Moving from Official SAT Practice to Official Digital SAT Prep on Khan Academy
The SAT is adapting to better meet the needs of students and educators in our digital age. This means for U.S. students, the last administration of the pencil-and-paper SAT will be in December 2023, and all students will take the Digital SAT starting in 2024. The move to digital will result in a shorter test (2 hours instead of 3 hours) and faster delivery of results. Khan Academy has continued our partnership with College Board to support students as they prepare for taking the SAT digitally, and is updating our SAT preparation experience in response.
Important: We recommend downloading, printing, or screenshotting any data from Khan Academy’s legacy Official SAT Practice that you wish to retain as this data will no longer be accessible after December 31, 2023.
How will the Digital SAT be different from the paper-and-pencil SAT?
In addition to being a shorter test and having faster results delivery, here are some additional changes being made with the Digital SAT:
Digital SAT Math:
- Calculator use: Calculators are now allowed throughout the entire Math section. A graphing calculator is integrated into the digital test experience so that all students have access.
- Question word count: The average length of Math word problems has been reduced. In-context questions are still a big part of the test, but they’re not quite so wordy.
Digital SAT Reading and Writing:
- One test for Reading and Writing: While the pencil-and-paper SAT tested reading and writing in separate test sections, the Digital SAT combines these topics.
- Shorter passages (and more of them): Instead of reading long passages and answering multiple questions on each passage, students taking the Digital SAT will encounter shorter passages, each with just one follow-up question.
- New question types: With a greater number and variety of passages, the Digital SAT includes new types of questions, with new prompts that require new strategies.
To learn more about the Digital SAT and how the test will be administered, please visit College Board’s site.
What’s changing on Khan Academy?
Students will continue to be able to use Khan Academy’s Official Digital SAT Prep courses, developed in partnership with College Board. However, our legacy Official SAT Practice experience – which supported students in preparing for the paper-and-pencil test – will be retired after the last administration of the paper-and-pencil SAT at the end of 2023. The new Official Digital SAT Prep courses will fully replace our older Official SAT Practice product and materials by December 31, 2023.
Students will still be able to use Khan Academy to prepare for the new Digital SAT through our two Official Digital SAT Prep courses (Math and Reading and Writing). These courses will allow students to:
- Read articles, watch videos, and work on thousands of practice exercises for every skill evaluated in the tests.
- Take quizzes, unit tests, and course challenges to track and prove your mastery level in all skills.
- Track both time spent on SAT prep and mastery data for all of the different skills in each Digital SAT course
Teachers can also easily track their students’ work on Khan Academy’s Digital SAT through their reporting tools.
Without access to the legacy Official SAT Prep experience, students will no longer be able to take full-length practice tests for the Digital SAT on Khan Academy - instead these will be available for free on College Board’s Bluebook app. We will also no longer support linking of College Board and Khan Academy accounts or importing existing scores of any previously-taken SATs. However, College Board’s Bluebook app will provide students who take practice tests with a custom link to review their answers – and corresponding rationales and practice resources – on Khan Academy.
What will happen to my existing SAT-related practice data on Khan Academy once College Board transitions to the new Digital SAT at the end of 2023?
Users will be able to access their practice data through Official SAT Practice to prepare for the paper-and-pencil SAT through December 31, 2023. After that date, the legacy Official SAT Practice and its data will not be available on Khan Academy. All practice and progress from the Digital SAT courses, however, will remain available.
If you or your students use Official SAT Practice this year to prepare for an SAT administration date in 2023, we recommend printing or screenshotting any data from the Official SAT Practice that you wish to retain into 2024 (Khan Academy district administrator partners can also download this data). Between now and December 31, 2023 all users with Official SAT Practice data will receive periodic emails from Khan Academy reminding them about the upcoming changes and encouraging them to save any data they wish to retain.
How can I use Khan Academy to prepare for the Digital SAT?
We encourage learners that are looking for more resources to prepare for the Digital SAT to use both Khan Academy's Official Digital SAT Prep for skill practice and College Board's Bluebook app for full-length practice tests.
For tips and tricks on how to prepare for the Digital SAT, please check out this quick and helpful guide from College Board.
Thank you so much for being a part of Khan Academy’s history and its future! As always, if you need more help with using Khan Academy, you can let us know by submitting a support request.