon, whereas S-type asteroids are primarily made up of silicate minerals.
Answers:
In the context of this excerpt from Bram Stoker's "Dracula," the word "disturbed" most nearly means "alarmed." The narrator is describing a tense situation where the baying of wolves is getting closer, inducing fear in both the narrator and the horses. The driver's lack of reaction implies that he is not alarmed by the situation, despite the growing danger indicated by the approaching wolves.
The main purpose of the text is to summarize a finding suggesting that some mechanisms in the brains of certain insects, specifically honeybees, resemble mechanisms in mammalian brains. This is indicated by the mention of Jingnan Huang and colleagues' observations that behaviors in honeybees, like foraging, are motivated by a dopamine-based signaling process similar to that seen in mammals in response to pleasure or the expectation of a reward.
The choice that completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of standard English is "including." This choice correctly implies that the list that follows is a part of the many inventions patented by Richard Spikes, without suggesting that it is a complete list.
To emphasize a difference between C-type and S-type asteroids, using relevant information from the notes, the most effective choice is:
"C-type asteroids are mainly composed of carbon, whereas S-type asteroids are primarily made up of silicate minerals."
This choice directly contrasts the compositions of the two asteroid types, highlighting the primary difference between them as noted in the student's research.
Additional Reading Provided:
No More No. 2 Pencils: The SAT Goes Fully Digital
The new format cuts nearly an hour out of the exam and has shorter reading passages.
After 98 years of students scratching answers on paper, the SAT will now be fully digital.Credit...Alex Brandon/Associated Press
March 8, 2024
With adolescent anxiety surging and attention spans challenged, high school students will take a revamped version of the SAT on Saturday, which has been designed in part to reduce stress, according to the College Board, which administers the test.
The exam will be briefer — two hours and 14 minutes instead of three hours — and students will have more time for each question. The reading passages will be much shorter, and test-takers will now be able to use an online graphing calculator for the entire math section of the exam.
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And after 98 years of students scratching answers on paper, the SAT will now be fully digital for the remote-learning generation.
The College Board said its piloting of the exam showed it was just as rigorous as the paper test, but less intimidating for students. And those with A.D.H.D. and dyslexia, as well as those learning English, reported that they were “better able to maintain their focus” on the digital test, compared with the earlier format, said Jaslee Carayol, director of communications for the College Board.
Delivering the test digitally will also reduce the possibility of cheating, the College Board said, because few students will receive the exact same exam. In both reading and math, test-takers who perform well early in the exam will receive harder questions as they go along. (The College Board says scores will be accurate, regardless of the difficulty of questions.)
The Science of Reading Movement
What to Know: An effort to overhaul how children learn to read, known as the science of reading, is sweeping the United States. Here’s where it stands.
In New York: Gov. Kathy Hochul, who wants to change the way schools in the state teach reading, proposed spending $10 million to retrain teachers in the science of reading.
In California: A study found that California schools got positive results from a program that emphasized the science of reading — at a cost of about $1,000 per student annually.
A Reading Revolt: Parents, civil rights activists, educators and lawmakers are taking on the education establishment over how children are taught to read. But can they get results?
There are critics, though. The switch to shorter reading passages has not been universally celebrated by English teachers, many of whom believe that in the face of constant distractions from technology, students need to develop greater reading stamina.
The latest overhaul of the exam comes at a fraught moment for the standardized testing industry, in which most colleges have dropped testing requirements.
According to data from Common App, the number of college applicants submitting SAT or ACT scores plummeted from 76 percent in the 2019-2020 admissions cycle to 45 percent this year.
Here’s What It’s Like to Take the New SAT
Even though Yale, Dartmouth and Brown recently made waves by reinstating standardized test requirements, saying the scores are the best predictor of academic success, it is unlikely that most colleges, which are far less selective, will follow suit, said Mary L. Churchill, associate dean at the Boston University Wheelock College of Education and Human Development.
The average acceptance rate among four-year institutions is 73 percent, and most colleges do not face the challenge of having to draw fine-grained distinctions between huge swaths of highly qualified students. Indeed, with some smaller colleges facing under-enrollment and at risk of shutting down, many admissions directors see test-optional policies as a way to encourage more applications, Dr. Churchill said.
Amid this changing landscape, the College Board has successfully promoted the SAT to state policymakers as an integral part of the high school experience, and 16 states now require or encourage students to take the test during the school day, regardless of their plans for life after high school.
In total, 1.9 million students took the SAT in the high school class of 2023, with two-thirds taking the exam during the school day, often for free. In the 2019 class, there were 2.2 million test-takers.
Students will take the exam on an app called Bluebook. In some ways, it tries to recreate the experience of working with paper. There are tools to make highlights and annotations, and to cross out multiple-choice responses students think are wrong.
Test-takers will no longer need to flip back and forth between long reading passages and pages of accompanying questions. Instead, they will tackle a string of much shorter passages — some just one paragraph — each associated with a single question.
Yoon S. Choi, chief executive of CollegeSpring, a nonprofit that provides in-school test prep to low-income students, said the new format was a boon to many, especially English language learners.
But others — including some educators who work with that same population of students — expressed skepticism about the College Board’s revision.
“It seems to me like they are maybe trying to cater to this generation that is doing a lot of reading on the internet, bouncing around from one place to the next,” said Ariel Sacks, a New York City public school English teacher and author of a book arguing for the importance of assigning full novels. “But I don’t think that’s setting a high or even effective expectation for what students should be doing as juniors in high school.”
Ms. Carayol of the College Board acknowledged that reading stamina was important, but said the paper SAT also had not been a good test of that skill.
“Long test passages force students to race through text hunting for answers instead of reading carefully,” she wrote in an email. “There’s a huge benefit for a student by having these shorter passages. If they get uncomfortable or disoriented by a passage, they can skip it and return, rather than having eight to 11 questions tied to each passage.”
At North Houston Early College High School, Adair Rivera, a 17-year-old junior, will take the SAT in the School Day program. He hopes to become the first member of his immediate family to attend college, to study computer science.
Adair said he is earning higher scores on digital practice tests than when he took the paper SAT. He hopes to attend M.I.T. or Yale, which require test scores, or the University of Pennsylvania, which does not.
“It’s a game changer,” he said of the shorter reading passages and shorter exam time. “It doesn’t wear out students as fast.”
