On Saturday, March 9th, the SAT went digital, making a pivotal moment for students who took the exam becoming a part of history. In general, the material on the test stayed relatively the same, only with reading passages being shortened, meaning strategies for preparation would only have to change a little for future students. However, a new technique for problem selection was implemented in the math section, which was now possible because the test was being taken online. As students progressed through the first math module, the difficulty of the second math module would increase depending on how well they performed on previous questions. This led to many test takers having extremely difficult questions in the second half of their test, many saying the given questions were unfair and not a part of online practices provided by the College Board (per Jake, the SAT Guru). Junior Rohan Piplani said, “the increase in difficulty was more than I thought it was going to be, and I think a lot of other people thought that as well.”That said, the SAT accurately scales each test taker proportionally to any other student, meaning missing multiple hard questions is relatively equivalent to missing only one or two easy ones.

The digital SAT was a huge success as students could take the test without any significant setbacks. While it may seem relatively insignificant, this was a huge accomplishment for test programs worldwide, as completing these tests online will eliminate a huge excess of paper production, helping to protect our environment in such an easy way.  Compared to their counterparts in the ACT, the SAT’s boldness and optimism to take the first step into these digital tests without any prior results will forever be remembered as a generational point in test-taking history.