Sat Experimental Section

In the past the sat experimental section was given for three main reasons to test out future material to ensure fairness and gauge difficulty level and to detect any evidence of cheating.

Sat experimental section. What is an experimental or equating section. Ets included experimental sections in the old sat in order to gauge difficulty levels and adjust score curves so that each iteration of the sat was of roughly the same difficulty as other iterations of the test. The only source that talks about the sat experimental section are the counselor s guide which says.

The sat experimental section since the introduction of the redesigned test in 2016 the college board has given a 20 minute experimental section to randomly selected groups of students who take the sat. There has been an experimental section of one kind or another throughout the test s development but what form it took and who took it has varied with major consequences. On both exams the experimental section is a section of the test that does not count toward a student s score.

Back in march one student of mine had to abandon half way through because the experimental section had been torn out of his test booklet. To test out future material. Prior to 2019 only students who did not take the essay could be part of that group.

I teach sat for a living. By design students could not tell which section was experimental which allowed the college board to effectively pretest questions for future exams. The college board includes this section to try out new test questions on students to gauge fairness ease or difficulty.

As of 2019 the sat now contains a 20 minute long experimental section for students who take the test with the essay and those who take the test without the essay. The sat will be given in a standard testing room to students with no testing accommodations and consist of four components five if the optional 50 minute essay is taken with each component timed separately. They use the data gathered from this extra section to create future tests that are more fair and balanced.

The sat s experimental section the concept of an experimental section on the sat isn t new. Around the time the sat was redesigned the college board and ets parted ways. What is an experimental section.