<p>Yeah, so pretty much I wasted all my money on prep books.</p>
<p>How do you feel about the switch for all of us 17'ers and after?</p>
<p>Take the SAT now instead of later and problem solved.</p>
<p>I’ll most definitely do that haha. Generally speaking, my question was for your opinion on the change.</p>
<p>I’m mad. </p>
<p>I could’ve gotten an 800 on CR - the three questions I got wrong on the CR section were all because of obscure words. </p>
<p>Mad.
Super mad.
I’m mad at college board, and my 5 year old sister, who by default, will probably do better than me on CR now. I’m also mad at the English language. And higher education. Everyone. I’m mad at everyone. </p>
<p>^3 wrong on CR. Wow! Hopefully you’ll recover someday.</p>
<p>I don’t imagine it will be so different that the old prep books won’t work at all. I mean, I did well on the SAT and I only specifically studied for the ACT. Doing well on standardized tests is sort of a flexible skill. </p>
<p>The new format will be bad for the first few years before all the SAT prep companies know that with which prospective buyers will be dealing. It will not be particularly useful for colleges since it will be harder for which to prepare (despite claiming closer correspondence to academic curriculum) and students who prepare prodigiously will prepare somewhat inefficiently in comparison to the wealth of resources that can be used to prepare for the 2400 SAT. </p>
<p>However, if college board decides to release another blue book with 8/10 practice tests that closely resemble the test before it’s first examination date, then the distribution of scores will more closely resemble the current distribution.</p>
<p>TLDR: Currently, perfect scores are very attainable with sufficient preparation, but the new SAT in its infancy will have a significantly lower proportion of perfect scores due to its unpredictability. </p>
<p>Or Just take the ACT</p>
<p>F M L. This truly sucks for the juniors and seniors (including me). Life just sucks. </p>
<p>I’m just annoyed about it in general. If I was tortured with an essay and stupid vocab words, the future generations should be too!
(I’m clearly not in a generous mood :P)</p>
<p>Seems like it’s looking more like the ACT, minus the science section. I only took the ACT, but if available, I would now probably elect to take the SAT. It seems it got easier. </p>
<p>This isn’t going to affect me at all, but I do encourage the reform efforts. I like that they’re extending the essay time limit and removing overly obscure words. You should see the comments on some of the news sites though, people are furious that they’re “dumbing down the test”. :/</p>
<p>@Cornball They are dumbing down the test. They are removing all of the difficulties of the hard vocab, a guessing penalty, and other things that we (this generation) have to go through. This truly sucks. </p>
<p>This means colleges can’t give as much weight to the SAT since the changes are so big that there is essentially no precedent. The test has gotten easier so a 1600 on the new SAT is definitely not as good as a 2400. It would not be good for college board at all if the SAT becomes disreputable</p>
<p>The optional essay will more than likely be mandatory for your HYPSM applicants - similar to the SAT II’s, I suppose. </p>
<p>The guessing penalty didn’t keep me from guessing - I gave up on the whole strategically leaving some blank - I answered every question. I went up in all sections. I was satisfied. </p>
<p>Is this good for me? I’m a freshman. And remember to tell people it’s not being implemented until 2016. </p>
<p>@Hawkface Should the exam really be hard just for the sake of being hard though? Why exactly should obscure words that aren’t going to really help you in college stay on the exam? Why should there even be a guessing penalty? </p>
<p>Difficulty does not equal effectiveness. Anything that moves the SAT closer to it’s supposed goal of assessing a student’s readiness for college I applaud. </p>
<p>SAT is an indicator of college success. Those who go out of their way to learn obscure and seemingly useless words are more likely to succeed in college, hence why the sat includes such words.</p>
<p>If you really want to impress college, get perfect scores on both old and new SATs.</p>
<p>According to a new York times article, the new SAT is estimated to be about 5 hours. Very glad that this doesn’t affect me…</p>
<p>“Why exactly should obscure words that aren’t going to really help you in college stay on the exam?” If you read the NY Times article, one of the commentators pointed out that that very NYT article used several words which could be considered to be obscure. Pretty funny, I thought. The truth is many of those words are not so obscure, and you will find them in college level reading. I did.</p>