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By MICHAEL CRIMMINS
Glasgow News 1
College entrance decisions will no longer been determined on a 1-36 scale, but on a 400-1600 scale as the Kentucky Department of Education recently announced that it has awarded “a contract to the College Board to administer the SAT Junior State Administration as the state-funded college admissions exam beginning in spring 2026.”
The four-year contract, which locks the cost of the exam at $30 per student, has the potential to save Kentucky $350,000, according to a Kentucky Department of Education press release.
Kentucky high school juniors will take the SAT during the school day as part of the state’s required college admissions exam testing. The contract for the American College Test — or ACT — ended on June 30, according to the press release.
“The move to the SAT gives Kentucky students access to powerful tools that support their success, like free, personalized practice through Khan Academy and a new digital format that’s shorter, adaptive and designed to be more student-friendly with fast score reporting,” Commissioner of Education Robbie Fletcher said in the release.
The SAT is widely accepted by four-year colleges and universities across the United States. In Kentucky, most public institutions – including Western Kentucky University – consider SAT scores for admission, even when submission is optional.
The exam is a 2-hour, 14-minute digital assessment with reading, writing and math sections, each scored on a 200-800 scale, according to the release. It is a “multistage [and] adaptive exam” that has reading and writing, and math sections divided equally, and separately timed, modules.
Based on the performance of the first module, the second module of questions will either be more difficult or less difficult overall, the release states.
According to College Board, some of the differences between the SAT and ACT is that the SAT is given “digitally everywhere” while the ACT is still given on paper — though there is limited digital availability — is shorter by 41 minutes, the math section has a built in Desmos graphing calculator and features less questions on the reading and writing section.
The SAT also does not have a separate science section like the ACT does, but rather “scatters some data analysis and science questions throughout all sections of the test,” according to Piqosity.
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