New ACT, SAT, and PSAT

The New ACT is coming up very soon – the new essay section will be in this month’s ACT! Other than that, it’s the same old ACT. The Enhanced Essay, as it’s called, will still be optional. The difference is that instead of one prompt, students will face three viewpoints on a topic and asked to discuss all three viewpoints in a coherent essay.

Here’s the link to the official ACT sample Enhanced Essay prompt:  http://www.act.org/actnext/pdf/SampleWritingPrompt.pdf

The New SAT probably should be called “the old ACT,” since from my taking the official practice “new SATs,” the tests have been made like the ACT, except without a science section, and with a slightly different essay section, in which students are asked write essays analyzing the literary and rhetorical techniques used in writing a particular excerpt from a piece of literature.  The time to do so is considerably longer than the old 25-minute essay. The writing section is now based on longer passages with sections underlined, as found on the SAT, rather than the old sentence completion, or shorter “sentence improvement” and “paragraph/essay improvement” problems. The new SAT will not be in effect until March 2016, so if you’re taking it before then, don’t worry about the new SAT. 

Here’s a link to the College Board’s official line on the changes to the SAT: https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/sat/inside-the-test/key-changes

Here’s a link to more information about the new (and the current) SAT from the College Board: https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/sat/inside-the-test

Here’s a link to some free SAT practice from Khan Academy, including prep for the new SAT: https://www.khanacademy.org/sat

The New PSAT will be changed in the same way as the SAT, but will still have no essay. This takes effect in October 2015 (next month!), so if you’re taking the PSAT, you really should check out the sample PSAT (and the answers, scoring guide etc.) at https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/psat-nmsqt-psat-10/practice/full-length-practice-test .