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Light Rain Valley Stream Central H.S. prepares for SAT changes
Major changes are coming to the SAT, according to the College Board. The test, which has been a mainstay of the college admissions process, taken by millions of high school students every year, will go completely digital beginning in the spring of 2024.
While answer sheets, booklets and sharpened No. 2 pencils will eventually be a thing of the past, testing will still take place at a test center or school. Students will be offered the choice between using their own tablets or laptops or the schools’ devices.
Robert Milani, assistant principal of Valley Stream Central High School, said he welcomed the switch to an online-only format.
“A big part of administering the exam when the kids arrive on test day is them filling out all this paperwork,” Milani said. “All of that busywork is eliminated by it being on the digital platform. Kids at this point are very tech-savvy, so they’re very comfortable with the digital platform.”
Milani has questions, however, about how the College Board will guarantee a laptop or tablet for every test taker. “We were told that the College Board would provide students with a laptop or tablet if they don’t have one of their own or if we don’t have enough for them,” he said. “We don’t have that many extras … a lot of details have not been provided yet, since it’s still far off.”
The length of the test will shrink from three hours to two, there will be shorter reading passages, and students will be allowed to use calculators on the math section.
“Taking the SAT, and the college application process, is very stressful,” Milani said. “We feel that this streamlined version will reduce a little bit of that stress. A lot of the colleges waived the SAT this year. At this point, it seems to us we’re still going to see that next September for our class of 2023.”
Most universities and colleges have, in fact, adopted a test-optional policy, mostly because of coronavirus concerns. In the past two years, the unpredictability of the pandemic has led to exam cancellations and limited testing availability. This, compounded by the usual college application anxieties, according to Ron Rini, a guidance counselor at Central, has made the college search process almost overwhelming.
Rini said he believed that waiving the SAT requirement has had its benefits. “In the past,” he said, “kids with a 95-grade average who didn’t test well in the SAT would have been overlooked for colleges that once required the score.”
Nevertheless, Rini pointed out that SAT scores remain an important metric for college admissions, as well as scholarships. “If a student has an 85 average but ends up with a 1200 SAT score,” he said, “that score could enhance their application and could even get them some money.”
“Typically, you see that students who take the SAT are students applying to some of the more competitive colleges, because that has always been a requirement,” Milani said. “Even without the requirement, we had students still take the SAT. [But] this year we probably had half of the usual test takers we usually do.”
“I find that since the higher-achieving kids pack their schedules with so many AP courses, they don’t have time for the [SAT prep classes],” Rini said, and turn instead to online resources available both in and out of school.
That was the case with senior Emily Monfort, a Haitian American who will soon be a first-generation college student on the pre-med track. “I didn’t take the SAT prep program, because my schedule was already full of AP courses,” Monfort said. “I reviewed learning videos on Khan Academy and Kaplan on my own time. My counselor gave me a list of resources for me to use and offered me the option to reach out to any teacher specializing in a particular area on the SAT.”
Monfort weighed the options of taking an expensive course or studying on her own. “If you need extensive help, it can be extremely costly — around $1,200 per session — to get a great tutoring program,” she said, “but … I was able to do just fine doing self-study, using some free resources. But it was also kind of a relief to have that test-optional policy for when I was applying to the bigger colleges.”
Monfort added that her best SAT score was high enough to submit to her target colleges, but not high enough for her top-reach schools. She is still waiting to hear from schools in the second category, but has her eyes on two prestigious colleges in the Northeast: Northeastern Honors College, and Binghamton’s Honor College.
Monfort credits the resources of the high school for her college application success. “Central High opens the resources to everyone,” she said. “I had the flexibility to take as much AP class as I could and still receive academic support with things I’ve been struggling with,” she said. “Everyone is included, no matter if you come from an under-represented background. And colleges also recognize that … there are a lot of resources open that allow you to go to college and be successful.”
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