What's "New" in the New SAT?

I have been getting this question from dozens of my students and their parents since the beginning of the year. Most students are anxious. Much of the anxiety results from the fear of the unknown. Many tutoring businesses have been placing ads in school newspapers  with headlines such as "Get Ready... The New, Tougher SAT and PSAT are coming." The fact is the SAT has changed before and it will change again in future. The reasons behind the changes and their impact will be analyzed in another blog post. However, the most important thing is to understand the nature of the changes so that you can see how they may impact your performance and what you may and should do to prepare to get a top score or your dream score.

The SAT is about to change; the new SAT will be offered from March 2016. Superficially, some of the key changes will make the SAT similar to the ACT. For example, the penalty for incorrect answers will be removed. The English section's grammar and sentence correction will resemble that of the ACT. The new SAT will have a sections of fairly simple math problems which will not permit the use of a calculator, The questions in the section are not difficult; unfortunately a large number of students reach out for a calculator even to find the product of 13 and 9, and these students may find this section difficult! The most interesting problems in the new SAT will be data-driven word problems. Students who are loath to reading and who find word problems difficult, may find these problems challenging even though the problems are not difficult. What should you, the student, do? Any student who wishes to do well on the new PSAT or the SAT must understand his/her strengths and weaknesses and how these changes will impact his/her performance. Once the student understands his strong and weak points, an effective strategy and a plan should be devised to raise the scores. I'd love to hear from you if you have apprehensions or just plain questions about the new SAT