Since so many scorers can pay to land in the 1400-1500 range, my guess is that they made the 2nd math module more difficult to help differentiate gifted kids from great study skills kids.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC took the digital SAT today at school (a DCPS in-school test day)…said it was not nearly as bad as the Saturday test and much closer to the practice tests (though a bit harder).

Different day, different test. College Board equates the tests. We will see in a few weeks what that looks like given that students thought the March 9 test was much more difficult than the in-school tests.

for sure...just interesting that it felt so different to DC (and their friends that also took both tests within a few days). I knew the difficulty varied from test to test but it is somewhat surprising the degree to which the difficulty varies.

It's also possible that it felt easier b/c they just took another one. They have more experience now.

I don't think this is it...a lot of the kids that found it so difficult last Saturday had taken all four practice tests that the College Board released. My DC took one of these "official" practice ones at a test prep center on a Sunday under timed conditions to simulate actual conditions and said last Saturday's test was "1000x harder."

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC took the digital SAT today at school (a DCPS in-school test day)…said it was not nearly as bad as the Saturday test and much closer to the practice tests (though a bit harder).

Different day, different test. College Board equates the tests. We will see in a few weeks what that looks like given that students thought the March 9 test was much more difficult than the in-school tests.

for sure...just interesting that it felt so different to DC (and their friends that also took both tests within a few days). I knew the difficulty varied from test to test but it is somewhat surprising the degree to which the difficulty varies.

It's also possible that it felt easier b/c they just took another one. They have more experience now.

The Saturday test had some weird math problems on it.

My kids (twins) both had perfect math PSAT scores and 36 math scores on the ACT. They can generally do standardized test math problems. They thought 3-4 questions were weirdly difficult.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC took the digital SAT today at school (a DCPS in-school test day)…said it was not nearly as bad as the Saturday test and much closer to the practice tests (though a bit harder).

Different day, different test. College Board equates the tests. We will see in a few weeks what that looks like given that students thought the March 9 test was much more difficult than the in-school tests.

for sure...just interesting that it felt so different to DC (and their friends that also took both tests within a few days). I knew the difficulty varied from test to test but it is somewhat surprising the degree to which the difficulty varies.

Anonymous wrote:I just saw a you tube video saying at least one question per module is a different type of question designed to be very difficult and not counted toward the score. Very strange as I never heard this for the paper version.

The paper version had an entire unscored, unannounced section on it.

Anonymous wrote:DC took the digital SAT today at school (a DCPS in-school test day)…said it was not nearly as bad as the Saturday test and much closer to the practice tests (though a bit harder).

Different day, different test. College Board equates the tests. We will see in a few weeks what that looks like given that students thought the March 9 test was much more difficult than the in-school tests.

My child took digital SAT also over weekend and thought he bombed the math section (he got a perfect math on practice digital SAT) but thought the English easier. I guess we will see. Maybe it’s not terrible to throw in some variables/ challenging Qs to keep kids thinking in their feet? Also helps equalize against test prep industry?

DS took a pilot test of the digital SAT so we never received his scores but he felt that it was much easier than the paper one. He took the paper one twice and then said nope when I encouraged him to take a scored digital one once they were available last fall. He’s a senior and couldn’t care less if certain schools don’t admit him for this reason or some other one outside of his control.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t have a problem with the second module being very hard but it seems very unfair to not make the level of difficulty similar in the practice tests. Then kids can identify what they don’t know how to do and can also have a realistic sense of their score range. My DC scored over 1500 on the practice with an 800 on the math and thinks they bombed the second math module.

Yes I agree. Don't surprise kids with wildly different degrees of difficulty. Give blue book practices that reflect the actual level of difficulty so that kids know where they stand and what they need to work on. The whole point is to help kids learn not to say "aha I got you".

Theoretically, the point is to test aptitude. So if the test is harder to game and prep for, that's a good thing.

DC took the digital SAT today at school (a DCPS in-school test day)…said it was not nearly as bad as the Saturday test and much closer to the practice tests (though a bit harder).

Anonymous wrote:I just saw a you tube video saying at least one question per module is a different type of question designed to be very difficult and not counted toward the score. Very strange as I never heard this for the paper version.

I believe there are two questions per module that are "experimental" or "pre-test" and don't count on the digital test. Some paper versions also had experimental or pre-test questions but I don't think all did.

I just saw a you tube video saying at least one question per module is a different type of question designed to be very difficult and not counted toward the score. Very strange as I never heard this for the paper version.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is my understanding that the experimental questions are scattered throughout. There is no indication as to which questions are real and which are experimental. If they put them all at the end, kids just wouldn’t do them.

Right- that's my understanding....the problem with this is that these "experimental" questions have actual consequences, in that if they are bad/confusing (which many likely are since they haven't been validated yet), kids waste time on them and might do less well on other questions. They should find other ways to validate those questions.

Sure, but CB isn't going to change. Now that we know, we can tell our kids to flag time suck questions and come back to them if there is time.

Yes...but...unlike the paper version, different questions get different weights. If harder questions are given more weight, it's not always going to be the right calculation to to simply skip harder ones to move on to easier ones, right?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is my understanding that the experimental questions are scattered throughout. There is no indication as to which questions are real and which are experimental. If they put them all at the end, kids just wouldn’t do them.

Right- that's my understanding....the problem with this is that these "experimental" questions have actual consequences, in that if they are bad/confusing (which many likely are since they haven't been validated yet), kids waste time on them and might do less well on other questions. They should find other ways to validate those questions.

Sure, but CB isn't going to change. Now that we know, we can tell our kids to flag time suck questions and come back to them if there is time.