Is the Redesigned SAT Harder or Easier?

Test Preparation SAT Preparation
1

Surfing the internet, I was surprised to see what difference of opinion there is on this question. Some people and news organizations claim the test is much harder, others say it is so much easier, a dumbing down, etc

My own (very provisional, unscientific) opinion is that whether the test is harder or easier depends upon the type of student.

For cr, I think the passages are a little harder, but the questions are much easier. Good readers won’t notice the increased difficulty level of the passages, but will benefit from the easier questions. Average or weak readers are going to suffer more through the readings, so the easier questions won’t help much. Overall, good to excellent readers will find the test easier, weak readers will find the test harder, and average readers will find it about the same (considering that vocabulary is gone).

All students who are weaker in vocabulary than they are in reading comprehension will be happier with the new test. Vocabulary whizzes will be nostalgic.

For math, I think the 800 in math level 2 kids are going to find the new SAT math test much, much easier. Unless CB puts some harder trick questions back in the test, there is just not that much to stump someone who has studied math through pre-calc very well. I don’t know how many people take Math Level 2, but I would assume it is a pretty big number. If we consider that 10% of Math Level 2 test-takers score 800, and many more are 700+, there could be a big increase in perfect or near-perfect SAT math scores. The way the SAT is now, you can be good in Math Level 2 but quite a bit less good in SAT math. I think those days may be over.

On the other hand, I think students who are around 550 in math on the current SAT risk being completely blown out of the water by the new test. I had a couple of students in that category look at the new SAT math. They hated it. They said the current SAT is much better. They couldn’t do almost anything on the non-calc section, including the arithmetic and fractions.

In terms of prep, it looks like the people who are in the upper end of the curve on the current test will need less prep, and the people who are in the middle-bottom will need more, potentially a lot more. They are going to have to relearn addition of fractions, multiplication tables, and all sorts of other basic stuff going way, way back…

Well, just my 2 cents based on subjective opinion, a very small sample, and no concrete data. Take it with a grain of salt.

I would be interested in the 2 cents’s of other people. What do you think?

2

It’s not necessarily harder or easier. But it IS different in some important ways. Some students will find the differences to their liking, but others may opt to go the ACT route instead. The best way to decide if it’s right for you is to compare the differences, not old and new or harder and easier, but between the New SAT and the ACT. They have basically the same material, but here are the differences:

  1. SAT has no science section. But ACT science is easy to master
  2. Essays are different: ACT asks you to come up with an argument - the SAT gives you an argument to evaluate
  3. SAT has few fill-in--the-blank math problems and half don’t allow you to use a calculator. ACT is multiple choice and allows calculator on all the problems.
  4. The SAT is less “time sensitive” while the ACT is very fast paced

So depending on your preferences, you should like one more than the other. The best way to figure it out? Grab the official practice books for both tests, spend an afternoon looking through each one, and compare them side by side (especially the different sections) - then pick the one that you like the most.

3

I would like to add a few more observations in light of the October PSAT.

I was able to take a look at the Oct. 14 and Oct. 28 PSAT’s.

The Oct. 14 is a little harder in R and a little easier in M than is the Oct. 28.

I thought both were a little harder in R than are the practice tests because there are more trap answer choices. I guess CB figured out there were going to be too many perfect papers in R so it threw in a few traps. This makes the feel of the R more similar to the feel of the old CR reading comprehension: you have to be careful while going through the choices. However, I think the R is still easier overall than the old CR for students strong in reading comprehension, but less strong in vocabulary because there are not so many traps and the questions are less twisted.

Students who are not so strong in reading comprehension are likely to find the readings harder. The passages have some things in them (foreign words, heavy rhetoric style, highly technical language) that are going to make weaker readers unhappy. These students can improve by practicing with Core Curriculum readings. They will also be helped by the fact that there are only 4 answer choices and no penalty for wrong answers.

A student still needs to be pretty strong in vocabulary to do really well because there are questions with relatively challenging vocabulary in context. These occur also on the Writing/Language section. People who are only medium-strong in vocabulary will probably get a couple wrong because of vocabulary issues (but maybe not so many wrong as they would get on the old sentence completions).

