ch is about being quantitatively literate.
Passport to Advanced Math, which features questions that require the manipulation of complex equations.
The emphasis on algebra comes at the cost of de-emphasis on geometry. Geometry questions constitute only 6% of the New SAT’s math questions, compared to 24% of the Old SAT’s questions, and, as we’ve said many times before, “Without geometry, life would be pointless.”
The New SAT’s substantially changed Reading section, in addition to collapsing all of the reading passages and questions into a single section, instead of the three that were present in the Old SAT, does away with the between five and eight sentence completion questions that led each of the Old SAT’s reading sections.
Gone are the questions testing knowledge of arcane vocabulary words that students might not encounter again a single time in the rest of their lives: For example, “treacly” (look it up) was the target word in one of the Old SAT Official Guide’s practice tests. But that doesn’t mean vocabulary isn’t going to be tested in the New SAT, because it will.
The differences are that vocabulary in the New SAT will be tested in a far lower percentage of the questions asked than was true in the Old SAT, the words tested will be – generally, anyway – more commonly used than was true previously, and they’ll be tested “in context” as the words are used in the long passages that now dominate the New SAT’s reading section. Questions that read, “As it’s used in line __, which of the following choices best describes the intended meaning of “_______?” are common, and they’re common for passages for which the peak words per sentence are far higher than is the case with recent ACT practice tests..
We qualified part of our above statement with “generally, anyway,” and the reason that we did so is that some of the vocabulary tested (for example, “brazier,” “betook,” and “discomfiture”) is going to be drawn from older texts with which very few students will be familiar.
We also want to note that it appears that some of the reading passages in each of the New SAT tests will be significantly harder than anything that’s appeared in any Old SATs and any ACTs – and that at least one of the passages could be very hard and will possibly approach or reach the 14th grade level – that’s right, the college sophomore level – in difficulty.
Last, all of the passages in the New SAT’s reading section contains what the College Board refers to as “Command of Evidence” questions. Those questions follow others and ask which of four different sections of a passage support the student’s answer to the previous question. Naturally, if the student answered the previous question incorrectly, the chance of finding support in the passage for that answer is rather small. Still, these questions are simple and test only whether or not the students have comprehended what they’ve just read and can cite the germane portions of the text.
What the Old SAT called the Writing section, the New SAT calls the Writing and Language Test, but, since writing that’s devoid of language would be better described as scribbling or doodling, nothing is gained by that name change…
…which is not to say that nothing else has changed except for the name, because almost everything has changed.
The Old SAT’s two writing sections each contained sentence improvement questions, and the first of those sections contained multiple sentence error identification questions. For the New SAT, both of those types of questions are present in the single Writing and Language Test, and it emulates the ACT’s English test so well that the two are substantively identical…
…except for the “science-ie” questions the College Board has slipped into its Writing and Language Test – probably so that it can claim (spuriously) to test science knowledge – and the charts and graphs that might appear to test (again questionably) “graphic literacy.”
According to the College Board, the New SAT’s Writing and Language Test asks students to be editors “and improve passages that were written especially for the test 