Nowadays, a huge number of students all around the world take the SAT test. Many college students need the SAT as a form of entrance exam, for other students it is obligatory to take the SAT according to school or state standards. This US-wide popular college admission test is considered to be the first step toward higher education for students of all backgrounds.

The latest prominent changes to the SAT came in 2005, when they improved some question formats, added a written essay and gave a new turn to its score scale from 1600 to 2400.

Now, the great changes will come into effect in spring 2016.

College Board President and CEO David Coleman said the road to college success has always been a practice of challenging work at the classes. According to his words they need to create more opportunities for students, rather than obstructing them with test questions that felt detached from their educations and the preparation colleges needed.

How The Test Will Change

Sections of the redesigned SAT might sound similar to the current test, but the changes are significant, Coleman said.

The reading and writing parts will contain questions that require students to cite evidence for their answer choices, and will include reading passages from a broader range of disciplines, including science, history, social studies and literature.

Test takers will no longer be asked to complete sentences with recondite words they might have remembered from flash cards.

Instead of that, students will have to make a careful study of the context of how words like “synthesis” and “empirical” are expressed. They’re not “SAT words” as they’ve come to be known, Coleman said, but words students are likely to encounter again.

The math section will no longer allow calculators to be used on every portion. It will focus on data analysis and real world problem-solving, algebra and some more advanced math concepts — areas that most prepare students for college and career, Coleman said.

The essay part, which the SAT widened in 2005, will now be optional. SAT essays have faced criticism over the years from educators who said they focused too much on what test takers wrote, not whether their statements were true, or their arguments reasonable.

Essays will be scored separately from the rest of the test, and the prompt will remain basically the same in every test: It will ask students to consider a passage and write an essay that analyzes how the author made an argument, used evidence and styled ideas.

The redesigned test will take about three hours, with an additional 50 minutes for the essay, and will be administered by print and computer; the current test is available on paper only.

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