In a First, US Students Will Take the SAT Entirely Online (npr.org) 76
The SAT, a college admissions exam that for nearly a century was completed using paper and pencil, is now officially all-digital. From a report: This week, students in the U.S. will begin taking the new SAT on their own devices -- including a tablet or a laptop -- or on school devices. The test is also one hour shorter (down from three hours), has shorter reading passages and uses digital tools, like a highlighter, a graphing calculator and a bookmark to go back to skipped questions. The revamped test, which ditches the paper and pencil, aims to make cheating harder and grading easier.
Students will still take the exam at a test center or at a high school. "Today's students, they do a lot of their living digitally, they do a lot of their learning digitally and they do a lot of their test taking digitally," says Priscilla Rodriguez, who oversees the SAT for the College Board, the organization behind the test. Throughout March and April, the College Board expects more than 1 million students to take the new digital SAT. Students can take the exam on Saturday test dates or during SAT School Days, where participating high schools offer the test to upperclassmen free of charge during the school day.
Students will still take the exam at a test center or at a high school. "Today's students, they do a lot of their living digitally, they do a lot of their learning digitally and they do a lot of their test taking digitally," says Priscilla Rodriguez, who oversees the SAT for the College Board, the organization behind the test. Throughout March and April, the College Board expects more than 1 million students to take the new digital SAT. Students can take the exam on Saturday test dates or during SAT School Days, where participating high schools offer the test to upperclassmen free of charge during the school day.
Cheating harder? (Score:5, Interesting)
I would have loved an electronic SAT in the past just to deal with hand cramp (yes, people get carpal tunnel from keyboards but for me, hand cramp from writing multi-paragraph responses has always been worse). That being said, how is cheating going to be harder? Especially if students are allowed to use their own devices (per the summary)?
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hard to believe that that isnt the intent.
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Re:Cheating harder? (Score:5, Insightful)
Cheating really only affects the cheater
Pure, U.S. Grade A bullshit. The cheater pushes out those that don't cheat. Even if the cheater does fail some latter challenge they've still set back a legitimate prospect.
And you should be long past the point where you wonder how the rampant cheating that plagues schools in many foreign countries somehow fails to inform these decisions. This is a deliberate compromise of the US SAT system.
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Cynical take here, but having worked in an industry that favors college graduates over demonstrable proficiency (software), I've seen college serve the purpose of class division more than education. If you're well off enough to take the financial hit and opportunity cost of attending college, then you're rewarded with a job where you can exhibit negligence and pass blame for good pay.
Streamlining the SAT's to favor cheating is an advancement of this trend.
It would be nice to see academia drive efficiency, v
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Cheating will be rampant
It's not as if colleges just hand you a degree and send you on your merry way. Students who cheat on the SAT will find themselves in over their heads when they start taking classes, so that's the real deterrent against cheating.
I've been of the opinion that college really should have a trial period where you can cancel and get your money back (or loans cancelled) if it didn't work out. Higher education really isn't for everyone; some folks truly do struggle with school.
need more trades & trades like paths for skill (Score:2)
need more trades & trades like paths for some skills in collages now.
also at lest some of the armed forces classes should have some kind of collage credit
Re: Cheating harder? (Score:2)
It's not as if colleges just hand you a degree and send you on your merry way. Students who cheat on the SAT will find themselves in over their heads when they start taking classes, so that's the real deterrent against cheating.
The admissions process itself is a competition for a finite number of spots in an incoming class for some schools, and the workload will vary based on the institution and major regardless.
The new process will just make it easier for the rich to have someone take the exam for their kids, and I'm sure administrators don't really care as links to the wealthy mean benefits down the line after junior graduates.
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It's not as if colleges just hand you a degree and send you on your merry way. Students who cheat on the SAT will find themselves in over their heads when they start taking classes, so that's the real deterrent against cheating.
Harvard [harvard.edu] admits about 2000 students per year out of about 57k applicants. I would bet that 10k+ of those applicants could do just fine at Harvard, and the only reason they aren't being admitted is Harvard doesn't want to expand its student body and risk its exclusive reputation. If more students started cheating to get into Harvard, and other exclusive schools, many if not most of them would handle the workload just fine.
