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The SAT is administered digitally to all students (with the exception of specific accommodations). Although the SAT has evolved over time, its role within the college admission process has changed little. The SAT is still used to predict students’ college readiness and success in entry-level college courses.
Adaptive Structure
The SAT’s digital format allows for an adaptive structure, which adjusts the difficulty of test content to best suit each student’s skill level. The Math section and the Reading & Writing section of the SAT will each be divided into two modules.
On test day, all students are given the same first module. Depending on their performance, each student will be given either an easier or harder second module. This adaptive structure allows for a more precise measure of student skills, so the test can offer accurate scores with fewer questions.
Test Administrations
Official test administrations and practice tests are delivered digitally through the College Board’s Bluebook app. You can find an overview of Bluebook on page 32. All administrations of the SAT are digital unless you have accommodations for a paper version. You can find a description of available accommodations and their approval process starting on page 13.
Weighted Questions
The SAT uses a scoring model based on Item Response Theory, which gives each question a unique point value, or “weight.” The value of each SAT question is based on the question’s difficulty, the skills required to find a solution, and statistical data about how well students perform on the question. More challenging questions are not necessarily more valuable, as an easier question may have a greater impact on a student’s score. Thus, it is critical to work thoroughly through all questions and avoid careless mistakes.
Adaptive Structure Scoring
After you finish the first module in a section, your performance is analyzed. The weighted values of your correctly answered questions are multiplied. If your score is high enough, you will move on to the higher second module, which has more challenging questions. Otherwise, you will move on to the lower second module, which has easier questions.
Overall, the higher module has greater question weights than the lower module does. Therefore, the higher module may allow you to achieve a greater overall score. However, due to the increased challenge, most students will answer fewer questions correctly in the higher module than in the lower module. For the majority of students, there will be no difference in overall scores if they are placed in the higher or lower module. There is a large overlap in possible scores, with the higher module offering scores as low as about 400 and the lower module offering scores as high as about 600 per section. This overlap is an intentional aspect of the digital SAT design so that you don’t need to worry about getting into either the higher or lower module. There is no benefit to being placed into either module and no viable strategy to take advantage of the test’s structure. The weighted scoring and adaptive structure are simply an effective design for making the test shorter and more accurate.
Example
Student A and Student B took the same digital SAT test. Their performance on the first module was similar, but Student B made more mistakes. On the second module, Student A got harder questions and Student B got easier questions. In the end, they demonstrated the same levels of skill and achieved the same score.
Adaptive Difficulty
An adaptive test evolves in response to a student’s performance to allow for a more precise measure of student skills with fewer questions. The first section is a standard mix of easy, medium, and hard difficulty questions, which generally get harder as you go. The harder second module can include very difficult questions early in the section, while the easier second module can have easy questions even at the very end of the section.
With a traditional linear format, questions vary significantly in difficulty throughout the test. Some questions may be too simple or too difficult for a student. Many questions are needed so that one standardized test form can provide enough data to generate an accurate score for students across different skill levels. This linear structure is simple but relatively inefficient. This is the linear structure students with accommodations will see if they opt to take the longer, paper version of the SAT.
