America’s First National Digital SAT Scores Are In. Now what?

Hey guys, it’s Eric at Solution Prep. The first digital SAT has come and gone here in America. Scores are out. And finally we can answer the question I’ve been fielding for the last two years, which is, will the new SAT be easier? And of course it wasn’t. Of course. Come on, think about it. If it’s easier, you think that everybody’s gonna get more questions right; they’ll all get a higher score. Everybody’s score is good, so they can all go to Harvard. Obviously not.

The SAT is as it’s always been — curved. And your score is not based on how many questions you got right, but how you did compared to everyone else taking the test across America that day.

So each reading/writing module has 27 questions, and you need to get about 18 or more of those right to move on to the hard module two. If not, you move on to the easy module two.

In math, where each module has 22 questions. You need to get about 15 right to move on to the hard module two. Otherwise, you’ll go to the easier module two.

And if you’re in the easier of either of those two modules, your best possible score in that subject is a 200 to a 650. But if you can get to the hard module two, now you’re between a 400 and an 800. So it’s not a direct cutoff — it is a lot of overlap. And yes, how many questions you get right in both sections matter, but which questions you get right aren’t the most important part. And very importantly, some of these questions are experimental. So you’ll notice that out of the 54 reading writing questions you answered, out of the 44 math questions you answered, not all of those go into your score.

Some of them are being used to write future test questions, just like your test questions or somebody else’s experimental questions. This is the first day this was ever offered in America on a national test day in America, they did test this out for a year abroad in every other country to make sure it’s ready for prime time.

Now, that said, we are hearing across the spectrum — on Reddit, on TikTok, all over — that students are saying that the harder math module was tougher than anything the college board has released in their Blue Book app, in their official blue book, the official SAT Study Guide.

So we are not surprised to see the scores that we’re seeing today, although it is very disappointing that the college board, the makers of the SAT, would pull a bait and switch on students, on educators who can only prepare for the level of math, the kinds of questions we can expect based on the material they’ve released. So to add much harder math was really doing students dirty this time. But hey, there’s always the next test. There’s gonna be May, there’s gonna be June.

Ideally, we help our juniors wrap this all up during junior year. And if you’re a sophomore, you have more time to get it done throughout junior year coming up.

So if you have questions, call us at (732) 556-8220. We are here to help.