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Assuming intake is about the same as output, and assuming that the physical facilities (classrooms, etc) and other resources (instructors, janitors, advisors, etc) are all relatively booked as things are, to increase incoming class size by 5x there will be a bunch of university-specific support/infrastructure increases needed and then a bunch more similar in the surrounding communities (all those new students and staff need places to live, etc too!). Even if you changed classes to be 24/7 in 3 shifts the h
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Harvard wouldn't be the first university to build new buildings, and to perhaps create satellite locations. If a university wants to expand they would be able to.
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Sure. But to expand 5x ?
Re:Cheating harder? (Score:4, Interesting)
I looked into this once. Yes you could do it. If you used some sort of wireless HDMI spliiter/extender, that would make the screen contents available to a cohort. And you could potentially get audio back into the test taking room as long as you had a microphone that was directional enough not to pick it up (and you were really certain.)
But it's no easy task. The simple ideas of using things like virtual machines and emulators are absolutely out as they won't even let you start taking the test in a virtualized/emulated enviornment.
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It is easier to take a test prep course for the SAT to improve your score than to cheat at test-taking time. ;)
Cheating takes effort and preparation
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Just do what Trump did and pay somebody to impersonate you to take your exam! (look it up, then ask yourself is the guy likely to be lying? no.)
Harder , but by no means hard (Score:1)
That being said, how is cheating going to be harder?
Harder does not mean hard, just harder than other online tests - it will still be trivially easy. I suspect that it will use some nasty form of secure browser that takes over your desktop and invades your privacy but does absolutely nothing to the phone or tablet that is kept out of sight of the desktop's webcam. Unless you have a person you trust in the room with those taking the exam cheating will be rampant which is a lesson we all learned during Covid. This will put the honest students at a significant
Re:Harder , but by no means hard (Score:5, Insightful)
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Silent KVM switchbox concealed under the table and hotkeyed.
You're welcome.
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The first iterations of virtual proctoring were awful.
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I have. I've done it. What you say is not true.
I recommend dark themes in general and a rough match on both screens, but this is not hard. Contrast down as well. No one is watching that closely. The people that get hired to proctor are really fired up to catch cheaters. Not.
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No disagreement from me! I just want to add to what you said:
It's been a few years, but not that many, when I took some I.T. certifications and had to opportunity to do it from home, instead of a local te$ting center. As un-fun as the pricey testing center was, it was preferable to taking the test at home. In fact it wasn't possible to take the test at my home, because, (due to the time of year, weather, and my unusually shaped A-frame house and window positioning), I could never get the lighting to be acce
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I absolutely share your concern with regards to the possibility of a false positive. As much as I dislike the testing center(!), I agree it is *absolutely* the preferable option for the reason you describe.
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If that's the case, then why does the summary mention people taking the SAT on their own machines?
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The proctor (and the AI) watches reflections in your eyes as well as off of your clothing. The KVM switching would be trivial to detect. Also the keystroke sounds picked up by the microphone would not match character inputs to the testing application so it would be very obvious that there are keystrokes going somewhere else.
I think you are vastly overestimating the effectiveness of online proctor systems. The ones from a few years ago were utterly incapable of anything like that and frankly spent most of their time warning you about "suspicious" activity from a handful of students who either it could not properly identify for various reasons or who hummed a tune, tapped their foot or otherwise made some innocuous noise. I'm sure the systems have improved over the last couple of years but matching keystrokes to system activity
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Most of the online proctoring system claim to engage in eye tracking. Reflections changing in your eyes is certainly something that is done. I'm not saying that they are read
FUD (Score:2)
Most of the online proctoring system claim to engage in eye tracking.
Again they claim, but even if the claim were true tracking where someone is looking is utterly useless at determining whether they are cheating unless you can see what they are looking at. During online tests people look away from the screen all the time to think about the answer or to use scrap paper to calcula
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How do you propose to bring that to the test center and set it up without getting caught. (did you read the summary?)
Voice of Sad Experience (Score:2)
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Re: Cheating harder? (Score:2)
I thought schools stopped requiring SATs because racism or something...
I'm surprised ETS was still shipping boxes of pre-printed paper around the country...
I swear people do things just to do them. (Score:4, Interesting)
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I took the California bar exam in February of 1989.
It was the first time they collected a thumb print at the start of each section.
It seems that in the prior exam, someone went from one of the lowest scores in the state to one of the highest.
