The College Board—a nonprofit ubiquitous in the area of college applications—moved the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) to digital-only in 2024 and have been broadly moving their testing protocols to a digital focus for a few years now. However, such a rapid shift in methods for clients can very easily be rocky, and not-for-profit organizations can have trouble facilitating an easy change.
Abington Friends School’s Associate Director of College Guidance, Joanna Upmeyer, has dealt extensively with the College Board and had much to say on the subject of the SAT. Anything said about the Digital SAT also applies to the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT) and Advanced Placement (AP) exams, as they all use the same piece of software in Bluebook.
“It’s less work for me to do, being digital,” Upmeyer said. “That said, I do think that different devices have different success rates. iPads tend to have more glitches… the Chrome lockdown browser is just another inconvenience.”
Upmeyer said, “Thankfully, at AFS, we can give students new-ish and high quality loaners for the test, but it is more convenient when a student has a Mac device of their own that they can just bring to the Digital SAT. Macs are more expensive, [so] there’s just some built-in privilege.”
Upmeyer did say about the October exam in Cheltenham High School, “They told students who were not Cheltenham High School students that they would not be able to access the Wi-Fi. So, if you were not able to make a hotspot or have the ability to get on a hotspot, you were just not able to take the test, which I really do hope is followed up with as a problem for that test site.”
Upper School Learning Specialist, Steve Biehn, had his own opinions on the digital testing format.
“I actually really like the new digital format because of the accessibility tools that it has built in,” said Biehn. “For instance, it used to be the case that, if a student needed a large print for reading, you’d have to get a separate test altogether, but now that’s built into the screen, where you can zoom in. The read-aloud function is built into the test.”
Aisling Scanlan ‘28, who took the PSAT for the first time this past October, had a positive experience of their first time using Bluebook.
“[Bluebook] was pretty easy to navigate,” said Scanlan. “It was pretty similar to what I used in my middle school for the PSSAs [Pennsylvania System of School Assessments].”
Notably in regards to the digital SAT, according to Sauder Schelkopf Law, there is an active investigation into a potential class-action lawsuit against the College Board over the organization “caus[ing] tests to auto-submit at 11:00 a.m. local time, regardless of whether students had finished.”
The investigation is seemingly still ongoing, but it raises questions about if the Board was ready to switch to digital back in 2024.
The digital exam’s flaws aren’t only digital, though: last year, Milpitas high school’s newspaper, The Union, reported on an incident where 364 students’ Free Response scores, for a number of AP exams, were lost in transit.
In both of these cases, the options the College board gave were limited. For the lost AP exam scores, students could either retake the free-responses or accept a projected score. For the SAT bug, students could either retake the test or cancel their scores.
This is, in all likelihood, an uncommon incident. As much as software can be buggy, it can also be leagues more convenient than any other option.
When asked about the user-friendliness of Bluebook and AP Classroom’s LockDown browser, Christine Lahtaw ‘26 said, “The lockdown browser sometimes glitched, but I think that was because I was impatient trying to do something… Other than that, it’s pretty easy.”
Even beyond the College Board’s move to digital, the exam’s usefulness and difficulty as such a major aspect of a given college application has been hotly debated for some time. The application process being Upmeyer’s area of expertise, she also had thoughts on that.
“I think that my opinion mostly stems from the fact that standardized testing is not the ultimate indicator of the student’s ability to succeed in college,” Upmeyer said. “I think the test optional [and holistic] system is ideal, which most schools try to adhere to. So, I think a good system would be one in which they are looking at every single piece of a student’s application, including how much time and effort they put into commitments outside of school.”
In conversations about the College Board and standardized testing, the PSAT is important to talk about in regards to its content. All 10th and 11th graders take the test early in the year, and though it isn’t directly important to anything collegiate, it’s very much emphasized as important that students do their best at it.
According to the College Board, the PSAT, also called the National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (NMSQT), plays a hand in the process of giving students scholarships for college based on their scores in 10th and 11th grade. This practice test is therefore simultaneously much more than a practice test, also being an important step in the college process especially for students who may need financial aid.
