<p>My soph S will be part of the guinea pig class for the new SATs. I know this has been discussed somewhat, and most of my questions require speculative answers, but sophomores preparing for SATs need to make decisions soon. With the timing, it may be better to prep for the old SATs starting in 2015, and taking the SAT at the end of next year, with the last test date of Jan 2016 for a second take. If he does well (or not) then he can try the new SAT in the Spring. He may want to try the new SAT regardless of his score to see if he can do better on the new SAT, but that's a risk on a new test. Wondering how many sophomores are planning to do both? And, if so, anyone have a guess as to how a college will look at the tests on applying:</p>
<p>Will they try to superscore the old and new SAT scores together? Not sure how they'd to that.
Will they require to see all scores - old and new SATs? Some schools require that all SAT scores be submitted.
If one fails miserably on the new SAT but did well - or well enough - on the old SAT (or vice versa), how would they be compared?</p>
<p>Hard to prep for 2 versions of the test, and the Spring switchover becomes messy for early takers (my D had taken the Jan and March SATs, which were great schedule-wise, but that's not an option for my S). Lots of speculation at this point, and no one will have definite answers for some time, but with limited time in a student's schedule, we want to allocate prep time the best we can.</p>
Bump, since this is the year of the change over.
I would prep for the Current SAT only. We are not sure how colleges will view the new SAT and there will be limited practice tests.
I would also highly recommend taking the ACT since it is not changing.
I tend to agree that if you are going to prep a lot then you probably have an advantage with the old test (or with the ACT as the above poster wrote). In a way I think the new SAT will, in the beginning at least, present a little more of a level playing field since it will be a little harder to really prepare for it. So I think the new test in its early days will probably benefit the kids who don’t prepare as much.
But if I were a student I really wouldn’t want to prepare for both versions of the SAT. I would either start early and begin testing by October or November, or maybe start a little later and take it for the first time in March. You DO NOT want to take it for the first time next January since if you then need to retake you will have to prepare for a whole new test.
It seems to make some sense to stay with the old test, and take it in the Fall with a retake in Jan 2016. S wants to prep for the Oct PSAT (which is the new standard), so he’ll unfortunately need to study for both versions.
I can see a lot of students might choose to take the ACT instead of the SAT this year. My D did both; S will probably do the same.
Anyone have thoughts on what happens if a student takes both old and new SAT exams? Sounds like a mess with super scoring.
It should not be super-scored; the tests are not fungible. With that said though, the ACT is specifically designed as a test that should not be super-scored, yet many colleges do so against ACT’s advice anyway. So who knows really what any specific college will do?
Check out the sample questions released by the College Board. I might be wrong, but the test looks like the ACT with less time pressure. I’m not sure what the benefit would be in having lots of practice material for such a test.
Yeah, I predict an increase in ACT business for the next couple of years, which is ironic given that one of the purposes of the redesign was to capture back business from the ACT. The one thing I want to add is that I don’t think that studying for the PSAT should be a factor, unless your child thinks he has a good chance of getting a National Merit Scholarship. If not, and if he wants to take the old SAT, I think he should just focus on that and not worry about the PSAT at all.
Thanks for the responses. We will look at College Board’s sample questions.
We’ve gone back and forth on the PSAT studying. D missed by 2 points in high stat NJ (221) without any prep, and felt a little preparing might have brought her up to NMS semi-fin. Thinking the same for S, as his PSATs so far have been close. We wouldn’t have given it a second thought if not for the redesigned exam.
Hmm, well in that case it may be worth studying and that obviously complicates things a little. I occasionally tutor students for the PSAT (when it seems like they are close to the cutoff) and of course it doesn’t always work out but in some of the cases I feel pretty confident that the little extra focus that we did specifically for the PSAT helped get them over the cutoff. Unfortunate timing for your son that it is his year that has to deal with the new SAT!!!