This likely would have led to an investigation, even if one one of the proctors *hadn't* reported that he appeared to be six months pregnant . . .
apparently, his wife didn't even bother to cut her hair, instead just stuffing it down her collar.
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Just having access to the internet and a browser seems to make cheating vastly easier. Got a math problem? Plug it into Wolfram Alpha. Got a grammar problem? There are sites for that. Don't know what a word means? Look it up. I don't know how you could keep students from doing these things without multiple test admins constantly prowling the aisles.
own devices? or school ones? (Score:4, Insightful)
Now will the force some shity anti cheat software that will need.
can't run in an VM
maybe will not run on cpus with mixed core types or need to have the cpu model on some white list?
need windows
need local admin
edge browser only
It doesn't work .... (Score:5, Insightful)
This Device Is Not Supported, You can only download the Bluebook app on a Windows laptop or tablet, a Mac laptop, or an iPad.
They moved it digital, but didn't make it compatible, so for students who prefer digital liberty, they're screwed? Having to run Windows or Mac to use the software is a major oversight, one that's not acceptable, now I haven't checked if I can run it in Wine, which might be possible, but that shouldn't be required. Another thing moved digital, and not moved with compatibility in mind.
You cannot test with a personal Chromebook. (Score:2)
So they can do Chromebooks but only on school ones so is the school app just one with all of the anit cheat checks turned off?
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I would go as f
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The serious problem, you can't force someone to submit to abusive practices, and using Windows, Chrome, macOS, and other such software is effectively forcing self-abuse. The term digital molestation is extermely relevant, because if you have to force submit digital information in direct violation of digital liberaly, that's unacceptable.
Call a lawyer and ask if you have to submit to molestation before accepting access to a schoo
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Digital molestation is about collecting digital information that you haven't gotten proper, true, and clean consent to collect. Just because you throw a legal agreement that's 200 pages in front of
does apple take 30% of the sat fee and 30% of your (Score:3)
does apple take 30% of the sat fee and 30% of your school cost?
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Re: It doesn't work .... (Score:2)
So you imagine Online SATs will be BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)? I find that highly doubtful.
I imagined kids going to the school computer labs to take online SATs...
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This week, students in the U.S. will begin taking the new SAT on their own devices -- including a tablet or a laptop
So yes, I think people will be able to use their own devices, and even if they can't, and they use a school device, the same problem still applies. Forcing the use of Windows or macOS, requires a student to submit to digital molestation in direct violation of digital liberty. You can't mandate someone submit to invasive, and abusive practices, and hence you can't force someone to use Windows or macOS, which is why blocking the software on Linux, and not making it Open Source and Open Audit, is inane.
10
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> so for students who prefer digital liberty, they're screwed?
Both of them, yeah.
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So is eating a neoplasm off one's foot in an interview.
I think they got this headline wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
This should be
In a First, Chat GPT Will Take the SAT Entirely Online.
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It's only fair, I mean if they get into college ChatGPT will be doing their homework and likely by graduation, their job.
one hour shorter (Score:2)
The reduction in time caught my eye. I took the SAT twice and the test was a grinding marathon of concentration. It says 3 hours here but it is actually "more than four hours, from check-in to the end (if you're doing the essay)". You do get some short breaks.
https://blog.prepscholar.com/h... [prepscholar.com]
2 hours seems like adequate testing time, but it does mean fewer questions so you better get them right.
This will have an effect (Score:3)
You will still need a number 2.0 pencil.app (Score:1)
Or is that pencil.exe 2.0?
Backend surge capacity? (Score:3)
My wife's taught for 30+ years. With the push to e-testing, especially during/post COVID, she's repeatedly seen problems with the backend servers getting swamped as hundreds of thousands of students are submitting tests, getting timed out, and panicking their results won't be captured within the testing window. Has College Board/ACT/... ramped up their cloud footprint (assuming they're buying a huge load of capacity from $CLOUD_VENDOR) to deal with these scheduled spikes?
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the webpage just locks out and at max time with no data you fail and at best you can hope for is an free retake. No the rules do not allow use to take your data after max time even if our system fails.
Pencils Down (Score:2)
OMG! The #2 Pencil market is about to crash!!
really bad idea (Score:2)
That means if your device is slow, stupid, or has hiccups you lose, no fault of your own.
This will not end well. (Score:2)