From Paper to Screen: How the Digital SAT & ACT Impact Preparation

Webinar Transcription

2025-03-27 – From Paper to Screen How the Digital SAT and ACT Impact Preparation

Lonnie: Alright. Hello everyone. Welcome to our webinar called, “From Paper to Screen: How the Digital SAT and ACT Impact Preparation.” And this is brought to you by CollegeAdvisor as well as Curvebreakers. So you’ll have the opportunity to learn more about Curvebreakers as I’m now gonna introduce our presenter for our webinar.

Nick: Awesome, thank you. Hello everybody. Hope everyone’s having a good night. Uh, my name is Nick LaPoma. I am the owner of Curvebreakers Test Prep. Uh, we are a company over in Long Island, New York, and we help students, families, and schools with all aspects of the SAT and ACT process. Um, as you probably have heard, the SAT and ACT have gone in, uh, to a digital direction.

So I’m gonna be going over tonight like what that looks like, uh, how it affects preparation and how it affects the process at large. Uh, so I’m gonna get into all the ins and outs of both digital tests that now exist.

Lonnie: Nice, nice. I’m, I’m really eager to learn more about this. As you know, the, the formatting has changed and, uh, Nick has a great presentation in store for you all.

Before we get started into the content of our webinar, we would like to get a sense of what grade you are in. I’ve already launched the poll, so if you can go ahead and place your responses in. And we will, okay, so, so far for our live audience, we have 67% that are in the 10th grade, and then we have 33% that are other.

Um, so that’s just who our live audience is for this evening, Nick. But with that, I will turn it over to you and you can tell us a little bit about your company.

Nick: Of course. So, yeah, as I said earlier, I’m the founder of Curvebreakers. Um, it is a private test prep company for students, families, and schools.

Uh, part of my goal in starting this company was to provide resources for all students when it comes to standardized tests. One of the big, you know, issues with standardized testing in general is access to information. So many students don’t have access to the right information. They. Maybe don’t have the funds to pay for the thousands of dollars of tutoring that some people do.

Of course, obviously those things help. But at the end of the day, what my goal is with my company is to provide access to. You know, a large group of students and really give them the opportunities that they deserve. Uh, we’re very proud to be partners with a large number of very prominent school districts.

So we have, you know, contracts and schools that we work with and the New York City Department of Education. Uh, we’re also partnered with other districts around the nation. Uh, we work with a ton of different schools and. Honestly, thousands of students every year to help them with this process. It is unfortunately, a very complicated process.

I think over the past few years, it’s only gotten more complicated. I think everyone’s hope is that this process would maybe be streamlined a little bit, right? Maybe get a little bit easier, a little bit less stressful. Um, that was like maybe one of the core goals of the test, optional movement, which of course, I’ll be discussing tonight.

But, um, you know, at the end of the day, it’s actually become quite difficult and complicated to navigate and that, and that’s why I exist, right? Like my goal is to really help guide parents and students through this, um, to show people what the best methodologies are and what’s the best way to handle all this.

And I’m gonna kind of go into that, like what the, what the right approach is. And, you know, a lot of what we do is, uh, in our work with schools and students is utilizing data. So a big part of what we do is to really. Look at what makes students perform well on something like the SAT. Um, and we’ve really identified that through data collection with our school partners, case studies.

And, you know, that that’s information that I can provide to you guys. Like there’s things that work and there’s things that maybe work, right? And we wanna gear ourselves towards the things that definitely work for a majority of students. Um, and that’s kind of the information that I’m gonna be providing today.

So what is the new SAT like? As you may have heard, the SAT changed in March of 2024 to an all digital format. Um, there is no paper option, so, um, you used to be able to obviously do the, we all remember back when we did the SAT if you’re a parent, um. Paper and pencil Scantron exam. Now it is an entirely app-based digital test.

So basically the test is done entirely on a computer and it’s utilizing what we call adaptive testing. And I’ll explain a little bit more that, a little bit more about that later. Some of the big changes that they made to the test are positive, and I’m gonna go over those first. So one of the big ones is they did shorten the test, so we, we all remember any parents out there.

It was a long test, right? We’re talking three plus hours, uh, a very, you know, arduous grind, we’ll call it, um, to finish the SAT, and now they’ve actually shortened the test to two hours and 14 minutes, which is a much more appealing [00:05:00] timeframe for students. Uh, you know, it’s just, if we’re talking about chopping off about 45 minutes of a hard test, that last 45 minutes is probably like the most painful part of the whole thing.

So that makes the test feel a lot different. And I think students have really indicated that to me over the years, over the last year, pretty much. Uh, that they really like the fact that the test has been shortened, and also the questions have been shortened to some degree. So we no longer have the super long passages.

We have shorter passages, which is once again much more appealing to today’s student. I. Uh, we have two sections on the exam. We have English and math. Basically, um, there’s two modules for each section, so that’s a little bit misleading. So there’s really four parts to the test. Module one and module two of English, module one and module two of math.

One of the big positive changes they also made was to allow you to use a calculator on the entire part of the math section. Uh, on the old SAT. Uh, prior to March of [00:06:00] 2024, there was a part of the test that you could not use a calculator on. Students found that to be just very disruptive and frustrating.

Um, many students, um, use calculators actively in school. Um, some schools don’t allow students to use calculators at certain points in time, and those students tended to perform better on that part of the test. But many students are just allowed to use a calculator whenever they need it. And for those students, that was very challenging to have to, you know, have that removed and have to do arithmetic by hand.

And that was just something that students weren’t used to doing. And it’s kind of silly if you think about it. I mean, like, we have these tools, right? So like. Why are we gonna make students do things without a calculator when we all know we’re using those things all the time? So it was a little bit silly.

So they removed that from the test. Like I said earlier, they did a great job of shortening the passages, which I think was very effective in making the test a little bit more appealing to students. Um, they’ve also shortened slightly the window of time that it takes to get, um, your scores. Uh, it’s still not great.

They were really saying that it was gonna be very short, like it was gonna be a few days. Um, but it, it, it end ends up being a little bit longer than they first said, but it’s still like reasonable time. Like you might get it back in like 10 days or something like that. Um, and then the big one, now we’re down to the negative here.

