This year, the PSATs were taken digitally for the first time, which allowed for less stressful, more reliable and secure testing, according to the owners of the test.
The College Board, which is the company that produces the PSAT and SAT, announced that the SATs would be taken fully online in 2024 and that the paper format will no longer be offered. To prepare students for this change, the PSATs are now being taken online also.
The PSATs are taken on an online app called Bluebook. The test takes a little more than two hours. The paper version was three hours long.
The digital version allows testing to be adaptive to the students’ skill level. There are two reading and writing sections, and two math sections. The second section of each is based on the students’ performance in the first section. If the student performs worse than a certain threshold on the first section, the questions are easier on the second section, and if the student performs over the threshold on the first section, then the questions are slightly more difficult on the second section.
The digital versions also allowed the College Board to increase security and reduce leaks because of each student’s test being generated when they opened it for the first time.
“Going digital allows every student to receive a unique test form, so it will be practically impossible to share answers,” said a Jan. 25 article on the College Board website.
Archbishop Carroll students said they liked the online PSATs better than the paper ones.
“I thought the online ones were faster and easier,” said sophomore Margaretta Potten.
Students were concerned about wifi but it went better than expected.
“I thought since the whole school was going to be online that the wifi would be messed up, but it wasn’t,” said sophomore Jan Bach.
Overall, the digital PSATs had very positive feedback.
“The digital SATs will be easier to take, easier to give, and more relevant,” said Priscilla Rodriguez, vice president of College Readiness Assessments at College Board, in the company’s Jan. 25 article.
