Juniors took the new SAT on March 2 and responded with mixed reactions to the recently state-mandated test and graduation requirement that replaced SBAC. While all students sat for the exam, many chose to cancel their scores.

Unlike the ACT, the SAT has recently undergone major changes, which may have been a factor for some students cancelling their scores.

“I think a lot of people thought it was pointless since people prepped for the ACT,” Jacob Bonn ’17 said. “A lot of people cancelled their score since they thought taking the test didn’t matter because the SAT was changing.”

According to College Board, the new SAT differs from the old version in a variety of ways, including the omission of the penalty for guessing answers incorrectly, the decrease in maximum score from 2400 to 1600 and the essay section’s shift from mandatory to optional.

Due to these changes, some students feel wet behind the ears when approaching the new exam as its first round of test-takers.

“The SAT is new, uncharted waters that scare away kids and tutors because they don’t have any knowledge in regards to studying for it,” Nick Roehm ’17 said.

Another factor playing into the decision to cancel scores was Connecticut’s decision to omit the newly optional essay portion for the high-school-mandated version of the SAT. For many students, the essay omission was a dealbreaker for taking the test since, according to the SAT prep company Ivy Global, 26 colleges in America require the essay section and many more schools strongly encourage it. Since the March 2 SAT did not offer the essay section, any students planning to apply to colleges requiring or recommending the essay section would need to take the test a second time.

“I knew that I would have to take it again, and I wasn’t going to study for another test,” Katherine Coogan ’17, who cancelled her score, said. “It just wasn’t worth my time.”

In an attempt to make the test more worthwhile for students, Westport Public Schools Director of Technology Natalie Carrignan said the school district offered to pay an additional cost if the state would include the essay portion. However, the contract between Connecticut and SAT had already been decided and “the state and College Board were not interested in providing different options than the one they set up,” Carrignan said.

Despite the many reasons cited for cancelling scores, there were still teacher-SAT proctors who believed students missed an opportunity to benefit from the test, especially since many colleges accept superscores (the greatest possible composite score achieved by combining the highest section marks from each SAT attempt). “If [students] take their test in May and they do worse on the verbal, but they cancelled their scores from here, they don’t have the option to say ‘Oh, well I did better on the verbal [in March],’” math teacher Anthony Forgette said. Additionally, he speculated that many students cancelled their scores without first checking the superscore policy of schools they will be applying to in the fall.

For next year, Staples will take steps to avoid the confusion and cancellations that dominated this year’s test.

“We were thinking that maybe we ought to have all [next year’s] juniors come in and have the school district pay for the PSAT,” James D’Amico, incumbent Director of Secondary Education and Staples principal-elect, said. D’Amico hoped that by offering the PSAT for free, students would know what to expect when taking the test next March.

But for this year’s juniors, it’s too late.

“I think more people cancelled their scores than needed to,” Forgette said. “It’s like when you write this awesome paper, and then you delete it and there’s no way to get it back.”