One of the most stressful years of school is junior year of high school as some of your friends or siblings begin to move away for college, college applications become real for you, physical and mental changes as puberty commences, and more contributing factors are all happening at once. As difficult as the year may be, it is easily one of the most pivotal years of your life.

One of the things that occurs during junior year that wasn't mentioned before was the standardized testing that occurs in 4th, 8th, and 11th grade in the state of Michigan. The test taken in the 11th grade involved some statewide test but also either the SAT, ACT, or both. This takes up multiple school days in the spring as juniors try to ace these tests to help with college and job placement in the future. The SAT moved first in making changes which the ACT followed suit quickly, nonetheless, the SAT is going digital.

It is no surprise that children today have experienced school in a way that none of us in the past have. They have spent up to 3 years in virtual school due to the COVID-19 pandemic and have used technology for most of their schoolwork and homework. A lot of students now don't understand classroom etiquette or struggle with concepts because of the learning style.

These challenges have completed changed the way that students are able to process information and relay it properly. This is why both the ACT and SAT have made changes to not only accommodate the test takers but also for the benefit of educators who are working to bring students back to the "norm". The College Board has announced that the SAT is now available online and is shorter than it was before.

The SAT has been fully available online for US test takers since March 9th, 2024, but many are still just learning of this today. The new SAT exam is now shortened from 3 hours to 2 hours and is being labeled as "adaptive". The exam will still be graded on a 1600-point scale even though both the math and reading sections will be shorter and the split into two sections. The difficulty of the second section will depend on how well the test taker does on the first portion.

One of the advantages to moving to the online sector is that students will be receiving their scores back in days rather than weeks as the system will allow for grading to go faster than the handwritten ways of the past. I think that will be just one of many advantages as we will see the results in just a few short years on whether this is working or not.

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