Scores from the June 6, 2015 SAT will still be valid; however, any student believing their June 6, 2015 SAT scores were unduly affected by the printing error, which we discussed in our previous post, can petition for a retake for free. The College Board will waive the fees for the October 3, 2015 SAT date for students who took the June 6, 2015 SAT.
On June 6, 2015, the final Critical Reading or Math section, depending the test format taken, mistakenly informed students in the printed directions that the section would be allotted 25 minutes to complete. In reality, the correct directions are that the section was only allotted 20 minutes of testing time. By June 8, 2015, the College Board decided the sections with the misprinted directions would not be corrected, nor included in the final score, and the scores would still be valid. From the website:
The SAT consists of three Tests: Reading, Writing, and Math – with each test having multiple sections. To accommodate the wide range of incidents that can impact a testing experience, the SAT is designed to collect enough information to provide valid and reliable scores even with an additional unscored section within a test. From fire drills and power outages to mistiming and disruptive behavior, school-based test administrations can be fragile, so our assessments are not.
We have deliberately constructed each test to include three equal sections with roughly the same level of difficulty. If one of the three sections is jeopardized, the correlation among sections is sufficient to be able to deliver reliable scores.
Further, June 6, 2015 test takers were reassured that:
Colleges and universities will know these scores are valid.
Yet, the printing error has caused the College Board to amend its position, and offer students the opportunity to retake the SAT on October 3, 2015 for free.
For more information, see the amended College Board statement and the New York Times.
