October 5th SAT Score Release: What Happened??
The results are in, and they are largely underwhelming. In fact, I'd say they are downright depressing for many students. While we've seen some success stories with our students, the majority were disappointed with the results of the October 5th, 2024, SAT score reports.
Why Was the October 5th SAT So Difficult?
The test was indeed considered by a large majority of test-takers to be very difficult. We actually had at least one very bright student who took a noticeable step backward on the Reading and Writing section, yet increased their Math score from the August exam. Overall, it ended up being a wash for this standout student.
On the other hand, students who typically do well in Math actually showed stronger results in the Reading and Writing sections.
So what do all these mixed results mean?
What Made the Test Harder Than the August Exam?
Based on anecdotal evidence from students, Reddit forums, and other intel, the difficulty of the October 5th test was based on a few factors:
- Students ran out of time on the 2nd, more difficult, module for both sections.
- The passage questions for Command of Evidence and Inferences in the second module for Reading and Writing were lengthier, and the vocabulary questions appeared harder to most students. The second module for Math also required more time to solve difficult questions.
This means a few things. First, the College Board may be testing a new format with more difficult questions in the second module. These questions may require more outside-the-box thinking than simply plugging and playing with Desmos. Also, the increased difficulty of domains like Words in Context left very little time to focus on the increased difficulty of the longer Command of Evidence style of questions.
Together, these would have left little time remaining on the second module, if any.
Why Was the October 5th, 2024, SAT Test Harder Than the Bluebook Practice Tests?
Those of you who know my methods know that I only recommend authentic test questions. Can you use other materials like the Princeton Review? Sure. But those tests are not properly vetted nor do they follow the same patterns as authentic questions. Using official College Board test questions is the best way to achieve a better score on the SAT.
You're still wondering why you could score so highly on the official practice tests yet lose so many points on the real SAT. Here's why I believe this happened.
- It isn't because the questions were more difficult than the questions on the practice test. It's because there were more of them.
- The aggregation of difficult questions created a time crunch, which forced many students to end up guessing.
This higher ratio of difficult questions on modules two of both sections was certainly not nice. But, I don't believe the "type" of questions students saw were any different than the ones on the practice tests.
How Do I Do Better On Future SATs?
Since the real SAT appears to be using a greater number of difficult questions than the practice tests, it would make sense to recreate the real tests. But, we can't do that with real tests.
So, what do we do?
Our plan here at Mr. John's Test Prep is to create a series of unseen mock SATs that mimic the complexity and difficulty of the real SAT. And we plan to do it using authentic College Board test questions from the Official Question Bank and older tests.
The result should be a much more difficult version of a practice test that will truly challenge you the way the real SAT did in October of 2024.
The process of doing well on the individual questions remains unchanged. The only thing left to practice is normalizing the extra difficult questions in the same amount of time.
Stay tuned.
Mr. J
