Susan Santucci says she was surprised when she received a barrage of phone calls earlier this summer from parents of children preparing to apply to colleges in the coming months.
Santucci, founder and principal of Ivy League Tutoring LLC, says she has seen a roughly 20% increase in requests for SAT tutoring in the past six months.
Lisa Bigney, co-director of Rhode Island Tutorial & Educational Services Inc., has experienced a similar trend. She says she has noticed more interest this year both for individual SAT tutoring and overview workshops, which offer tips and strategies.
While Bigney didn’t see many requests for tutoring during the COVID-19 pandemic, she has noticed interest has rebounded and then some.
The rise in the demand for tutoring services comes as colleges and universities have begun resuming testing requirements for admissions. At the same time, the SAT itself has changed.
The College Board, the nonprofit that develops and administers the SAT, unveiled a new digital version of the test in March. As opposed to using a No. 2 pencil and paper, students take the SAT on BlueBook, the College Board’s new testing app.
When Bigney first learned of the new test format, she was concerned students would struggle to switch to a digital test. But so far there have been no issues as students have gotten used to learning and taking tests online because of remote learning during COVID-19.
“I haven’t found it difficult for them at all,” Bigney said. “You know, it may seem scary to us adults, but the kids have been working this way for a while. It seems to be working out for them”
Santucci said she also thought students might have a harder time focusing if they couldn’t mark up the test, but she was glad to see BlueBook has highlighting tools for the reading and writing section. The College Board is still offering the ability for students to take a paper version of the test, if requested.
Also, students have been finding the test less stressful and easier overall, observers say.
The updated test is much shorter – going from about three hours to two hours. Also, the digital version uses what’s called multistage adaptive testing, or MST, in which the test is divided into two stages and questions in the second stage are set up based on a student’s performance in the first.
Santucci says students are normally worried about this model because they may miss more questions if they get a harder second stage. But she says it’s actually better to be challenged because that could translate to a higher score.
Bigney says the shorter test is more approachable for students and the MST model means students aren’t facing too many hard or too many easy questions.
“It seems more doable,” Bigney said.
She also says students are finding the reading and writing section easier because the passages are much shorter than the previous version and there is only one question associated with each.
On the other hand, many students have found the math questions more difficult.
Through the BlueBook app, students can use an online graphing calculator known as Desmos throughout the test.
“This is a game changer,” Santucci said. “It’s an incredibly powerful tool.”
And while students who come for private SAT tutoring are usually very motivated, Santucci says the Desmos calculator has helped her engage students during sessions.
“I can present it as a gaming test with the Desmos calculator,” Santucci said.
Though the new SAT format has only been out for six months, both Santucci and Bigney say students’ scores have stayed relatively consistent across the new and old tests.
The R.I. Department of Education has yet to release SAT data for the most recent school year. A spokesperson for the College Board also said data on scores and how many times each student takes the SAT is not yet available because there have only been a few administrations of the digital SAT.
Now that the digital SAT has been rolled out, the ACT – a rival standardized test used for college admissions produced by ACT Inc. – is also changing, with a new version set to launch next April.
The ACT will offer all students the option of taking the test online or with a paper and pencil. Also, like the updated SAT, the test time will drop from approximately three hours to two. There will be 44 fewer questions and students can opt to take the ACT without a science section.
While more specific details on the new ACT have yet to be released, Bigney says tutors are monitoring and will adjust their curriculum as more information comes out.
Though the ACT has held a larger market share than the SAT across the U.S., Santucci and Bigney say an updated version is crucial to stay competitive.
“It’s about not losing ground on who’s getting the most students,” Bigney said.
