I took the SAT two years ago when it was still the old version. I tried solving some math questions considered to be difficult on the new SAT here: blog. prepscholar .com/hardest-sat-math-questions
They were frighteningly easy. Every question is no nonsense plugging in and rearranging. In my opinion, the questions more closely align with what students actually learn in high school. The new SAT seems more fair since wealthier students will no longer have the advantage of being tutored recurring “tricks” to score better. All the tricky wording and bizarre problems from the old SAT are gone. For those of you who have taken the new SAT, am I missing something? Are these actually not very hard compared to the ones on an actual test? Is there maybe a more stressful time crunch that makes it difficult to finish on time or something? It seems that there would be too many kids who get near perfect scores with these types of questions.
In my data set of ~450 students, I find most start off higher than our average on the old test, but getting to 750+ in each section is about as difficult.
Junior about to take the SAT for the third time here.
The majority of the questions are pretty no-nonsense and honestly pretty basic. I find it hard to imagine anyone having much difficulty with most of them.
HOWEVER.
The math section is designed to test simple concepts in not-so-simple ways. If it wants to test your knowledge of ratios, instead of giving you a nice, clean proportion to solve or a simple word problem, it will give you a multi-faceted diagram that you can easily make a silly mistake on, or a real world situation that is easy to get stuck in the weeds in.
After completing a month’s worth of pretty nonstop prep work, I managed to get a 1570 on my last practice test…but I made two silly mistakes in the math section (and one in the writing section) because of intentionally confounding wordplay on Collegeboard’s part.
Although, you could make the point that the SAT’s language has always been confusing, partly due to Collegeboard’s stubborn insistence that the SAT is an aptitude test based on years of learning, and not one that you can simply study for a month in advance, provided that you at least sometimes paid attention in class in years previous.
Good post, but I’m not so sure about this–the CB hasn’t made that claim in years, and in fact that’s why today’s SAT isn’t an acronym (or initialism for the pedants) at all.
The New SAT math has MORE short cuts than the old one (knowing, for instance, that the x-value of a vertex is equal to the average of the roots) - and they count for more because of the added time pressure caused by lengthy and unnecessary word-padding. However, these short cuts require you to think “outside the box” and only the smartest math kids are able to do that (they only use half the allowed time for the math sections and usually make no error, or one careless error). On the other hand, most math students struggle immensely through the sections as they attempt to recall the approach they were taught in school; they usually can’t finish section 3.
i took the old sat like, 4 years ago or so. i think the new one is easier. especially the reading, with how they ask you to choose evidence from the text that supports the last question. i mean that pretty much lets you self correct your last question if you cant find proof among the lines listed in that evidence question.
and the writing (multiple choice) definitely seems a lot easier to me.
cant remember what the old math one was like but i scored about the same +10 pts so i dont think the difficulty was that different. meanwhile with the reading and writing i scored like 110 points higher in the new sat than i did in the old.
I took the old SAT in december and got a 1410 and the new one in march and got a 1450 and in that time I got tutored so no I don’t think its significantly easier. I also think the curve on the new test is harsher. I finished with a 1540, 5 questions wrong and 60 points off. This was considered the 99th percentile.
Also, if you look at chance threads this year. 1500+s seem just as abundant and 2250+s were on the old test.
Except these aren’t really short cuts, they are math knowledge. The old SAT had a lot more shortcuts - plugging in numbers was the biggest one. There were also more tricky math questions that someone with less math knowledge could exploit by being a good test taker. The new test has a lot of questions that can be solved very easily if you have the math chops but can also be solved with a much slower method. The people that benefit from the shortcuts now are those people who have a very deep understanding of the content and know different ways to solve problems.
I took both tests and found the Old SAT to be significantly easier for me personally. I think an issue for the new sat, especially at the beginning was that there wasn’t much in the way of study materials and a lot of experimental stuff within the test. In my experience, The math curve is more generous in the new test while the writing and reading sections are harsher.
I never took the old SAT, just took the new one once and I’ll take it again in March. Personally, the math section is a real pain in the ass because, like the poster above me said, the test introduces very rudimentary concepts in a very foreign, riddle-like fashion. Reading and writing is easy imo.