Um, they’ve discontinued the QAS reports. Now what is that? Right? The QAS is the question and answer service. So when you took the SAT prior to March of 2024, so say you took it in 2023, you have an older student, or I don’t know, someone who took it, then, um, you were able to pay a few extra dollars and access your test paper.

Not the exact one that you used on the exam, but basically a digital copy, um, of a standard version of it. That was great, right? Because you could look at the test paper, um, you could look at your answers. You could use that to study. You could go over it, uh, with a teacher, with a parent, with a tutor on your own.

And that was a really great learning experience for students to like, see what mistakes did I make when I took the real SAT, you [00:08:00] know? And now you cannot do that, right? They just do not release the test papers. Um, it’s very hidden. And the logic for that is they’re saying that they might reuse the questions in the future, uh, but it does make it harder to prepare.

Um, and there’s uh, ways that we’ve solved that issue. Uh, and I’ll go over those later, but that is definitely like the big negative. If I had to point out one huge negative, um, number one would be discontinuing those ’cause so many students use that as a very low cost way to get some really good preparation for the exam.

Um, and. Now you can’t do that. Right. And that, that’s very frustrating to a lot of students.

So what are the things that have stayed the same about the SAT? So the scoring is still the same, right? We still have the 1600 score. Some of you may remember there was a period of time where they had a 2,400 score. Those days are gone. We’re back to the very familiar 1600 score. You know, you have 800 points for English, [00:09:00] 800 points for math.

Uh, that’s a familiar thing. One thing I would say about that, and one challenge I would say that I see with students and parents is that the, the score numbers have changed. Even though like the scoring of the SAT itself is the same, like the maximum is 1600, what colleges want and what is a quote unquote good score.

There is really no answer to what is a good score, but what may be accepted by certain colleges has changed a lot. So if you talk to, you know, parents, like I could think back to high school friends of mine that got into. X, Y and Z college or myself, uh, got into these colleges and these scholarships with these numbers like say at 1200 in, you know, 2004 when I did this.

That will get you into a lot of the top colleges in the country. 1200, 12 50. You would really be in great shape. Now, not to say that that’s a bad score, but a lot of the top colleges, the top 50 schools, that’s not going to be a submittable score. Like a 1200 range score is not going to benefit you for a lot of the top schools where you might now [00:10:00] need something in the 14 hundreds.

So even though the scoring of the SAT itself is the same, it’s still out of 1600. What is. Needed or required or useful in many instances has changed a lot. And that’s like kind of a differentiation, uh, between what’s in parents’ mind and what’s, uh, the reality now. It’s like, well, when I was in high school, I got a X score on the SAT and that was I was able to get into all these schools and that just may not be the case now.

You know? And that, I think that’s a challenging part of it. Um. The math section still does have the quote unquote gradients that fill in the blanks. They’re not multiple choice. You have to type in the number now. So those are still on the test. That was one of the things that they left that some students don’t like.

Uh, you, you basically, you don’t have the multiple choice, um, to work with that. There’s a lot of strategies you can use with multiple choice to get an answer if you don’t know exactly what to do. You cannot do that on those problems, and that’s probably why they include them. And then the reading comprehension questions, even [00:11:00] though the style of the questions is extremely different, uh, then the underpinnings of the questions are largely the same.

You know, you, you’re reading passages for context. You have to understand, um, you know, uh, main points and so on and so forth. Um. You know, so it’s largely a similar kind of test, but just in a different format. Uh, one of the big things that’s come up is like they have brought back vocabulary questions on the SAT.

So I do have this point at the end about vocabulary lists. Uh, you know, back in the day when I did the SAT in 2004, part of the studying was memorizing vocabulary because there was a huge. Number of very bizarre vocabulary questions and vocabulary words on the exam. Now what they’re doing is gearing the vocabulary words more towards words that students would more likely be familiar with, or that should be known for various reasons, like more, uh, words that would be applicable in daily life, right, that you might use actually in your writing.

Or, um, they might need to know when you’re reading something. [00:12:00] So gone are the crazy vocabulary words that no one needs to know, and they’re using like more familiar vocabulary. So instead of memorizing a list of a thousand words, that’s not really gonna be an effective strategy for studying for the current version of the SAT.

It’s very hard to predict what words would. What would, what words would be on the exam? So one of the best strategies there is when you’re doing your practice, when you’re preparing for the SAT, any word you don’t know that comes up, you should try to memorize. ’cause obviously if it appear on the test once, it’s very probable that it could appear there again.

But I wouldn’t waste hours and hours and hours studying vocabulary. Now I noticed that we did have some 10th graders in the audience. What I would do if I was very early on in the process and I was like a little bit worried about. The vocabulary piece and some of the reading comp that would just start to read, right?

Read texts that challenge you. Things that are boring. It really is a good way to look at it. You know, read magazines. Um, you could read the Economists, something like that. Like where it’s like more of a technical, um, technical articles. You know, you could read, [00:13:00] uh, popular mechanics, like things like that really try to like.

Push the envelope of what you normally would be reading. Uh, and if you don’t read, it’s a good habit to pick up. I think, you know, it’s not only beneficial for stuff like this, but it’s also beneficial for collagen and for life, right? It really helps expand your vocabulary and, um, increase your ability in that area.

So that’s definitely something that if I was really early on the process, I, I didn’t want to actually start preparing for the SAT, but I wanted to better myself. For the SAT or a CT, I would just read. So let’s go over the timing of the exam. This is one of the other big things that’s changed. Obviously we’ve shortened the exam significantly.

The whole timing structure of the exam has to change. Uh, so basically you have 64 minutes, 2 32 minute modules for reading and writing, uh, and then 54 questions. Uh, for the math, you have 70 minutes split into 2 35 minute modules, and there’s 44 questions there. So there’s 22 on each module, so you can see the total of two hours and 14 minutes.

And the total number of questions is 98. [00:14:00] Now, why is that important? Well, when we’re comparing SAT to ACT, the ACT as it stands right now is much longer test with significantly more questions. So you have a very small amount of time per question on the ACT when you compare it to the SAT. So you can see the SAT provides 68% more time for question when compared to the ACT.

