On Friday, October 11, when leaves drifted peacefully to the ground, friends and family gathered to support their teams, locals brought home pumpkins for carving, and cooks lay apple pies into warm ovens, two grades took the digital PSAT.
The Fourth and Fifth Forms sat to take the newly digital PSAT while the rest of the school engaged in other activities. The PSAT (Preliminary SAT) is both a practice version of the actual SAT and a National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.
This year, Haverford had sixteen students recognized by the National Merit Scholarship Program: semifinalists Michael Barthaldson, Devin Carpenter, Elliot Lee, Ian Rosenzweig; and commended scholars Alexander Borghese, Gabriel Crowder, Alexander Dardarian, Kai Degenhardt, Luke Gantley, Finn Kelly, Phineas Manogue, Alexander Matuch, Conor McDonald, Connor Simpkins, Cameron Smith, and Simon Wang.
Prior to last year, the PSAT was administered on paper, and students used to sit in their classrooms for two hours and 45 minutes to complete the exam. The school again acted as a test center, organizing and administering the exam on designated dates, but now, students took the exam on their laptops.
According to the College Board, which administers the PSAT, “the test is easier to take, shorter, has more time per question, and comes with a built-in calculator.”
On the digital PSAT, 60 minutes are assigned for the Reading section, 35 minutes for the Writing and Language section, and 70 minutes for the Math section (divided into a 25-minute no-calculator portion, and a 45-minute calculator-allowed portion).
The PSAT has a similar structure to the SAT. Both are adaptive tests, meaning that the questions a test taker receives depend on how they answered the prior questions. The SAT moved to a digital format this past March.
Unlike the SAT and PSAT, the ACT offers both paper and digital tests.
The ACT is changing format in April 2025. Changes include a shorter test duration, giving students more time to respond to each question. The test will last approximately two hours, compared to the previous three hours, making optional the Science section, which has 44 fewer total questions.
Both the SAT and ACT test aim to show how prepared you are for college, while the PSAT provides practice, and for a select few, the chance to qualify for a National Merit Scholarship.
