As most high schoolers know and dread, if you plan to go to college, taking the ACT and SAT is nothing less than necessary. Currently, the SAT is designed to test basic academic skills acquired by all students, presumably in high school. The three main sections are critical reading, mathematics, and writing; whereas on the ACT, science is included in the testing and the writing portion is optional. The College Board aims to reform this standardized testing system to create an exam that will better determine the student’s reasoning abilities and that, as College Board Vice President Peter Kauffmann said, “mirrors the work that students will do in college” in order to practice the work they will need to do in college and assess the level which they are currently at academically.

In the spring of 2016, the SAT will return to a 1600 point grading scale rather than a 2400 point scale. This is due to changes in the writing portion. Instead of being included in the overall score out of 2400, the writing portion will be optional and graded separately if the student chooses to take it. The reading and mathematics portions will each contribute to 800 of the total points; the writing part consists of another 800 omitted from the final tally.

There will no longer be a deduction of a quarter of a point for giving a wrong answer similarly to the ACT. This “right-only scoring encourages students to give the best answer they have to every problem.”

Not only will there be changes in the scoring, but the critical reading and writing portion will also undergo impressive modifications. These major changes include, disregarding direct definitions of vocabulary words in the reading section and instead turning to deducting definitions from context clues within portions of reading samples. The reading samples provided will be taken directly from real documents and students will draw conclusions from the evidence provided.

How do colleges adjust to this change? That is something admission departments and the College Board have concerned themselves with, discussing and debating changes ever since the announcement of the reform. With a different grading system and a different test altogether, it will definitely be a struggle for each college to decide on how they will adjust. Because admission departments hold different standards and look closely and some things more than others, it’s hard to say how this will affect students applying after the spring of 2016 when the test will first be administered. This reform also implies that there is currently something wrong with the SAT so how is that affecting students who have already taken it, even years ago, and what this means for students who will still take the “old” SAT between now and 2016.

Theoretically, this reformed version of the SAT exam will be “less difficult and tedious for students who likely are struggling to study for a test that is detached from what they learned in high school.” The SAT tests math levels up to Algebra 2 which can pose conflict for those students who, in their junior year when they actually take the exam, have not taken Algebra or Geometry courses since freshman year or even 8^th grade.

For freshmen through juniors currently at Air Academy who plan on taking the SAT: between now and the spring of 2016, don’t expect any changes to the actual test, just know that as soon as we’re done with it, the testing system will change the way students are accepted into college. These changes could potentially result in a domino effect, influencing the way students are evaluated in many aspects other than just a college exam.

“Redesigned SAT” 2014 College Board, Web. https://www.collegeboard.org/delivering-opportunity/sat/redesign

“SAT Reasoning Test” 2012 College Borad, Web. http://professionals.collegeboard.com/testing/sat-reasoning/about/sections

“SAT reform acknowledges issue of standardized testing as credible gauge of students’ abilities” The Daily Illini, March 10, 2014, Web. http://www.dailyillini.com/opinion/editorials/article_d8f66df6-a7e4-11e3-8605-001a4bcf6878.html