The SAT is an important step in the college application, and their move to digital has now made a computer an quintessential part of that process. The $70 test (as well as the myriad of other exams the Board provides) doesn’t always play nice, but whether its move to digital is a boon or a curse for high schoolers certainly depends on who you ask.
will d • Nov 11, 2025 at 8:38 pm
I feel like there needs to be more tweaks and changes to digital exams before we even think about switching to digital in the first place, one example from the article being the investigation of a potentional class-action lawsuit regarding the College Board’s digital tests turning themselves in at 11:00 am local time whether the students had completed the exam or not. The only times I have taken a digital exam was in 8th grade, where we had sort-of-standardized tests taken on our chromebooks through an extension. The exam itself felt easier than if we took it on paper, but depending on the exam it could be good or bad to take it on a device or on a paper. One example of that being a test where you would have to show your own work. It would be a lot easier to be able to jot everything down on paper than having to type it out on a device. However, a survey or a multiple-choice quiz would be easier to take on a device, because you can just click a button and the question is answered. Right now, I don’t fully trust the technology used for digital exams, especially with the potential lawsuit against the College Board, but if they are able to fix stuff like that, I think I’ll be able to trust them easier.
Jenny N • Nov 10, 2025 at 3:26 pm
Although digital exams bring a lot of benefits, I think that the College Board is not ready to go fully digital, as the inconveniences and bugs might counteract the benefits. For example, when I was taking an AP Biology multiple-choice test, the lockdown browser suddenly stopped working, and I lost valuable time trying to fix it. Experiences like this make me feel nervous about relying completely on technology for high-stakes exams. While digital tests can be more convenient for graders since they are faster to grade, and environmentally friendly, they still depend too much on internet connection and stable software. A small glitch could cause a huge disadvantage for students. I personally prefer paper tests because they feel more reliable and less stressful, and I can also make notes on the test paper, which increases my accuracy.
Dillan Shafer • Nov 7, 2025 at 2:51 pm
As a junior, I have taken the PSAT twice, and I have been studying for the SAT for a few months now. I cannot speak for digital AP exams, but I believe that, overall, the College Board’s decision to digitize the PSAT and SAT exams is beneficial because it is straightforward and accessible for high school students. I did not experience any sort of glitch or bug when taking the PSAT in both tenth and eleventh grade. The browser is simple to use, and I can access the calculator and reference sheets quite easily. As a Chromebook user, however, the process to acquire a computer compatible with the digital SAT has been cumbersome. But, in the end, the digital SAT’s accessibility makes it my preferred choice for taking the exam.
Nika Kim • Nov 7, 2025 at 1:57 pm
Digital AP exams are simply problematic and unsustainable. While I agree that there might be some benefits to taking certain digital exams, it is simply unfair to transition into having all AP exams be digital. For example, I took the AP Chemistry exam last year and my reference table was glitching throughout it. There was an option to retake the exam if you thought the glitch hindered your performance, but that meant taking a whole new exam for numerous hours. Additionally, for English exams such as AP Literature and AP Language, reading long passages on a computer screen is much harder than reading on paper. It is also so much easier to annotate on paper, and much more inconvenient to do digitally. Finally, the AP exams are supposed to be equivalent to college level assessments. If colleges don’t require every exam to be taken digitally, why should we?
Neiko • Nov 7, 2025 at 9:54 am
Though I’m only a junior and have taken very limited digital tests, I still prefer paper testing, and I believe that having paper tests as an option should still be an option for standardized testing. At my old school, we would take the Terranova’s, but that was when I was in fifth grade, so I may not remember everything so clearly, but I remember being able to focus more than compared to when I’m taking the PSAT or just any digital standardized testing. When taking standardized tests on computers, I can tell when my focus starts to shift to the things around me, and the screen starts blinding me, causing me to not be able to focus. I think having a physical test and being able to physically solve and write the math problems and write passages during these standardized tests on paper helps people focus more, or maybe just me. Though I trust the digital testing just as much as physical testing, I think that having the computer right in front of me is so distracting, and I don’t have as much focus as I usually would have if I were taking a physical test.
Kemper Bramblett • Nov 5, 2025 at 8:36 am
I like how you incorporated in the beginning that College Board is indeed dubbed a “non-profit”, as while that may be true, I have found myself shoveling them my income through endless fees. There is a fee to take AP exams, there is a fee to take the SAT, in fact there is a fee you have to pay in order for College Board to send your SAT scores to colleges. As someone who has only taken College Board tests on a computer, I have little to compare the experience to, however from what I read here, and the frustration I had trying to connect to various school’s WiFi networks, I think that it would not have hurt to work out some kinks in the process before rolling the full digital version. As someone who enjoys messing around with computer from time to time, I had to reset my entire personal computer in order to take the test, as little things I had changed permanently meant that College Board thought that I was trying to get around their little lockdown feature.