I sat down to take the new digital PSAT thinking it would be easier: fewer questions, less testing fatigue and shorter reading passages all sound like they would be to students’ advantage and provide a better testing experience, right? But really, the College Board created a test that differed in many critical ways from the paper version PSAT. This new SAT puts students at a much greater disadvantage than before and makes it even harder to get a “good” score.
One of the longest standing consistencies of the SAT has been that every question is worth the same amount of points. However, the new digital model has made harder questions worth more than easier questions. Many people may not have picked up on this because it does not explicitly say anywhere on the test that harder questions are worth more. Nonetheless, the structure of the test gives an advantage to students who get harder questions right. The new test has two sections for both reading and math. Students who do well on the first section of either category are then given a harder second section, while students who do poorly on the first section are given an easier one. To an extent, how you do on the first section determines your overall score. It is much more difficult to get a high score on the reading section if you are given the easier second section than if you are given the hard one. This punishes students who get easier questions wrong on the first section because it automatically puts them in a lower possible score bracket than those who got those questions right. It also rewards students who get harder questions right, automatically putting them in a higher bracket. This may seem like it is inconsequential because the students who get the easier questions wrong would probably also get the harder questions wrong. However, if getting easier questions wrong automatically limits your score, students are punished for guessing on easy questions when they run out of time and for making clumsy mistakes; this was not as large of an issue on the paper test.
One advantage of the digital test is its shorter length, but this hides a drawback for students taking it. Fewer questions may mean less test fatigue but it also translates to larger penalties for each wrong answer. The highest possible score on the SAT is still a 1600, but a much smaller number of questions make up this score; every question weighs more than it used to, making it harder to get a good score. This is another way that guessing and making avoidable errors can pull down your score in a way that may not have happened on the paper test.
There are some positives to the new test, such as the annotation tools that make it easier to focus on the passages and the built in calculator. However, these do not outweigh the hidden disadvantages of the test. Ultimately, the College Board wants more money from people taking the test and paying for prep books. The more people take the test, the more profit the College Board makes. It is to their advantage to make a test that seems easier but can actually result in lower scores because it will keep people coming back to take the test again and again until they get the score that they want.
