Navigating the New SAT
In March 2016, the redesigned SAT will be administered for the first time. You may be wondering why the College Board decided to redesign the SAT.
Read MoreNavigating the 2025 SAT
The SAT has undergone significant changes since its last major update in 2016. Read on to learn about the new digital SAT and get tips for your student’s preparation.
Changes to the 2025 SAT
- The SAT is now entirely digital, making it the first college entrance exam to do so. Students are permitted to bring their own laptops to use for the test and the exam is taken through the platform BlueBook.
- The SAT is just over 2 hours long, instead of 3 hours.
- The updated SAT has 98 questions, and with a total of 134 minutes for the test, this gives students more time per question than the previous SAT and the current ACT.
- The reading sections are considerably shorter on this version of the SAT and there is only one question per passage.
- Scores will now be available within days of taking the SAT, as opposed to weeks, as the digital test is faster to grade.
- The test is Adaptive, which we will discuss more thoroughly in the next section as this change has been causing some confusion.
About the Adaptive Format
As mentioned above, the SAT is now an Adaptive test, meaning it will adjust the difficulty level of the questions based on the accuracy of the student’s answers in the previous Module. There are 4 total Modules in the SAT; two Math, and two Reading & Writing. Students cannot skip back and forth between these Modules.
In Module 1 for both Math and Reading & Writing, students are given the same mix of Easy, Medium, and Hard questions. Depending on the student's performance on Module 1, their Module 2 will either contain primarily Easy questions or primarily Hard questions. In order to get the Hard questions in Module 2, students will need to get about 15 questions correct on Module 1.
These two different paths for Module 2 are weighted differently when it comes to scoring. Students given primarily Easy questions can achieve a maximum score of around 660 on the Math or Reading & Writing section. Students who are given primarily Hard questions can achieve a maximum score of 800 on the Math or Reading & Writing section, for a combined score that is out of 1600.
Tips for Preparation
- Create a customized study plan based on your student’s results on the PSAT and other SAT practice tests. Encourage your student to spend extra time studying areas that they had difficulty with on the practice exams.
- Make sure your student takes practice tests online so they have familiarity with taking the test in a digital format.
- Talk with your local RSM branch about our SAT test preparation courses. Our students work on homework assignments online so they are familiar with answering math problems digitally. Additionally, RSM SAT prep materials tend to be more challenging than other SAT practice offerings. Our practice problems align more closely with the concepts rather than question structure.
