Time – Kaitlin Mulhere
“High schoolers picking up pencils on March 5 will take a newly redesigned SAT, the result of a massive, multiyear overhaul of the college admissions exam. What’s changing? Broadly speaking, the new test is supposed to better align with what students should be learning in high school, so that studying for the SAT will reinforce what they’ve studied for classes and reflect skills they’ll actually use after high school. More specifically, the penalty for guessing has been eliminated, and there are only four answer choices instead of five. The writing section is optional again with a revamped essay prompt based on a reading passage. The vocabulary will focus on less-obscure words. (See more on the vocabulary changes here, including a video in which our staffers struggle to define examples of old SAT.) And the highest total score will be 1600 again, after roughly a decade on a 2400-point scale.”(more)