As the new Digital SAT is rolling out, students will notice some new features. One that is less obvious on the surface but which is incredibly impactful to students’ test-taking experience is the new adaptive nature of the test. This is not the first test to use adaptive questions, but is a major shift for the SAT.
But what is adaptive testing, and how does it work? Should this change your study and test taking strategies? Are other tests going to use an adaptive model, and why has the SAT made this adjustment? We’re going to explore the answers to all of these questions, so let’s dive right in.
Understanding Adaptive Testing
Put simply, adaptive tests are ones which react to your answers to previous questions. The degree of this reaction is varied, but generally performing worse on questions leads to you being provided with easier questions. This can be applied in different ways:
- The SAT has adaptive sections; how well you do on one section determines which second section you will get, either a slightly easier or slightly harder one.
- The GRE is fully adaptive, and questions get harder until you get one wrong, at which point you get easier questions.
This is possible because the tests are digital, and they are able to analyze your answers for accuracy in real time. This also allows for a greater variety in the questions asked; the SAT tests are composed from pools of questions to prevent cheating, but this also makes the adaptive elements more effective.
Exactly how many wrong answers will cause you to have one test or the other for the SAT is uncertain. Unlike the GRE, where a single wrong answer will cause you to start getting easier questions, the SAT is more flexible. Some questions are noted as being harder than others, and missing those has less of an impact. In general, you want to try to get everything right, but the model for how the test works is something of a black box.
Strategies for Taking Adaptive Tests
In many ways, adaptive tests are akin to non adaptive ones, and the same techniques you use to study for these tests already will work just as well. For a full guide on this, check out our article on the secrets of test prep.
Test taking strategies can differ, due in part to the different nature of the tests. Digital tests simply operate in ways that physical ones do not. The lack of a physical test to flip through is one of the main differences. While scratch paper is available on request, you don’t have the booklet to write in, and can’t directly mark up passages or equations.
You may or may not be able to flip between questions in a section before continuing. In the new digital SAT you can navigate within a section, but this is slightly more cumbersome than doing so on a physical test. If you do skip questions to come back to them later, we recommend noting these down on your scratch paper. You don’t want to accidentally not answer a question at all because you forgot which ones you skipped over.
Some students believe that getting a few questions wrong on purpose in the earlier section will help them get a higher score, as the easier second section will boost their performance. This is not the case; the only way to achieve the highest scores is to take the harder of the two second sections; the easier one is just worth fewer points.
Finally, not all adaptive tests let you go back and review previous questions. While both the GRE and SAT do, some tests are fully adaptive, and change after each question asked and answered.
Why Did the SAT Switch to Adaptive Testing?
There are many reasons, which they politely lay out in their announcement of their new digital testing initiative. To sum up, here are their main points:
- Adaptive testing is faster. Because it more accurately assess a student’s aptitude faster, they are able to shorten the test overall.
- Adaptive testing lessens the stress on students, and gives them questions better suited for their level.
There are some other reasons which we assume are true, though they are not stated explicitly by CollegeBoard. These reasons are:
- Capability. You cannot have an adaptive test except with a digital format. The SAT is taking advantage of their new digital format to experiment with new technological capabilities.
- Novelty. People like new things, and technology is a big part of that. Novelty is a virtue in itself for some, and is part of the appeal of this change.
- Finance. Grading the SAT was already automated, but having the entire process be fully computerized will save significantly on labor costs.
There are likely other reasons as well, but we do not claim to know the inner workings of College Board. This does raise the question of whether or not other testing services will follow their lead, especially the ACT, the main counterpart to the SAT.
We believe they will do so eventually, though are going to wait and see how things go for College Board first. The two form a duopoly, and if the ACT can gain an advantage by maintaining a paper exam in place of digital, they are incentivized to do so. Consumer preferences are hard to predict, but greatly important to their bottom line.
Also worth watching is whether or not College Board decides to make their other major property, AP tests, adaptive. The AP tests were digital during Covid, and suffered significant problems when doing so. In part this was due to the speed of the switch, without time to properly test the systems. This still left a bad impression among students, parents, and teachers.
However, College Board has maintained course, and announced that nine AP Exams were going to be digital-only in 2025. While they have not yet introduced adaptive testing for AP exams, as they increasingly digitize these offerings, we do think it’s likely to occur.
Final Thoughts
Adaptive testing isn’t exactly new; the GRE has been doing it for a while now. That said, as more tests become digitized, we expect to see it spread to other areas of testing as well. Whether or not it will dramatically change the testing landscape remains to be seen, but we don’t think it will.
Regardless of how it’s been changed, the SAT is still a key part of the college application process for many students, especially as more universities end their test optional policies. If you want help preparing for your own tests, schedule a free consultation with us today. Students in our test prep program see their scores improve by an average of 140 points, and we know all the tricks you need to ace these exams.
