A printing error occurred on the SAT distributed to US students this past Saturday, June 6. In one of the 20-minute sections (either section 8 or 9) on the tests administered in the US, there was a typo. The first page of the test booklet (incorrectly) told students they had 25 minutes for the section. The proctors told students (correctly) that they had 20 minutes. As a result, some proctors gave 20 minutes, while others gave 25. This error did not affect international test centers.
Earlier today, Monday, June 8, the College Board released a formal apology for the error, stating that they will be removing from consideration the section containing the typo. According to the College Board, two sections will be more than enough to provide an accurate score for any part of the SAT (Math and Reading). Therefore, even with the section removed, the scores will still be out of 800 and still be valid.
“To accommodate the wide range of incidents that can impact a testing experience, the SAT is designed to collect enough information to provide valid and reliable scores even with an additional unscored section,” the College Board stated. “From fire drills and power outages to mistiming and disruptive behavior, school-based test administrations can be fragile, so our assessments are not. We have deliberately constructed both the Reading and the Math Tests to include three equal sections with roughly the same level of difficulty. If one of the three sections is jeopardized, the correlation among sections is sufficient to be able to deliver reliable scores.”
Note: Students will still receive their scores on schedule.
