The new SAT starting in March 2016 can be taken by students who are applying for college in fall 2016 and after. The new SAT is more aligned with school curricula and skills you need to be college ready. The current SAT is famous for vocabulary that we might not use in our everyday conversation while the new SAT is more aligned with what you learn in school and it’s going to be simpler in terms of the number of sections.Let’s look into it in detail.
The current SAT has two 25 minute Math sections and one 20 minute Math section while the new SAT has a 25 minute and a 55 minute Math section; in the longer section you are allowed to use a calculator. The verbal section currently has two 25 minute sections and a 20 minute section; however, the new SAT has only one reading section of 65 minutes. The writing in the current SAT is divided into two sections: one 25 minute and one 10 minute section excluding the compulsory essay which is for 25 minutes. The new SAT has just a 35 minute writing section and an optional essay which is for 50 minutes. Both SATs may include experimental sections.
The big takeaways in the new SAT are that you have fewer sections, more time on average per question and the essay is optional. Moreover, there is no penalty for a wrong answer in the new SAT, so this relieves the students from the fear of making guesses.
Now, let’s look at the scoring. The Math is scored on a scale of 200-800 in both the SATs. On the other hand, the reading and the writing score is combined in the new SAT to give you a 200-800 points unlike the current SAT in which the reading section alone is a 200-800 points. The writing section along with essay is a 200-800 points in the current SAT. Whereas in the new SAT the optional essay is scored on a scale of 2-8 points. Hence, the new SAT is on a 1600 point scale while the current SAT is on a 2400 point scale.
Option Training Institute, Dubai, gives you a better idea of both the tests and helps you to improve your scores. We had clearly got our platform running like a well-oiled machine for the old SAT and are the only institute in Dubai that is consistently coming up with great results – including a perfect score from our student Sanchit Kapoor in the November 2015 test!!!! But we are excited about the NEW SAT and geared up to make our students perform really well.