Here is a breakdown of what went wrong with the March 2025 SAT

​

In my role as a Board Member of the National Test Prep Association, I serve as the liaison between the NTPA and College Board and ACT. This usually involves routine updates and communication about the tests. It also involves understanding when something goes wrong. AND, this weekend was BAD! On Monday, I met with Maureen Forman, Vice President, SAT Suite Program and Innovation for College Board, to understand what happened and what the remedies will be moving forward for students. (Ironically, I podcasted with Maureen last week on my Tests and the Rest podcast about the The Digital SAT: How It Started And How It’s Going.)

You may be aware of a significant issue during the March 8th and 9th SAT administration. After my discussions with College Board, here’s what you need to know to best support your students.

What happened? For test security reasons, College Board has a fixed time limit before auto-submission of their digital tests. This is to prevent bad actors from leaving the test open indefinitely and illegally sharing content. Though College Board won’t release what the actual time period is, it provides ample time for students to complete and submit their test before the fixed timer runs out, which is why this issue was brand new. The March weekend test configuration (parameters for how the test is administered) was incorrectly set for a fixed 3-hour time period. For better or worse, this was not a glitch, coding error, or issue related to the student’s version of Bluebook; it was an error made during a manual configuration update.

When international testing began on Friday night, the College Board team noticed some auto-submissions happening, but it looked like it was on a per-site basis. Most test sites avoided the issue if they started between 8am and 8:36am (the full SAT with a break is 2:24). Sites that started later hit the fixed 3-hour cutoff at 11am, and students’ tests all auto-submitted at that time. College Board updated the configuration around 2am ET on Saturday, March 8, but students who didn’t log out and restart Bluebook before testing may have still encountered the issue.

College Board emailed site administrators as early as possible to let them know that students should sign out and back into Bluebook, but amidst the chaos of a testing morning, a lot of those emails went unread until later.

College Board also emailed students in an effort to get ahead of the possible problems. While the email was intended to communicate that “this can’t hurt you,” it unfortunately led to more stress for a lot of students. They were trying to communicate that they would not auto-send scores to colleges as usual, but some students took it to mean that they couldn’t submit this set of scores at all.

Who was affected? Applying the configuration update and ensuring that students logged out and logged back into Bluebook significantly improved the number of domestic test takers who were able to take their exams as expected and submit their answers. The majority of impacted test takers were international students who began testing after 8:30am local time.

We can assume East Coast students were more affected than students farther west; by the time 8am Pacific rolled around, College Board had successfully notified most test sites. This is good news: it’s extremely difficult to round up test sites on the West Coast, let alone with two weeks’ notice for a makeup exam. Sunday’s administration had fewer reported issues, with the issue only affecting a handful of test takers.

I used the term “directly affected” above since the issue affected more students than just the students whose tests were interrupted. Some students were instructed to reboot their devices or log out of Bluebook mid-test, and for some, the timer didn’t stop, resulting in lost testing time. Other students were instructed to reboot or log out during their break, resulting in a missed critical break between sections. We’ve heard that others were disrupted by the chaos of the morning—emails being blasted out at the last minute, the impression that the test wasn’t submittable to colleges, scary announcements over school PA systems, etc. While College Board is currently most focused on making things as right as possible for those directly affected, they’re not blind to the students indirectly affected as well.

What’s next? College Board is working with every available test center to administer a makeup test on 3/22. Similar to what we’ve seen recently from College Board with West Coast test centers, they’re investing in additional test centers, strategies, and outreach to match students with available makeup opportunities as close to home as possible.

College Board has already communicated to directly affected students that they’ll 1) receive a full refund for the 3/8 test, 2) receive a voucher for a future test date, and 3) have the opportunity to either view and keep their score from 3/8 or take advantage of the makeup on 3/22.

NTPA lobbied for students to be able to view their score from 3/8 and take advantage of the makeup on 3/22. We also lobbied for College Board to offer the same remedies, including the chance for a makeup on 3/22, to students indirectly affected as they have for students directly affected. Those students who completed and submitted their test in time but were otherwise affected by the event should have a makeup opportunity. College Board indicated they’ll review cases of students required to leave or log out during testing and provide remedies, and for other cases, they’ll err on the side of allowing makeups to students who request them.

The automatic submission problem will overwhelmingly affect students’ Math scores. We lobbied for College Board to acknowledge that students may be concerned about submitting a “lopsided” test score to colleges even if the 3/8 RW score would improve their superscore. We want College Board to ensure that higher education institutions are aware of the 3/8 issue and that they view any impacted scores that a student chooses to submit from the 3/8 administration with context in mind.

What can you do? Help students reason through the difficult decision of whether to view their 3/8 score and forego a makeup test or to abandon their 3/8 score and rely on the makeup test. Students who felt particularly strong about their Reading & Writing performance on 3/8 should consider viewing and keeping their scores. Even if their Math score suffered, a strong R/W result could positively contribute to their superscore when combined with a future or past SAT. Conversely, students significantly impacted in Math and unsure about their R/W performance might prefer the makeup exam to achieve more balanced scores. Encourage students to plan how they will use their vouchers. There’s currently widespread seating for both the May and June SATs. From now on, communicate that it’s best practice for students to log out of and back into Bluebook right before a Bluebook exam to ensure they have the most up-to-date configuration.

If you have any questions, please let me know!

Best,

Amy Seeley

President/Owner

Seeley Test Pros/LEAP