College Board announces changes to SAT, realigns with schoolwork

story by Christina Elias, alternative coverage by Katie Parkinson

The College Board announced a revision to the SAT Mar. 5 that will go into effect in 2016. These adjustments mark the first major overhaul of the SAT since 2005. Some of the many changes to take place include replacing “obscure” vocabulary with words more common in college courses, an optional essay instead of a required essay and reverting to the former 1600-point scale for scoring, according the the New York Times.

SAT Alt Cov. 3

The College Board also announced that free waivers will be given to low-income students, allowing them to apply to four colleges without charge. In addition, the College Board has partnered with Khan Academy in an effort to provide free online practice problems and instructional videos pertaining to strategies for solving each question.

President of the College Board David Coleman stated both the SAT and ACT had “become disconnected from the work of our high schools.” These changes aim to realign the standardized test with school curricula. Both tests have been criticized in the past as not being able to accurately determine students’ future college success.

Senior Admissions Recruitment Coordinator Heather Henning of the University of Missouri Office of Admissions said that because the “new exam doesn’t go into effect for a couple of years,” colleges are unsure of the possible outcomes of the revisions.

“Mizzou’s admission criteria likely will not change, however, there will surely be a new national concordance table showing how the scoring will relate to the ACT exam as they have now,” Henning said in an email. “We’ll use this if we need to update cutoff scores for admission and scholarships.”

Senior Admission Representative Lacey Koester of the University of Kansas Office of Admissions believes the changes “won’t have any implication on admission and scholarships at the University of Kansas,” because KU receives primarily ACT Scores from applicants.

“This SAT change will be more likely to impact [private and liberal arts colleges],” she stated in an email. “Also, the SAT tends to be more widely used along the coasts than in the Midwest.”

According to STA college counselor Debi Hudson, “the major change coming is the optional essay on the new SAT, very similar to ACT,” and that each college or university will decide individually whether they require the optional essay or not.

“Over 95 percent of our students take the ACT and about 25 percent take the SAT so it will not have a huge impact our students,” Hudson said. “Each time a new version of a test is released they also have a concordance table so students, counselors and admission officers can measure between the test so that it does not impact the acceptance rates.”