March 8 SAT Glitch Impacts Thousands of Students

The College Board had been riding a wave of successful SAT administrations to nearly two million students when it hit a technical snag last Saturday, March 8. The College Board’s Bluebook software which is used to administer the test had a timing glitch, a piece of faulty code, which would force tests to end at exactly 11:00 am, regardless of whether a student had completed the exam. As reported by Adam Ingersoll of Compass Prep, the problem first appeared in SAT administrations in Australia, Pakistan and Vietnam, hours before the US administrations were set to begin. Forbes documented the College Board’s efforts to address the bug, sending out a communication to test administrators alerting them of this issue and asking that all students log out of Bluebook and reboot their computers to fix the faulty timer.

However, not all students received this information in time. Particularly affected were those students who began their tests later in the morning or those who received an accommodation for extended timing. Thousands of students had their unfinished tests auto-completed at 11:00 am, while they were in the middle of the math section, while many more students lost time having to reboot their computers or dealing with proctors who were scrambling to manage the unfolding situation. Students who logged out and logged back in, mid-math-section, lost critical time that they did not get back, and many were unable to finish their tests.

Putting this error in context

A mistake of this nature is not a good look for College Board. But it’s far from the first time a testing agency has had a logistical or technical challenge administering standardized tests at scale. During the days of paper testing, boxes of scantrons would sometimes get wet and misgraded,or lost in transit. During Covid, some 30,000 students had to retake their remotely administered AP exams when they were unable to upload their scores. The inaugural digital PSAT in October 2023 saw the tests of tens of thousands of students delayed when servers were overwhelmed by the volume of test-takers. Mistakes clearly happen; that’s a given. But the important thing is that the testing agencies get in front of the situation, apologize for falling short, and offer timely remedies to those impacted.

The College Board’s proposed solution

The College Board is offering affected students a full refund and a voucher for a future SAT administration. Regarding the March 8^th test results, students have the option to cancel or keep their scores, but they are not allowed to see the scores before making this decision. Students who chose to cancel their scores will be eligible to take a March 22 makeup test, but there is no guarantee of availability.

One of the challenges with this position is that students may be sacrificing a strong performance on the completed verbal section, which was generally unaffected by the timing glitch. Given that many colleges superscore the SAT, some students may want to keep their March 8^th scores, locking in their Verbal scores and then retake March 22^nd to lock in a valid Math score. The College Board should allow students this option. Students adversely affected should also be allowed to view their scores before deciding whether to cancel them, given the great degree of uncertainty caused by the technical error. Maybe they are throwing away a perfectly good score? Students will not know how they were affected by the timing error before having to make this decision.

An additional criticism is that the College Board advised affected students (by email) that their scores would be cancelled by default unless they contacted customer service to receive official scores. Students who wanted a shot at that March 22^nd retake would have to first cancel their scores, or wait until the May administration of the SAT.

A better remedy

The College Board will surely address this bug, just as it fixed the October 2023 server capacity issue for the inaugural PSAT.  But that’s no consolation for the thousands of students who had their tests disrupted. College Board should make it much easier to secure a retake, and students should not be forced to sacrifice their verbal scores in order to secure a retake. College Board has time to remedy the situation and fix things for the future and for the students who were affected this weekend.

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