Earlier this year, The College Board announced that the SAT will be delivered digitally. The change will take place beginning in the 2023-2024 school year. 

Many aspects of the SAT will remain: 

• The content of the SAT (and PSAT) will remain tied to knowledge and skills students learn in high school. 
• The SAT will still be scored on a scale of 1600. 
• Assessments will take place in schools and test centers as before. 
• Students who need accommodations will receive them, although we do not yet know all of the details. 

Other aspects will be new and different: 

• The exam will be shorter–about two hours, as compared to the current approximately three hours. 
• Students will have more time per question, so the pace will feel slower. 
• Reading passages will be shorter and tied to a single question, rather than a set of 10-11 questions tied to a passage. 
• Calculators will be allowed on all Math sections. A graphing calculator will be built into the testing app, or students can bring their own. 
• Scores will take a few days to come back, rather than 10+ days. 
• Students will bring their own device (laptop or table) to take the exam, or they will be able to use a school-issued or College Board-provided device. 
• The test will be adaptive, so the questions a student sees later in a section will change based on how they did on questions earlier in a section. (More below.)
  

Adaptive Test Scoring:

• The test will be split into two “modules”, and each module will be section adaptive.
• Students taking the test will see a set first module—one for Verbal and one for Math.
• The difficulty of each Module 2 will be based on the student’s accuracy on Module 1.
• In order to earn a top score, a student will need to do well enough on Module 1 to take the most difficult Module 2.

What This Means for Students:

• Digital exams will be rolled out at different times:
  • The digital SAT will be available in the United States in August 2023. 
  • The digital SAT will be available internationally in March 2023. 
  • The PSAT (including the PSAT 8/9 and 10) will be digital beginning in fall 2023. 
• For both U.S. high school students, the class of 2024 (current juniors) will be the first class who can take the digital exam. For these students, the digital SAT will be available in the fall of their senior year. 
• For international students, the digital exam will be available for the class of 2024 (current juniors).  For these students, the digital SAT will be available in the spring of their junior year.
  
• Class of 2024 in the United States: The digital exam will be available in the fall of their senior year. Here are possible test prep paths:
  • Focus on the ACT
  • Take the paper SAT & plan to finish testing by December of junior year
  • Consider waiting to take the digital SAT in senior year as an add-on to previous ACT or paper SAT testing.
• The format of practice will change–students will do much of their practice in a digital form. The College Board has released four online adaptive practice tests, available in the SAT Bluebook app. Private Prep already has an online platform and will begin to offer digital practice tests in early 2023.
• Check back often to our Testing Landscape Updates for the most up-to-date news on both the ACT and SAT.