And that is a big, um, a big deal breaker for a lot of students. When I go into, like comparing the two exams, that really plays a very big part. Now the ACT is changing, right? So that is going to change and I’m gonna explain how the ACT is changing. Um, they realize that this is a big weakness of their exam with a lot of students that just physically cannot finish the ACT.

And then those students, if they were, you know, coming to curve breakers, they were talking to me, we would have them do diagnostic tests of the SAT and the ACT. We’d figure out which one they’re naturally better at, and we would route them towards the tests that they’d be more successful on would yield a higher score.

So if a student’s doing that [00:15:00] analysis, they’re trying both tests and they don’t really like the timing of the ACT, they’re not going to want to do it. And the ACT has realized that, I think they’ve lost, you know, a bit of market share to the SAT. Um, because of the changes have been very positively, uh, you know, reviewed by students as positively as it could be for standardized tests.

Right. Uh, I think, you know, I talk to hundreds of students, hundreds of families, um, you know, we work with thousands of students across all the school partners and all that. So I, I’ve heard a lot of feedback on these tests and I would say, like, in our office here, or like, you know, on a Zoom call with a family that we’re, you know, talking about.

Tutoring the students 99% of the time, regardless of how the student performs on the two tests, they prefer the SAT. And if you think about it, like if I was a 16-year-old, would I prefer a two hour test with 90, 98 questions, or a three plus hour test with 215 questions? And it’s kind of a no brainer, like what student would subject themselves to this much longer, uh, [00:16:00] test with.

You know, more than double the questions. You know, not many, right? Only the only students that would say they would wanna do that were the students that were like really focused on their score and realized that they did much better on the ACT and like, all right, you know what? I’ll deal with the ACT because I’m just better at it.

You know, that’s a very small percentage of students that would be able to think that way in that context, right? So. Uh, it is a very important part of the process. I do recommend that any student looking at taking these tests try both, not in an official setting because then you’re putting on paper probably a low score ’cause you haven’t really prepared.

But in a practice setting, and that’s a service that we provide free of charge to any person, anywhere is like, we administer these free diagnostic tests and tell you exactly how you did. So, um, that’s definitely an important part of the process. So now let’s get into the adaptive testing piece. This is a slide that really explains how that works.

So let’s just say everyone here is taking the SAT, right? We start the [00:17:00] test, we start module one of the English portion of the test, and we complete that portion. Now, depending on how we performed on that first module, now remember we’re doing the test on a computer. So there’s a very brief break where the computer grades, how we did on that first module.

If we do really well on that first module, we’re going to be given a harder second module, significantly harder. If we don’t do that well on the first module, we’re going to be given a easier second module. Now, you might say, that doesn’t sound too fair. Well. There’s a little bit more to it than that, right?

If you get the harder module, you’re going to get a much higher score than the student that gets an easier module. So if you get the easy module two, you’re looking at a hard cap, like the highest you can get somewhere in the five hundreds, probably in the mid five hundreds. Like if you ace that second module, maybe you get into the mid five hundreds.

If you get the hard second module, you are looking at a floor of that level. Right. So if you bomb the second [00:18:00] module, you’re probably gonna get a higher score than someone that aced to the easy second module. So it’s in every student’s best interest to try to get the hard second module. Now, what is the standard to get that?

Well, you probably, it’s, it’s not exactly known, but. The estimate is about two thirds, correct. So if you get, oh, say you get 80% of the questions right on the first module, you’re going to be given the hard second module and you’re going to get a pretty good score, if not a great score. If you get, say, 50% of the questions right on the first module, you’re going to be given the easier second module, and your score will be more in the range of what I said earlier, probably be in the 400 to, you know, five something range.

So depending on your goals. It, you know, there are some students that may, um, be fine with an easy module score, but most students that are applying for college admissions, they’re using the SAT to apply to college. Um, you look on the websites of the schools, you see those, you know, 1300’s, 1400’s, 1500’s that the schools want.

You have to get the hard [00:19:00] module on both parts of the test. Uh, and that’s just a hugely important part of preparing for the test. And it does cause a lot of score fluctuations for students, right? If you. Fall one question below the hard module, your score might be a little bit lower. If you fall one question above into the hard module and you get the hard module, your score’s gonna be much better.

So that one question could really dictate your score to a very great degree, right? So it’s a little bit confusing and it’s a little bit frustrating at first, but once you kind of understand the system. Um, and, and part of ways students can understand that is by doing practice tests, doing diagnostics, uh, really understanding how it works, understanding how this all works is half the battle.

That’s why we’re here tonight, right? I’m trying to give you guys rundown of how all this stuff works. That is very important. Um, ’cause students that understand how this works can use that to their advantage, right? So, um, that’s pretty much how it works.

So this is a, a visualization of what the paper SAT used to look like. This, [00:20:00] uh, long passage here. This actually would’ve been this entire page. So you would have three full columns of reading, and then there would’ve been 10 questions. I just couldn’t fit it on the slide, but you would have this very long passage.

And then 10 questions. This is the old SAT. This is not what it looks like now to. The reason that this was challenging and why students didn’t like this, is that if a student read this long passage about some boring thing, right, and they don’t really understand it, they don’t connect with it, then they feel that 10 questions are now at risk, right?

And that that’s a huge problem, right? You don’t wanna have 10 questions. Now that I can’t understand. That actually is not the case. You could still get some of them if you don’t understand the passage. But you know, it was frustrating and it was definitely a source of. Discomfort for students. So what they did was they changed it to something like this, right?

So this is a note taking kind of question where you have bullet pointed notes and, um, that’s very, uh, interesting because that’s more of like a school thing, right? Like note taking, right? What can I glean from these notes, right? So they tried to make the test a little bit more relevant, a [00:21:00] little bit more.

You know, uh, familiar for students and also you can see this is a short prompt, right? You just have to read this one little thing and answer this one question. Uh, so say you didn’t understand this one passage. Okay? No big deal. Maybe I don’t understand this one question, but I can just move on to the next one.

