How Hard Is the Digital SAT?
Tutoring and Small Group Classes
Most of the comments I've heard and read about the new digital SAT given March 9 are critical of how difficult it was.
But I'm not sure it matters. The College Board is pretty good at assessing the difficulty of its SAT questions ahead of time. They engage in "score equating," which is similar to a curve, but done in advance.
My hunch is that the actual scores, when released later today (!) will not be super-low, generally speaking. I believe that they'll be pretty similar to historical scores.
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Sidebar from Cynical Andy: the College Board (and the ACT) have been under the gun in the past two-three years, as opponents to standardized testing -- namely, FairTest.org -- have pressured colleges to not require the tests because of their inherent bias, lack of correlation with a student's future performance in college and a likely reduction in underrepresented minorities on college campuses as a result.
On the other hand, a recent trickle of colleges -- Brown, Yale, UT Austin -- have announced that they are going back to requiring standardized testing because, as it turns out, the SAT and ACT:
- Are good predictors of how well a student will fare in college
- Promote, not reduce diversity
- Don't seem to be terribly biased
I expect more, similar announcements from colleges in the future.
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Back to my theory about the difficulty and scores from the digital SAT: I just don't see how the College Board would shoot itself in the foot by issuing a bunch of low scores, which would in turn discourage future test-takers from sitting for the SAT, and turn instead to the ACT.
Yeah, it's almost like the non-profit College Board is a business! Weird.
I guess we'll see what scores actually look like, later today! So fun!
The next SAT is in May. We're running small group tutoring classes, Monday and Wednesday nights, to help your kiddo CRUSH the SAT like a bug. Check it out here, and use the coupon code CRUSH2024 to shave off 100 donuts from the regular tuition!
Here's a roster of all upcoming SAT and ACT classes, CRUSH2024 coupon code applies to every last one of 'em:
- Andy Lockwood
P.S. Here are some other ways we can help you: