Don’t ask your father or mother what their SAT scores were. It’s an unfair question. If your parents took their SAT before 1995, they took it before it was “recentered.”Scores are higher now. And recentering has a lot to do with it. I’ve been told (by a fellow college application coach no less) that I couldn’t get into Middlebury today.  With the academic record I had, that is probably true. But I took my SAT in 1981, before re-centering. And my grades would likely be inflated today by, well, grade inflation. But that’s another topic.

Re-Centering

Why did The College Board re-center? In the mid-nineties, verbal scores were averaging around 425, and math scores were averaging around 475. One goal was to close that gap and get the midpoint to 500. The reference group went from 1942 to 1990. This re-centering meant that 1600 was no longer necessarily a perfect score. Students can now get up to four questions wrong and still get a 1600. To illustrate this, consider that In 1994, 25 students out of 1.25 million test takers got 1600 (about 1 in 50,000 students). The first re-centered SAT in April of 1995 saw 137 perfect scores out of about 200,000 test takers (about 1 in 1,400 students). 

Thirty years later, the 1994 test takers are 47 years old, many of whom have children applying to institutions of higher learning. Many parents are thinking their children are qualified for highly selective colleges and universities. A 1400 seems impressive to many people. And it was — in my day. The median range for SATs at Middlebury is 1420-1520. That means your 1400 puts you in the lowest quartile of successful Middlebury applicants. You probably should not even report a 1400 to Middlebury. Hope that your grades, coursework, activities, and Common App essay (there are no supplemental essays) will carry your application. But regardless of what they say, admissions offices want to see SAT scores. They are predictors of success in college. The University of Vermont is a fine state university.  A 1400 would put you near the top of their 1250-1420 median range. (You can get 15 questions wrong and get a 1400. You can miss 10 and still get a 1500.) Some state universities are more competitive. Michigan’s median SATs are 1350-1530. Virginia’s are 1400-1540.

The College Board has brought a number of other changes to its test. Subject area tests have come and gone. The optional writing section has come and gone. As the number of applicants to many institutions has skyrocketed, admissions offices have wanted to streamline the data they receive. Many institutions want only one teacher recommendation, if that. Many have gotten rid of interviews. Middlebury still has them, but only alumni conduct them. The Covid pandemic closed testing centers. Most colleges and universities went test-optional as a result. These same institutions decided they want to continue the policy. More applicants mean more money and better selectivity statistics. The University of California schools went test blind, meaning they don’t want anybody to report scores and won’t accept them.

The Digital Format

The recent major change is going from pencil and paper to digital format. Previously, the time limit was three hours. It’s now just over two hours. But it’s a shorter test. That is likely to help students with learning disabilities. Different sections are broken down differently. The paper test, for instance, allotted 1 minute 15 seconds per Reading question and 48 seconds for each Writing and Language question. This requires different strategies. Our test prep tutor has taken the new SAT in order to get a better understanding of it and how to prepare her students. The new SAT is adaptive. That means if you do better in the first module, your second module will be more difficult. If you don’t do so well, the test gets easier. That may be helpful to students with testing anxiety. Everyone uses the same built-in calculator, so as to narrow the gap between students who can afford the best calculators and those who can’t.

The College Board insists that the overall results of these two versions have been the same.  Scores are released quicker. Some 84 percent of students say they prefer the digital version. A common question we’ve received is if one can superscore a paper score with a digital score. The answer is yes. Of course, the question will become moot after students have cycled through the old format. It will take a while to glean the data we need to assess the desirability of the digital SAT. Hardware and WiFi glitches will continue. But it’s hard to argue with 84 percent of students. Soon, students won’t remember any other way of taking the exam.