Throughout the years, many students have been used to taking the SAT on paper, the test often taking threehours or more to complete. Recently, there has been a new way for students to take the SAT on a computer and for shorter amounts of time. With this, numerous benefits come along.
One of the benefits is a shorter, less time-consuming part of the test. As a person who has taken the PSAT on paper and SAT on both paper and computer, this not only saves valuable time for students but also has the potential to reduce test-related stress. This could be beneficial to students who can focus better on their performance as well as possibly achieve better scores. According to the College Board website, the digital SAT is 46 minutes shorter than the paper SAT and has 56 fewer questions. The Reading and Writing sections are combined and have shorter passages, helping to reduce the number of questions.
Along with this, the SAT also introduces a new digital format and an embedded graphing calculator. Rather than waiting weeks to get results, students will receive score reports from the digital tests in a matter of days. With this, students will see what their scores are more in advance and what they need to improve. The calculator also helps in case testers might’ve forgotten their calculator or there is none they can borrow from their school. When taking the test, I feel that this has helped me and not had me stress out too much whether I brought a calculator or not. Also, receiving the test scores in a timely manner is great to see whether I did poorly or not and takes away that anxious feeling of waiting.
The digital SAT is easier than the paper SAT, and when it comes to little things like not having the right pencil for the paper SAT, not having to worry about any of that when taking the digital SAT goes a long way. With time and questions being shorter, and still having 15-minute breaks helps take the stress off of the SAT and worry less about having time to complete. As well as being drained by the end of the paper SAT, little changes like this and making it digital have gone a long way in helping students receive better scores and help them do well in the future.