It’s a totally new thing, and I one a problem with it. This is another example of the kind of question they ask on the new digital SAT. So you can see this is one of those vocabulary questions, and you can see the nature of the vocabulary, like I was mentioning earlier, we have the words widespread, careful, unintended, and infrequent.

Those are words that I would imagine most students probably know. Um, and those are like usable words, right? Those are real words that you might actually have to use. Not some wild vocabulary that would only exist in a dictionary. Right. So it’s very familiar words and there’s a lot of strategies that go into this kind of question, and that’s kind of what you’re looking for when you’re, you know, looking for services For S-A-T-A-C-T, you want someone who’s gonna really tell you how to take the test.

What are the strategies, what are the tips, what are the tricks? [00:22:00] And these kind of questions, there’s a lot of those kind of things. So this is a example of what the actual app looks like that you take the digital SAT on, it’s called Blue Book. You can see you have a test preview, you would have your upcoming tests here.

Um, you have full length practice tests that they have on the apps. You can actually do. Practice tests on the Blue Book app. So I would suggest any student that wants to, you know, start practicing for the SAT, you can download Blue Book. It’s totally free and you can do some of the practice tests. Uh, people in the industry and in my industry, the SAT prep industry, have very much so criticized the tests that they’ve released.

Uh, ’cause students have really said that the actual tests feel different than these tests, especially the first few they released. Um, so that’s why there’s like. A lot of outside vendors and websites and sources of questions that you can utilize. Um, we do have a testing platform for students so they can do practice tests that has thousands of practice problems in them categorized by [00:23:00] question type.

We assign homework and quizzes and so on and so forth. And, but this is a free thing, right? So I always encourage people to utilize free resources when they can, and this is a very good free resource. Just have to be aware that the test quality on some of the tests has been criticized, like students have gotten very high scores on.

These practice tests on this thing and then they go into the real test and they do not get the same kind of score. Uh, there’s a lot of reasons that could happen, but I think I do agree. I do. The first few tests they released were definitely not, uh, the best. Um, and that was definitely challenging for students this past year.

But, um, it’s being, uh, reduced. I have another call.

Lonnie: Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Give you a short break, Nick, ’cause you are sharing a lot of great information with our audience. I’m learning a lot. Uh, so with that audience, we would like to get a sense of, you know, we’re speaking about the, the SAT and the A CT, but we wanna know where are you?

In the college application process. So I know that we have [00:24:00] 10 graders that are in the live audience, and we know that the process starts much sooner than the summer going into your senior year. So we would like to hear from you. Let’s see. We’ll give the responses a few more seconds to come on in.

Okay, there we go. Okay. So for our audience, um, we have a hundred percent of our audience that are in the research phase, which makes sense. You know, for our students who are here with us this evening, we have o more responsive they have.

Uh, so with that, Nick, I will turn it back over to you to take us into the second portion of our presentation.

Nick: Thank you. All right, let’s get into now the A CT. Right? So the a CT is changing as well. [00:25:00] Uh, and that is, it’s, they’re, the way they’re changing it is a little bit different. So when the SAT changed in March of 2024, what they did was they just had a hard stop.

So in March of 2024, the test changed to the digital SAT. There is no paper option. You cannot take the test on paper. And everyone had to start doing this new SAT. As you can see here from the little arrows on the bottom, there’s more of like a rollout of the A CT changes. So I’m gonna go over that first and then I’ll get to the bullet points in a second.

So the first thing they’re doing is in April, so very shortly, the online a CT, which does already exist, will be changing to the new format of the test. So there’s a new a CT coming out and they’re starting it with the digital a CT in April. Then in September of this year. The paper, a CT is going to change to this new format and it’s gonna be the same test, digital and paper.

And that’s going to be a choice that you as a [00:26:00] student can make, right? So you can choose to take it on paper, you can choose to take Take it on a digital platform. On a computer, but in both instances, in September, it will be the same style of tests, the same format, just gonna be a different delivery medium, right?

So it’s either gonna be paper or digital, but you’re gonna be doing the same test, right? So that’s a little bit confusing. Like why are they changing it early for the digital test and then later for the paper test? That I don’t know the exact answer to. I think a lot of it has to do with like what’s more popular, where the volume is maybe testing it out a little bit, seeing how things work, where you know, before they like hard launch a test to a million kids, make sure it works right?

Like make sure everything goes smoothly, make sure people like it. I think there’s just a lot of reasons they’re doing that. I. And then in spring of 2026, they’re changing the state and district testing. So that’s where students do in-school tests, like on a Wednesday or something like that. Um, most of the other changes have to do with the weekend tests, the Saturday tests that students can take.

Uh, so what are the actual [00:27:00] changes? I’m saying that the format of the a CT is changing. What are those changes? So the science section is becoming optional, right? So that’s something you can take, but it will not. Affect your composite score. Your composite score is your quote unquote score, right? So I’m gonna ask you, what did you get on the A CT?

You tell ’em your composite score. I got a 30 on the A CT. That’s my com. I’m telling ’em my composite score. Someone wanted to know every section. You can give them all the sections, but that’s basically your a CT score. So the science part will not be a part of that. It’ll be its own score. So when you take the a CT with, with the optional science.

You’ll have your score for English, your score for math, your score for reading, and then your composite score, and then that those three will average out to your composite score. So the way you get your composite score on the a CT is you add up all of your sections and you divide by the number of sections.

So now with the new a CT being three sections, English, math, and reading, you will add those three scores up. You’ll divide by three, and that would be your composite score. The [00:28:00] science part will just be its own score, right? So. It’s very questionable what colleges will do with that. Maybe they’ll want it for STEM programs or for certain majors.

Maybe they won’t want it at all. Who knows? I mean, that’s yet to be seen. Many people in this industry that I’m in have made various hypotheses about what will happen. Um, some people think it will still be important. Others think it will die completely. We don’t know yet. I think it’s yet to be seen. Um, and they’re shortening the test, right?

So they’re shortening the test to 125 minutes, which is of course two hours and five minutes. You can see the battle going on here, right? The SAT two hours and 14 minutes. Now the a CT changes in response two hours and five minutes. So this is a battle to make the shortest test that still works. Um, and they’re definitely shortening the number of questions.

There still will be significantly more questions on the A CT than the SAT. Um, there’re also one weird quirk of the a CT right now that the math part has five multiple choice answers instead of four. So they were knocking [00:29:00] that down to four. That was kind of pointless. Uh, just made it a little bit harder to guess.

Um, there’s some reasons for that. I won’t spend a lot of time on that, but. Um, that’s definitely a positive change. Um, shorter passages, once again, trying to compete with the SAT with the short passages, they’re gonna make them a little bit shorter. Um, and then we’re gonna have more time for question, which is, you know, hugely important, uh, because that’s one of the biggest issues with the A CT.

I still think students are gonna struggle with the time a little bit on the a CT. So you look at yourself, you think like, okay, which one’s better for me? Obviously trying both is the best way. But if you said to yourself, well, I think, you know, I really like to move quickly. I don’t, I don’t like to think about things too much.

You might be better suited for the a CT If you said to yourself, you know what? I really like to think things through, I, I don’t like to be rushed, then you’re probably a better candidate for the SAT.

So, like I said, the scoring will remain the same, uh, the same 36 level score. Um, the composite score will now be the average of the three parts that still exist and the science will be [00:30:00] optional. We still have the option of paper or digital. I think that’s usually important. And the digital test, since the two are the same, the digital a CT will not be an adaptive test.

So they’re not doing the adaptive testing thing. You don’t have to worry about the modules. Module one, hard, module two, whatever. That is a positive, right? That definitely source of confusion for parents and students that they’re removing, but then they add in a different source of confusion is should I take it on paper or should I take it digitally?

Right. I was like, how do I know which one I should do? Um, that’s a, that’s a very good question. You know, company like curve breakers, we provide all the resources students we’re gonna be giving. Students, digital acts, paper acts, digital sat, or be able to figure out which one is the right decision. I always say there’s not really a great way to figure it out other than to actually just try it, right?

Like you have to see how you perform. Uh, we can hypothesize all day. I could give you all the reasons why someone would do well on one thing or the other. Uh, but that’s not usually the most helpful. So why did they do this? Right? [00:31:00] I’ll give you the real reason before I give you these canned responses from the a CT.

The real reason is that the SAT was very well received by students. Students really liked it and they decided we have to compete with that. I think they were just waiting to see what would happen with the digital SAT. Would it be really good and students would really like it and wanna do that? Or would it totally flop, bomb and like no one wants to do it and then we’re just not gonna change the a CT, right?

So. It the latter option, the flopping the bomb. That didn’t happen. Right? The SAT has been well received. So then they had to change their tests very quickly. So I think that’s kind of how it happened. If I had to really guess the real reason. But what do they say? This is actually from, uh, the a CT. They want students to have options to do science or not at the flexibility.

Um. Demonstrate their capabilities not be so restricted by time. Tailor their testing experience by picking different parts of the test. You know, really my reason on the bottom and bolt, that that’s the real reason, right? They just, they, they don’t wanna lose to the SAT. Uh, and then they kind of made the determinations [00:32:00] about what to change by probably polling students, right?

Talking to parents, talking to teachers, talking to school administrators. What do people not like about the A CT? It’s very easy to give this list of things, right? The timing you see, number one, and this is also from the a CT. I can’t finish the test. Like that’s a terrible feeling, right? You’re doing a standardized test, you can’t finish.

People just do not like that. Right. And it also very significantly affects your score. Right. Another thing, I don’t like the science section. There’s a big difference between the two tests. Like there is no science section on the SAT. Like I I don’t like that. Okay, great. Here, take it if you want, don’t take it if you don’t want to.

Right. Uh. I want, I do want to show off my science skills. Okay, great. Take the science. Uh, I don’t want to test on a computer. Okay, great. We’re gonna keep the paper test around and we’ll also have a digital test for the students that wanna do a test on the computer.

All right. Let’s see. So the a CT format, so you can see the current format. On the left, you see a lot of questions and a very [00:33:00] short amount of time. You see you have less than a minute per question on pretty much. Uh, a majority of the tests or around a minute a question, uh, slightly over on, uh, on, well, actually no, it’s less than a minute a question on almost all the parts of the test.

So that is a huge challenge, right? Students really struggle to finish that, and you can see on the right is where we do get into the territory. Some of the parts of the test, having a little bit more than a minute of question. So, you know, it’s, it, they’ve improved it a little bit, right? They’ve definitely.

Turned down the speed slightly, but they did definitely didn’t turn it down all the way, as you can tell from these numbers, still feel like, feels to me like there’s gonna be some students that do have a time issue with the a CT. Uh, but you know, if you’re doing the a CT, there’s just one thing you have to prepare for and there’s strategies you can use.

There’s, there’s ways you can work around that. Uh, one of the other big things is that because of this, right, like you’re probably thinking Nick, like if the a CT gives you so little time, how is that fair? Well. The questions have to be a little bit more straightforward, a little bit easier. [00:34:00] So you do find, if you compare SAT to a CT without time involved, the a CT questions are definitely a little bit easier.

Most students would agree with that. That’s just a, because there’s restricted time, right? On the SAT here, we’re giving you a lot of time. Here’s a harder question, you know, so some students don’t like doing the more challenging questions and prefer the more straightforward nature of the A CT. This is a little FAQ that the a CT kind of put out.

Um, you know, we’re, like I said, we don’t have an adaptive test. Super scoring will still work largely the same way. Um, there’ll be different price if you do the science or not. This is all available on the a CT website, so I’m not gonna spend a huge amount of time on that. So this is a, an important comparison.

So this is how we can look at what are the differences between the tests. I would encourage you to. Take a screen, grab or take a picture of this. Um, this really shows you what the difference is between the digital SAT, uh, the a CT and then the new [00:35:00] changed a CT. So, uh, I kind of went over all the different reasons.

So it’s all here, um, in one nice place. And then here are some more reasons, uh, more ways we changed it. Uh, a lot of the, the, uh, changes obviously when you change a test. The companies that make these tests have to release all new materials. They do have books, right? They have a SAT and a CT books released by the organizations.