For M, I think the PSAT’s confirm that there is going to be a huge advantage for students who have studied Core Curriculum math (as interpreted by CB) well. The M really is much more of an achievement test now – It is SAT Subject Test in Core Curriculum Math. There were a couple of questions that actually required some independent reasoning, but not many. What IS required is good facility with interpreting math language. The math is full of verbiage, and students who are not so good at reading will be penalized on the math. I showed some math questions to a very, very smart math student to get his opinion and he said, “I have to read all that? Ugh.” Students who are naturally talented in math are going to have a hard time distinguishing themselves from people who are good readers and have learned how to do rote problems well. To me this looks like CB may be trying to boost the math scores of girls relative to the math scores of boys.

Because there are so few hard questions, careless mistakes are going to be even more significant than they already were on the old test.

4

@Plotinus I agree about the heavy verbal loading in the math sections. I’m on an elementary district school board, and this is something we agree that we need to address. We have Smarter Balanced scores in reading-writing but the scores in math do not necessarily give us an indication of computational math achievement, because the amount of reading disadvantages our large number of English learners. So, we will likely add some district-wide formative tests to gauge math achievement that is mostly separate from reading ability. We know that Common Core requires a lot of reading in math, but we also want to see how our various schools are doing at teaching computation skills.

5

Anyone who finds the new SAT challenging had better get a tutor in college. Standard college reading (4-year college) in any course will be far more difficult than what you see on the redesigned SAT.

The difference, though, is that at least college reading will tend to be more interesting – in most subjects — than the passages in the super-boring new SAT. The old SAT at least included some interesting articles/essays and vocabulary much closer to college level.

6

@epiphany
I have found that some students miss questions although their skills are good or even excellent because their schools are not using the Core Curriculum. Statistics is not that important in some high school math curricula. You can get A+ in calculus but never study statistics at all. In college, hopefully there is a good match between the tests and what is taught in class.

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Right, Plotinus. But I was speaking only of the Verbal sections, not the math.

8

I agree with you ephiphany but College Board says that 390 in Reading on the PSAT is “college-ready”.

9

Sad.

And, well, CB is wrong about a lot of things. :wink:

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@Plotinus
Well that’s why the statistics they test in the SAT are very very basic.
Literally all you need to know is:

  1. median is the “middle” value
  2. mean is the average or the sum of all of the data set values divided by the number of values.
  3. mode is what happens the most.

If you know that^ then you know everything to solve the statistics question the SAT will throw at you…

You can’t blame a student for missing a statistics question on the SAT to not taking Core Curriculum. I highly doubt an “excellent” student who gets a A+ in calc (not that this matters) misses a basic statistics question like that. Even if you didn’t take any statistic course, that literally is a basic fact… You literally learn this in like 6th grade…

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@YoLolololol
I just finished completely rewriting my SAT statistics lessons for the new SAT. I spent two weeks and went from 1 lesson of 20 pages for the old SAT to 3 lessons of 20 pages each for the new SAT, so one of us is missing something. For starters, you can add “standard deviation”, “conditional relative frequency”, “randomization”, and “confidence interval” to your list of basic concepts.

12

From what I’ve been reading, it’s not so much that it’s easier…it’s just that what they’ve been taking the scores to mean is where it gets inflated (and thus seems easier). In other words, the percentiles are inflated (so it’s easier to be in the 90th or 99th percentile) (http://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/problems-with-new-psat-part-1-inflation/), and the benchmarks for college readiness are lower (so, it’s easier to be “ready” for college). (http://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/problems-with-new-psat-part-3-benchmark/)

The one thing that might lead to one saying it’s easier is that the new PSAT had small differences between the sophomores and juniors who took the test this past October (http://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/problems-with-new-psat-part-2-discrepancies/)

13

I think the test is easier in the sense that there will be more people with perfect or near perfect raw scores.

More high raw scores do not necessarily mean more high scaled scores. You can just make the curve steeper. Maybe this is what CB will do.