It feels like it was only yesterday that the College Admissions Powers That Be terrorized prospective students and a multimillion dollar test prep industry by redesigning the SAT. But, hey, the times they are a-changin', and so is the definitive college entry exam: the College Board announced sweeping changes to the SAT today, which include making the essay optional and lessening the difficulty of the vocabulary. And to think you learned the word "pellucid" for nothing.
Apparently, the College Board wants to make the test materials more in line with what college students study, striving to create "worthy challenges, not artificial obstacles" for high schoolers. The new SAT will also drop the irritating penalty for wrong answers, and the math section will focus more on linear equations, functions and proportional thinking, whatever that means, and calculators are a no-go on certain sections (gasp!)
And while the SAT enjoyed a brief 2400-point scale reign, it will once again revert to being scored out of 1600 points—one for math, one for “Evidence-Based Reading and Writing,”— which isn't frustrating at ALL to anyone who scored an 800 on the Writing section in his or her heyday, no, not at all. The now-optional essay will have its own separate score.
The new SAT hits high school classroom desks in 2016, and remember that your test scores intend to follow you deep into the grave.
