SAT
What is the SAT?
The full form of the acronym: SAT is Scholastic Assessment Test. This exam is designed and conducted by the College Board for international applicants aiming to apply to universities abroad for various bachelor’s level courses. The SAT exam is digitized and is conducted only seven months in a year. The SAT exam is sometimes taken even if the score submission is optional just to prove that applicants have a certain level of aptitude while submitting college applications.
Benefits of Taking SAT Exam 2024
Students looking to enrol in undergraduate programs in the US appear for their SAT. Most of the colleges and Universities in the U.S. require the SAT for admission to undergraduate courses, while there are a few which have either become test-optional or have completely scrapped the SAT score submission for undergrad admissions. But those universities still accepting SAT scores from international students, can look at the pros of appearing for SAT exam 2024 and submitting its scores for admission:
- SAT is an MCQ-based exam which tests students’ knowledge of English and Math subjects. There are some questions in the Math section which may require students to produce an answer without having MCQ-type options as well.
- The duration of the SAT exam 2024 has been reduced and is now only 2 hours and 14 minutes long.
- Apart from this, many schools also offer SAT scholarship money to students based on their SAT results and scores.
- SAT helps to strengthen the application with its scores and helps the admission committee evaluate students based on their skills.
- Plus, students can appear for the SAT around the year as many times as they wish, to improve their scores and even perform better each time.
- In comparison to the ACT, questions tested on the SAT have 43% more time for answering and there is no negative marking for unanswered or wrong answers.
There are many other advantages of taking the SAT and the fact that the SAT exam 2024 is now Digital, unlike the ACT which is still a pencil-paper-based test and slightly longer in duration in comparison to SAT. Also, there is no separate Science section SAT to test key concepts. Science is tested only through reading passages on the SAT Digital exam.
The SAT Digital exam is designed in a very planned manner, and it consists of the following features or international students:
- The SAT Digital exam is one hour less in duration than the older one, and students are allowed to carry their laptops or iPads to take the SAT Digital exam at the test center.
- International students taking the test from outside the US appeared for the first Digital SAT Exam in March 2023. The US-based students would be able to take the SAT Digital Exam from 2024 onwards.
- There are two sections on the SAT – reading + writing and mathematics, each section is for 400-800 marks.
- Overall, the SAT exam is scored on a total of 1600 marks. SAT scores are consolidated, that is, they are based on marks per section and once the section-wise marks are calculated the total scores are released.
- SAT exam cutoffs vary per university of application. While some universities publish SAT cutoffs for admission course-wise, there are others that do not.
- There is no average cutoff that can assess if an applicant can get through college admissions abroad or not.
- Results of SATs are released in a span of 10-14 days from the date of the SAT exam taken.
- Applicants willing to appear for the SAT can register for the SAT on the College Board website, choose their test date & center, and submit applications.
Learn more after the Assessment and Interview at WLEC.