Those books have fewer tests in them. Um, the platforms have fewer tests, fewer questions, because the test is new. So that was a challenge with the digital SAT. There wasn’t a lot of material, but now there’s much more. So now there’s up to 10 tests for the digital SAT and for the a CT. Right now, they just have one.

So that is definitely a problem, but I’m sure they’re gonna increase that number ’cause they get, gotta sell their books, you know. But at the end of the day, like, I hope they do release more tests because a lot of students do use those tests to, uh, prepare for the exam. So let’s talk about the preparation right now that the SAT, I’m just gonna use that as an example.

Now, the SAT is [00:36:00] digital. If you’re doing a class, you have a tutor, you’re preparing for this test and you’re not using a digital platform. You are putting yourself significantly behind. You must practice on the digital platform. You must practice with the tools they give you. You need to understand the scoring.

All that comes from the digital platform, having it be adaptive, all that stuff. Someone hands you a piece of paper. Yeah, that’s great for practice. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t have the adaptive stuff. It’s not really preparing the students properly for the exam. Uh, so you really need a platform.

We provide that service, something we can provide also, uh, for students to get, uh, an approximation of their score. They would also need to really use a platform. You can do it on paper, but it’s just not as effective. Right. Um, so I really stress that, you know, because diagnostic testing is such a big part, preparing for these tests, that’s one of the biggest parts, right?

You gotta know the content of the exam. You have the math formulas, grammar rules, you need to obviously do practice, understand the questions, strategy, so on and so forth. Obviously that’s really important, [00:37:00] strategizing on the test. But the big one, the big extra one, is you really need to sit down and do complete practice tests because the timing and the endurance.

It’s so important. So that’s why I’m stressing that, uh, like I said earlier, we do provide free diagnostic testing for all students. I highly encourage people to seek out that kind of thing. And you could do it on Blue Book, like I said. Um, how should we prepare for this test? Try both tests before you get started.

You don’t wanna waste a lot of time doing a test that maybe you’re not gonna be as successful on. Try both tests. Do the diagnostic testing, figure out which path is better for you. Use the free resources that are available. Use Khan Academy, use College Board, blue Book, use, all that stuff. I encourage people to use.

It’s free. Definitely doesn’t hurt. Obviously there’s better stuff. There’s online courses that various, we have all kinds of things, you know, like tons of different companies have all kinds of paid stuff. What you do want to be careful of is things like really shady sounding guarantees. Like there are some guarantees that are totally legitimate, like.

You know, if you don’t go up X points, um, you do all the homework, you come to all the classes, [00:38:00] we will give you X, Y, and Z refund, whatever. You just wanna be careful the ones that have like 10 pages of fine print, because that usually just means you’re never gonna get any, any retribution, right? So be careful with that.

And then practice makes perfect, right? The more suit you practice on these kind of tests, the better you’re gonna do. Uh, it’s just a fact. So here is what the diagnostic testing platforms look like. This is what our diagnostic testing platforms look like for SAT on the left and for a CT on the right. A CT of course is gonna change because we need the digital a CT platform.

But you can see this is data, right? We’re simulating a real, real testing environment. You’re getting feedback. How much time did you spend on a question? Which ones do you get right and wrong? What categories of questions you get wrong? You get easy questions wrong when you’re making silly mistakes or you get hard questions wrong where you need to maybe learn some of the content.

Learn better strategies, right? This is hugely important to understanding how to take this contest. So when you’re thinking about preparing for something like the SAT or a CT, you wanna take into consider. Your own personal learning style, how much time you [00:39:00] have, what your budget is, and like what score you need.

Right? So if I take a diagnostic test and I get a 1200 and my target school needs a 1400, that may take a decent amount of work, right? But if I had a 1350 and my target school needed a 1400, I probably need much less work than the student that needs to increase 200 points. You can increase that much, you can increase significantly more than that.

It just takes time and effort, right? That’s what I always tell you, like what’s the maximum minimum people can prove? Kids have improved hundreds and hundreds of points. They just go through a lot of time and effort to get there, right? Uh, so if you need to, you wanna improve 400 points. That’s definitely gonna be challenging, but I’ve seen students do it, right?

Everybody is not gonna do that, but some students definitely will, and it’s just gonna be months and months of effort. Lots of practice questions, lots of diagnostic tests. You know, you, if you have a particular personal question, feel free to reach out to me. I’ll tell you exactly what to do, how students have done it and what they do.

But you just wanna be really careful in setting, uh, reasonable expectations and goals, which really just [00:40:00] need to align how much time you can spend on this, and you know what your goals are. So let’s go over self-study. If you’re a motivated student, you feel like you could really self-direct yourself, that is a great avenue.

There are a lot of, you know, free resources, you know, blue Book, Khan Academy, you know, stuff on the a CT website. You know, low cost books and products online. There’s a lot of things you can do there. Um, but you know, if you’re not so self-directed, sometimes that can be challenging. A lot of students do need help and you have group classes.

Those are better for students who maybe have, you know, uh, certain budget to, uh, prepare for the test. They do provide a lot of strategies. You provide a lot of, um, you know, practice questions, practice problems, uh, that might be available at your school. Uh, that might be available in your local community, might be available online.

You can do online classes. A lot of companies like, like mine and many other companies, uh, they’re great. You just do need some self-directed learning. And then the last option would be private tutoring. That’s where you’re really getting into something that’s very expensive, [00:41:00] but there can be a lot of benefits to that.

You do wanna make sure that, you know, you have someone that’s a good fit for your student and really is going to be helpful to them. And then my, my last one I’ll go through quickly. Does the SAT still matter? Obviously you’ve probably heard a lot of schools are going back to requiring the SAT. If you don’t, I look at it this way.

I’ll make this slide very quick. This is a, a no risk situation if you don’t do well on the SAT, there’s plenty of schools that will take you without an SAT score if you do do well on the SAT or a a t, it does open up a lot of doors. You can’t get scholarships, all that good stuff. So I would go into it with, uh, you know, an eyes wide open approach, whereas like if I do great, great.

I’m gonna try to do great, but if I don’t, it’s not a big deal. I am done.

