SAT Gets First Revision In 10 Years

BOSTON (CBS) -- Boston College Education and Public Policy professor Henry Braun says it's been 10 years since the SAT has been revised.

The so-called new and improved SAT will be administered for the first time on Saturday. Braun says the old test was just too abstract, and gave the analogy questions as the main example.

"Individual is to community as a fish is to, whatever--maybe one of the items is a school," Braun said, giving a sample of the type of question that was featured in the old SAT.

But the new SAT will focus more on real-world problem solving. Math problems will include more words, and reading passages will be longer and tougher--but comparisons like "yacht is to regatta" have been scrubbed.

Braun says that, come Saturday, there will of course be students with sweaty palms.

"That nervousness is, if you will, exacerbated when a new test comes down the line," said Braun. "The hope is that when they settle down and figure out what they need to do, those activities are more in line with the kind of learning that we want them to do."

The hope is to give middle school and high school teachers new data on how to make their students more college-ready.

WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Mary Blake reports