Blog

Now that we’ve returned from Spring Break, many of our 10th graders have begun or will soon begin their first steps towards preparation for the SAT or ACT. For this particular class of students, there’s a unique twist in terms of test choice: the current SAT will only be offered through December 2023, after which a radically designed Digital SAT will be offered beginning in March 2024.

The fact that we're losing one SAT and getting another with few practice materials means that we strongly recommend most current 10th graders take the ACT for flexibility and ease of preparation. With that said, our test prep team has been analyzing the Digital SAT to stay on the cutting edge of students' needs. We recently gathered our SAT/ACT tutors together for a roundtable discussion of the new test- and we’re sharing our insights below!

Read on below for our full take on the digital SAT vs. the ACT, though here are the key takeaways:

• Sophomores should book self-proctored diagnostics for both the current SAT and ACT in the next few weeks- if the current SAT is significantly stronger than the ACT, prep needs to begin as soon as possible for students to hit goal scores by December.
• The Digital SAT won’t be available in the US until March 2024, so current 10th graders in the US should move forward with the ACT or current SAT if possible!
• For international students and/or those who can’t start until Spring 2024 (and for students who don’t hit their goal scores by December), here’s what our tutors think you should know:
  • The Digital SAT might seem “easier” or more palatable than the ACT, but the scoring and scaling will be much harsher.
  • Due to the Digital SAT’s adaptive nature, students will have to perform near-perfectly on the first half of the test in order to unlock the potential for a top score, placing a greater emphasis on precision and control.
  • Added vocabulary questions mean that strong strategy will make or break students aiming for the top percentiles.
  • The lack of official practice materials means that successful prep will need to pull from resources outside the SAT.
• Reach out to us for a tutor match ASAP to begin prep by this summer (or before!) to maximize bandwidth and avoid the academic crunch of junior year. Early prep means most students can be finished by late fall (and is a must for the current SAT!) or early Spring, and many of our tutors are booking up for summer and fall.

As a reminder, you can book self-proctored mock tests with us free of charge here and receive full diagnostic reports (the most advanced in the market- read more here) and a complimentary consultation with one of our tutors to discuss the results, as long as they still have availability. If you’d like to listen to a podcast of cofounder David Phelps discussing the value of diagnostics, you can find that here.

Digital SAT: Forum Prep Tutors Roundtable

Q: Do you think the digital SAT is easier?

The responses from our own tutors were unanimous: the Digital SAT will feel easier and more palatable to students because it’s significantly shorter, it eliminates long reading passages, and the math is narrower in scope. The downside is that if it’s easier for you, it’s easier for everyone, and you’re being scored and scaled against other high schoolers taking the exam. The result?

The scoring and scaling on the Digital SAT will almost certainly be incredibly harsh- students aiming for the 99th percentile will have to turn in nearly perfect performances; since everyone on the whole will likely get more questions correct, the bar for the top percentile will be even higher accuracy-wise. In other words: don’t be fooled by the cosmetically appealing changes- this “easier” feeling test will actually be much harder in terms of the number of allowable missed questions.

From a preparation perspective, given one “easy” testing experience, and one “hard” testing experience, and equivalent starting scores, the hard one is often the better choice, since it's much easier to prepare when the student recognizes the difficulty vs. when they don’t- a better metacognitive foundation translates to a stronger improvement potential.

Q: How will the adaptive nature of the test affect scoring potential?

The Digital SAT gives each section in two parts, and it’s adaptive: how well you perform on the first half determines which second half you receive, and only the students who give top performances on the first half will be able to unlock the top level of possible section scores by receiving the hardest second half.

Our tutors already coach other tests, including the GRE, with a very similar structure. What we’ve found is that adaptive tests require much greater emphasis on precision and control of attention (especially post-pandemic) than other tests like the ACT where everything is equally weighted. Given the adaptive testing quality, students have to aim for -0 in the first half, and miss almost nothing in the first 85% of this test to have the possibility of a top score. Tests measure what you do, not what you know- this aspect is magnified on the digital SAT, so strong strategy and consistent practice will be key to success.

Q: Do the vocabulary questions make the test harder?

In a word: yes. The Digital SAT adds back in “Sentence Completion” vocabulary questions common to both the pre-2016 SAT and the ISEE. The vocabulary, from what we’ve seen so far, is significantly more advanced than that of the current SAT.

There’s a good reason for this: as one of our tutors put it, vocabulary questions are “the great divider.” It’s not realistic for students to memorize 5,000+ possible vocabulary words, so vocab questions are the easiest way for the College Board to differentiate percentiles when the Reading Comprehension questions are universally easier. They’re also good for the College Board’s bottom line, since they’re the easiest way to create objectively correct questions that stand up to scrutiny, requiring less expensive vetting of new tests.

There’s no way around the fact that vocabulary questions will make top percentile scores impossible for a portion of digital SAT students. What we’ve found through extensive prep on the ISEE and old SATs, however, is that there’s a great deal of improvement that can be unlocked through solid question-type strategy- our ISEE students can get away with knowing about half the vocab words and still gain top scores by leveraging clues in the sentence and strategic process of elimination. So far, Forum tutors working with international students on the Digital SAT have had success with similar methods.

Q: What materials will be effective in prepping for the new test?

The College Board has only released 4 official Digital SAT practice tests, so creativity is key in making sure students have enough practice in challenging areas to confront the new test confidently. So far, our tutors have been successfully leveraging the Khan Academy Digital SAT practice drills in concert with resources as far-ranging as LSAT and GMAT Logical reasoning questions, sentence completion and paragraph questions from the 2400-scored SAT, ISEE vocabulary exercises, and components from the current SAT and ACT for Math content and grammar. One of our tutors noted that the added digital Graphing Calculator on the Digital SAT was almost identical to Desmos, which most students use in the classroom, so familiarity with that program is rewarded.

Third party practice tests and sections through Test Innovators and other companies are already in development, but since so little is known about the scoring and scaling of the Digital SAT (and, based on the last SAT redesign, scaling and content will likely be highly erratic for the first few years), results should be leveraged as indicators of need for improvement, rather than as score predictors.

Q: Should anyone even take this test for the next couple years?

Our tutors agree that most students should steer clear of the digital SAT until scoring and scaling has clearer transparency (and consistency) and there are more high-quality official practice materials available. The ACT has more generous scaling at the top (you can miss more questions and still hit the 99th percentiles, since the material and pacing are more difficult), and there’s a bank of more than 10 years’ worth of relevant official tests and countless prep books available.

The most likely student candidates for the Digital SAT are those who have acute pacing difficulties on the ACT (the Digital SAT has 40-60% more time per question than that ACT, depending on the section) and can also execute at an extremely high level: no matter what the scale is, -0 questions will be a 1600. In addition, given that early versions of the test could be erratic in a student’s favor, many of our tutors may have their ACT students take a digital SAT with little to no prep just to diversify their testing portfolio. A few of our ACT students who plateau in the 30’s are energized by a quick switch to the SAT with low stakes and do end up hitting their percentile goals, though consistent prep for the most strategic test for the student definitely produces the most consistent scores!