Although students will not be taking the new PSAT until the fall, this coming summer is a great time to strengthen your critical reading skills and brush up on math in preparation for the sweeping changes coming with the revised SAT. October’s PSAT will provide a good preview of the SAT that will begin in March 2016 and may help you choose between the SAT and ACT later in the year. Let’s take a look at the make-up of the new PSAT.
Reading rules! With a 60-minute long critical reading section, your ability to maintain focus and to retain what you’ve read is foremost. The reading section will include longer passages, charts and graphs, a “global conversation” or “founding document” that relies on your understanding of history, and questions that require you to find evidence. Unlike the old PSAT, there will be fewer vocabulary-based questions and more that really test your understanding of the passages you’ve read.
The math section of the new PSAT includes both a calculator-assisted section and one in which you must rely on your computational skills. The math includes multi-part questions, more algebra and analysis of data, and generally higher level math including some trigonometry and pre-calculus. To do well, your math skills will need to be stronger and faster, and you will need to be precise in your calculations. Your strong mental math abilities will greatly enhance your performance on this test.
The writing and language section is similar to that of the current ACT. In summary, the new PSAT is 35 minutes longer than the old PSAT, the multiple choice questions have only 4 answer choices, not 5, and there is no penalty for guessing. Your score is based on correct answers only.
With all this in mind, you’ll want to include more reading in your plans for this summer and also make time to brush up on your computational skills. This type of general preparation will lead to better scores in the fall.
