High school students dreaming of a college education will have a newly formatted exam to tackle starting in 2024. That’s when the College Board will launch its revamped SAT exam for US students.

The College Board recently announced that it is revamping the SAT exam again, which was first administered in 1926 and has gone through numerous revisions over the years. The change is big news for the nearly 3 million students who take the SAT every year at some 7,000 test centers in more than 170 countries.

The new test will first be introduced to international test sites in 2023, before launching to US test sites in the spring of 2024. The most significant changes are its format, which will change from paper to digital, and its duration. , which will go from three hours. of test material at two hours. The new test will also reduce the length of reading passages and allow the use of a calculator on all, rather than just some, math problems.

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Another interesting quality of the new test is that it is “adaptive”, meaning that it chooses questions from students as they progress through the exam, based on their results. to the questions of the previous test. Adaptive tests ask more difficult questions when the answers to the previous questions are correct, and easier questions when the answers to the previous questions are incorrect. Of course, student scores are impacted accordingly. The SAT will continue to be scored on a scale of 400 to 1600 points.

Although the test is digital, students will not be able to take the exam at home. They will be required to report to an official test center, usually a local high school.

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High school students who are currently in their second year, juniors and seniors will not be affected by the change, as they will either be seniors or have graduated by the time the new format is introduced. Current freshmen will have the option of taking the SAT in its current format during their freshman or sophomore year, or in the fall of their freshman year. They can also take the newly formatted SAT in the spring of their freshman year, the following summer, and the fall of their senior year, and ultimately use their most impressive score for their college applications.

Even though many colleges have adopted an “optional testing” policy during COVID, and some continue to do so, students are recognizing that strong SAT scores can benefit them in a multitude of areas, including college admissions, scholarships and avoidance of college placement tests.

Susan Alaimo is the founder and director of Collegebound Review, which for the past 25 years has offered PSAT/SAT® prep, essay editing, and private college counseling by Ivy League-trained instructors. Visit CollegeboundReview.com or call 908-369-5362