On Wednesday, March 2, Seminole High School will be requiring all juniors to take the redesigned SAT. The school is covering the cost for juniors this year to determine how well SHS students perform.

Junior Norma Pacheco says, “I think it is beneficial for the school to allow all the juniors to take the new SAT free of cost because it gives us a chance to get a feel of the new test, which is extremely important, especially when it comes to college admissions, without worrying about how to pay for it.”

The new SAT was designed by College Board after complaints arose over the complexity of the exam and the lack of emphasis it places on applicable knowledge. The redesigned SAT will place more emphasis on the context of a word rather than requiring students to memorize numerous vocabulary words not used to converse daily.

This was highlighted by Les Perelman, a director of writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T) and a critic of the old SAT,  when 15 of the students he mentored did significantly better on the exam when they were instructed that “details mattered but factual accuracy didn’t.”

“I spent years preparing for the old SAT, and most of the emphasis I placed was on memorization of many useless facts. I think by redesigning the SAT, I will hopefully be able to exhibit my applied knowledge, rather than what I have memorized but do not understand well,” says junior Arige Shaukat.

Another factor to the new SAT is superscoring exam scores. Superscoring is the process in which colleges will look at a student’s highest section scores across the SAT, also known as “highest section across test dates.” Juniors who take the new SAT and old SAT will not be allowed to superscore both exam scores together.

Junior Iswarya Chigurupati says, “It makes sense for the colleges not to superscore exam scores from the old and new SAT, since they are two completely different tests.”

On the new SAT, there will be an essay in which students will be asked to read a passage and analyze a specific aspect of the text. This essay will be optional, but some colleges do require it.

For more information on the new SAT and the March  2 testing visit College Board.