US College Entrance Examination SAT Got Revamped

The competent authority of Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT), an undergraduate entrance examination for US College, has announced changes in the pattern of the test including elimination of mandatory essays, removal of negative marking, cutting ambiguous vocabulary words.

As per the announcement made by the College Board that produces SAT via a press release published on the official website of SAT on 5 March, the changes made in SAT will take effect from 2016.

The redesigned SAT, is to cover 3 sections -- Reading And Writing, Math and An Essay and will switch back to the score of 1600 from its current score scale of 2400, with having a separate score for the essay part. To choose it or not can be decided by colleges individually.

The test with these changes will be conducted from the spring of 2016 and will be for three hours. While extra 50 minutes for the essay will also be provided. The test is going to be administered by print and computer.

Other changes include no deduction of marks for any wrong answers. The vocabulary will be replaced with the easier words that are usually used in the college courses, in place of unknowable SAT words.

The challenge now shifts to problem-solving from Mathematics and Vocabulary. The new version of SAT test will demand candidate to analyze the reading passages in the exam, and the students must cite specific passages from extracts of well-known writings to support their answers, which was not the case in the current SAT version.

Majority of American colleges ask candidates for their SAT or ACT exam score for approving admission to their graduate programmes.