The days of scrambling through pages and scribbling in bubbles ended. Recently, the PSAT went online for the first time ever, but more issues arose instead of resolving the difficulties of past test administration, challenging the popular notion that technology makes standardized testing more simple and straightforward compared to manually distributing books and collecting them.
The PSAT is an exam taken by sophomores and juniors in order to practice for the SAT, but also serves as the qualifying test for the National Merit Scholarship competition. According to The Princeton Review, nearly 3.6 million students take the test every year, and nearly all of these students completed them online in 2023.
To put it mildly, things didn’t go as planned.
Nationwide technological issues plagued high schools as they tried to administer the test. Students who signed in correctly did not show up on the proctor’s screens, proctors could not access their toolkits, and for many, the website refused to load, among other complications. The challenges proved insurmountable for some schools, prompting them to suspend their testing and postpone the PSAT.
At Spring-Ford, students were fortunately able to take the test, but the district was not immune to the problems either. Many classrooms began late, leading to an extra thirty minutes added onto testing time and canceling seventh period classes.
Several area schools were also forced to postpone their testing to a different day.
College Board released a statement pinpointing the main issue being that the surge of traffic on the BlueBook app (the application used for College Board tests) caused it to malfunction. They also stated that 1.2 million students were able to take the test, meaning that of the more than 3 million students scheduled to take the exam, not even half were able to complete it.
This event has caused great disapproval of College Board exams going online. This is because it is not the first time their digital tests have gone wrong. For instance, in 2022, the AP Chinese exam crashed in multiple districts, making students uneasy about online testing. Moreover, College Board is planning on administering the SATs online in 2024 as well, but there are doubts whether or not the website can sustain such a lengthy test.
