The New SAT… is just the SAT to juniors

As March approached, we were bombarded with calls from parents and the media about the New SAT.  Most juniors simply called the test “the SAT.” For them, there is nothing new.

Since many parents of high school juniors in Connecticut are losing their minds over the NEW SAT, I thought it would be helpful to relay the advice that I recently gave at one of our open presentations.

The new SAT was redesigned for many different reasons but many have suggested that the growing popularity of the ACT was the primary one.  When I first started teaching test prep back in 1999, I don’t recall any student mentioning the ACT. In the early 2000s, I was aware of the ACT but other an outlier or two applying to Midwestern or Southern colleges, students were not interested in taking the test.  At some point, coincidentally around the same time we expanded our operations into Fairfield County, the ACT gradually become popular and then seemingly “overnight” to Connecticut guidance counselors the ACT was almost an equally popular test.

The new SAT has formatted itself to match the more student-friendly ACT.  That’s a good thing from the perspective of students who almost always liked the ACT’s format better. The SAT has removed its guessing penalty to match the ACT. Again, this is a good thing from the perspective of most students.  The SAT has removed sentence completions which now eliminates the need to memorize high level vocabulary. Again, another positive for the SAT as it will match the ACT in this regard as well.

The NEW SAT is really just “the SAT” to high school juniors and since it is more like the ACT, this is a good thing.   So… relax!