The College Board, the administrator of the SAT, announced on January 25, 2022, that the test would be experiencing a few changes to the basic format coming in 2024. This new format is raising concerns for students and teachers.

  Anna Montgomery, one of the teachers of the SAT Skills class available at GLPS, sat down with The Comet’s Tale to explain the SAT and her thoughts on the changes.

   “[The SAT] Is a standardized test that is created by the college board, and it serves to provide a standardized assessment for students’ skill proficiency,” commented Montgomery. Also, the time of the test is “A total of 230 minutes not including break time.”

  The test typically would involve four sections: Reading, Writing & Language, Math (Calculator), and Math (Non-Calculator), but this curriculum is changing.

  The changes that will be coming to the test are, the time will be shortened from three hours to two hours, it will be digital, have shorter passages, and a full calculator math portion will be added. Concern has been raised such as test security, academic honesty, and accessibility.

  “Inequities could impact the test. Certain districts could not guarantee there would be enough resources for everyone to take the test,” Montgomery said on another one of her worries, “I don’t know how they are going to manage the security so they know if the student taking the test is who they say they are and how they control what access the student has to other things.” 

  There are many concerns about this new format for both students and teachers, with student stress and the chance of cheating taking high priority. Some colleges in the past have been dropping SAT score requirements for their applications, such as the University of California.

  It is unknown how these changes will be impacting the SAT and how schools administer it; The only way to know for sure is for students, teachers, and colleges to wait until 2024.