Lonnie: Okay. Thank you so much Nick. Um, so audience, we are now gonna go into our live question and answers. Just to let you all know that the handout or the presentation, um, that Nick [00:42:00] just provided is actually downloadable by visiting the handouts tab.

Um, I know there was a section in there that was really important that did the comparison, so you all can definitely download the slides. Uh, so we’re gonna move into our questions and answers. So the first question that I um, have, and these are generated from our audience when they registered, is when should I begin test preparation?

Nick: Uh, that’s a great question. Uh, a lot of that just depends on, um, I don’t, I’ll give you the like average when you should prepare, but a lot of that depends on where you’re starting and where you need to end up. So like my example earlier, if I just need to go up 50, a hundred points, I probably could start.

You know, two, three months before my actual test, right? Most students are taking the SAT Most popular time would be in March, uh, the spring of junior year. A lot of students do take it significantly earlier than that. Like they take it in the. Fall, winter of their junior year. Right? If I need to go up a lot, if I want to get a very [00:43:00] high score, I’m applying to elite colleges that need high scores.

Maybe I’m, I have a bigger, you know, bridge to gap here, then you probably want to give yourself more like maybe six to nine months. Some students study for a year. This is a very personalized process. Like, depends on your goals, depends on where you’re starting, where you want to end up. But I would say if I had to give you the average, the best time to repair is like.

The summer going into 11th grade or sometime in 10th grade, take the diagnostic test because then you can see, okay, what do I need to do? Like, do I have a long way to go or am I pretty close? Am I doing well? And then you can kind of dictate your schedule from that.

Lonnie: Okay, great. Uh, our next question is if I’ve maybe already taken the paper version of the SAT or the a CT, is it okay to.

Kind of mixed scores, like anything around super scoring that you might be able to share?

Nick: Yeah, they’ve said that, well, when the SAT change in March of 2024, colleges did say they would accept both scores and they would super score them. Um, it’ll probably be the same thing [00:44:00] for the a CT. It’ll just be a little bit awkward because one of the sections will be missing.

But I think at the end of the day, colleges are most interested in just getting really high scores from students. So, um, I, I don’t think that’ll be a problem.

Lonnie: Okay. And so speaking of high score question comes up all the time, is how one can like boost their SAT scores. Um, so perhaps like, you know, this was, how can they get from 1590 to 600 score within the SAT?

Nick: Yeah. The, the best way to improve your score is, number one, to diagnose what your issues are. Like, okay, what mistakes am I making? You know, I. Um, am I making mistakes on grammar questions, reading comp, geometry, algebra, like, understand. What mistakes you’re making and that’s where the diagnostic tests come to play.

And then the trifecta of effective SAT prep is obviously practice problems, strategizing and diagnostic tests, right? You have to understand the content of the exam, the formulas, the ground rules. You [00:45:00] gotta study all that stuff, but you really need to do time to practice. You need to diagnose yourself and like kind of chip away at the things that you make mistakes on.

If you wanna get a very high score. Realistically, the thing you need to do is really. Once again, see it happen on a practice test. It’s not going to occur where a student like takes a practice test and gets a 1300 and then goes into the real SAT and gets a 1550. Like that’s just very unlikely to happen.

So the best way to like get to that point is to slowly build your score by studying and doing practice tests, build it up, and then once you do do a practice test or a diagnostic test and you get that kind of score, you’re more than capable of getting another real test. It just takes time. I think we want a really high score.

It takes time, but just another little aside, you don’t need to have a 1590 or 1600. If you have anything over 1550, pretty much any college in the nation will accept you. Obviously, there’s a whole lot of other things we can talk about that you need AP classes, high grades, essay, blah, blah, blah. So there’s no guarantee that just ’cause you have a high test score, you’re gonna be [00:46:00] taken to any college.

So. Yeah, it’s part of the process.

Lonnie: Yes. Thank you for affirming that. Uh, for our students, uh, our next question is, are there two different types of PSAT exams? Um, my friend took the PSAT in the ninth grade.

Nick: Yeah, there is, there’s a early version, PSAT for younger students. That doesn’t include some of the complicated math.

And then there, even the PS PSAT itself is like kind of a light version of the SAT. You know, they kind of just turn down the notch of difficulty, like one or two notches to make it a little bit more fair for students because a lot of students are taking the PSAT in 10th grade, they’re taking the earlier PSAT in eighth or ninth grade.

It just would be unfair to give them, you know, algebra two content that students learn in 10th or 11th grade. Right. So, yeah, there are different versions.

Lonnie: Okay. Um, the next question says. What happens if my device crashes or my [00:47:00] wifi cuts out during the test?

Nick: That’s a great question. Uh, what happens is the test is actually that the whole thing with Blue Book is it’s a software, it’s not a website.

So the test is downloaded before you take the test onto your device in the software. So if you are with the wifi crashes, you can still continue to do the test, and then as long as you connect to the wifi, like within next. Whatever number of hours later, it will still send your test through. So it, it’s capable of doing the test offline.

You just need to go back online to, um, do continue the, you know, to send the test in. And then if your device crashes, excuse me, um, you should just, or restart your device and then pick up where you left off.

Lonnie: Okay, so this question is more, um, framed from a parent. How can I best support my child at home in preparing for a digital test format, especially if I’m not too familiar really with [00:48:00] technology myself.

Nick: That’s a great question. I think, um, you know. That’s one of the challenges that I mentioned earlier. You know, if you go out to a bookstore or you go on Amazon and buy student a bunch of SAT books, that’s definitely helpful, right? But it may not really prepare ’em for the digital format of the test. So I would, if I wanted to do something that was totally free, I would just have them sit down.

On Blue Book and do digital SAT tests, and it gives you your score and you can see, you know, what, what happened there. So just making sure that they’re like using the platform or obviously seeking assistance from some companies that have digital platforms that can show students how to use them and so on and so forth.

Lonnie: All right, so this question says, what happens if I accidentally click the wrong answer? Can I easily change it without losing time or confusing the system?

Nick: I. Yeah, you just click, you just click the, if you click a mistakenly, you could just click B and it will change over. It’s, it’s very intuitive.

Students actually usually don’t [00:49:00] have very much difficulty utilizing the platform. It’s very straightforward, it’s very simple. So that’s not a, not a big concern.

Lonnie: Great. Awesome. Um, if I’m a slow reader or struggle with screen fatigue, how can I prepare myself to stay focused during a digital test?

Nick: That’s a great question.

I mean, one thing I would do if you. Struggle with screen fatigue is probably considered taking the a CT on paper. Uh, but, um, in terms of like how to prepare yourself to stay focused, endurance and focus is a massive part of, uh, standardized testing. Um, so many students like kind of weighing at the end of these tests, so I’m gonna sound like a broken record here, but once again, sitting down for time diagnostic tests, that’s the only way you’re really, it’s like if I had to run a marathon right?

Right. Um, I probably at some point in time would wanna run a pretty far distance to test my endurance running like, you know, 50 feet every day over like the course of a whole year and adding it up to a marathon, that’s probably not gonna work. Right. So you kind of need to [00:50:00] like practice how you want to play, you know?

Yeah,

Lonnie: yeah. Um, do colleges scrutinize if a student took the exam more than three times?

Nick: I would say 99.9% of colleges would not care if you took it five times. They just want the highest possible score. There are a select number of schools that you could probably count on one hand that do prefer when students take it a very small number of times, or they will.

You know, use that extra information from the other tests to evaluate students. But there’s few and far between, like beyond belief, like it’s, most colleges ju it’s a numbers game. They just want the highest score possible. So there’s tons of students out there taking it three, four or five times. I don’t know if that’s necessarily the greatest thing in the world, but people do it right.

And if you need to do it for whatever reason, that’s just what people do. And you know, that’s just the world we live in. So that’s what it is. But yeah, it doesn’t really affect you that much. Gotcha. Georgetown is the big one that [00:51:00] doesn’t like a huge number of tests.

Lonnie: Yeah. Yep. Um, our college is gonna trust the digital S-S-A-T-A-C-T scores the same way they trusted the paper ones, especially during the first few years.

Nick: Yeah, they’ve statistically proven that because of the adaptive testing, it has the exact same efficacy as it used to have. Um, and you know, the fact that colleges are like going back to requiring testing now, or some of them are slowly, um, that’s picking up a lot of steam that just shows that they, they do need it.

Um, one of the big problems is like, fortunately like across the country, GPAs are just very wildly inflated and compressed now. So like in some, you know, schools that I’ve seen, the. You know, the bottom 25 percentile, GPA is like 93 or below. So if you have a 92, you’re in the bottom quartile of your high school.

In some high schools, of course. Um, so that’s a huge problem. That’s why the tests are needed.

Lonnie: All righty. Uh, let’s see. I think we have [00:52:00] a couple more, couple more questions. Um, does the faster score turnaround with digital tests give my child a better chance to retest before application deadline?

Nick: Um, not really.

I, they kind of have, um, organized the test dates to like work with the application deadlines. So they actually, the SAT added a September test this year, so they had an extra, um, fall. You know, uh, summer fall test. So they really do have a number of options before the application deadlines are due. So I, I wouldn’t worry about that too much as long as, especially when you’re starting early, that’s one of the big benefits of starting early, right?

Is that like you have more options for testing, right? And then, um, that’s less of an issue.

Lonnie: All right. And this last question, um, which is something I know that you, you went over in the presentation. So how can I know if I should take the SAT or the a CT just given the changes and what should I base my choice on?[00:53:00]

Nick: I would say, once again, sound like a broken record. Try both tests in a diagnostic setting and figure out which one you’re better at. Obviously a lot of students score very equally on the two. And then that’s where like experts can come in and tell you which one you could see better progress on. But definitely like the diagnostic testing.

Lonnie: Awesome, awesome. Take both exams. Um, yes.

Nick: Not officially, uh, at, at at home or at a place or online or something, you know? And. And you can figure it out pretty easily that way. Great.

Lonnie: Awesome. Well, that actually is bringing us now to the end of our webinar. And so thank you so much Nick, for sharing more about this new digital format that students have some have already started to embrace and many will go ahead and start to begin.

And so I wanted to just also allow you opportunity if there was more that you wanted to share about curb breakers before we conclude our webinar.

Nick: Yeah. Uh, thank you [00:54:00] once again. This was a, was a pleasure. I love doing these things. I do them all the time, schools and stuff like that, so it’s definitely, uh, exciting for me.

Um, you know, like I said earlier, like our company is a, you know, full scale tutoring company, S-A-T-A-C-T. Um, uh, APs, all that good stuff. And we provide the diagnostic testing platforms, high quality tutoring group classes. We work with schools. Um, so if you want this at your school, want this kind of information.

Like we do work with a lot of school districts and stuff like that. And, you know, personally, uh, like I struggle with the SAT process in the beginning. Eventually ended up with a 99th percentile score. And part of that was because I prepared for the test. I had some help. Uh, luckily graciously my parents were able to provide and, um, the, these kind of tests benefited me wildly in my life because it helped me get into a really great college, get a huge scholarship, but also when I went to law school, also a licensed attorney, um, it really enabled me to get a full scholarship to that as well.

So, like, testing ability is something that has benefited me greatly and that’s why I’m trying to, you know, give that [00:55:00] back and, um, you know. That’s like what I’m all about. So,

Lonnie: nice. Nice. Awesome. Well, thank you. Thank you so much, Nick again, for even sharing your story, more about your company, and I know that our audience will take advantage by clicking on that QR code where they can gain more access.

Access and information about Curvebreakers. And last but not least, I just wanted to let you all know that here is the link for a CollegeAdvisor. So if you are interested in learning more about CollegeAdvisor, please click on this QR code or scan the QR code so that you can sign up for a free strategy session with.

Uh, specialist from our team and we can talk more about your academic profile and discuss more opportunities, support you through one-on-one personalized admission support. So with that, everyone have a great evening, and this presentation will be available tomorrow on our CollegeAdvisor website. Thank you again.

Goodnight. Thank you.

Nick: [00:56:00] Goodnight.