


I am mostly concerned about question 9, but question 8 is the basis for question 9, so I copied both below. (I have discussed math questions on another thread.) Here is an example of a Khan Academy reading question I find flawed. At least that material has been edited, and if you get good enough at the ACT, you can also sit the real test. So in my view, the only publicly available official prep materials are the 6 official SAT practice tests, 2 official PSAT Practice tests, and the two actually administered October 2015 PSAT tests.Īfter this, the next best thing is old ACT’s, especially for Writing. QUESTIONS THAT ARE NOT WRITTEN, SELECTED AND EDITED BY THE SAME PEOPLE WHO WRITE, SELECT AND EDIT THE REAL TEST QUESTIONS ARE NOT “OFFICIAL”. CB is promoting as a major improvement what is actually a significant lowering in the quality of its preparation offering to students.ĬB says that Khan Academy SAT Prep is “official”. I agree it can be helpful to some people, but students deserve better. I only recommend Khan Academy to students who need to work on basic skills and want a budget option. I used to recommend the Online Course (for $60) to every student I had. The delivery format of the test and practice questions makes a difference.

Only the complete tests also available from the College Board site can be downloaded. Khan Academy does not allow downloading of most practice questions. In addition, it was possible to download every practice quiz and test from the Online Course. The result is that Khan Academy questions often do not look and feel like real SAT questions, and also have errors and ambiguities one would not generally find in real SAT questions. My best guess is that even if some of the questions are written by people who write questions for the real test, the Khan material is not subject to the same selection and editing process as are real test questions, which are reviewed many times. It has been very difficult to obtain clear answers from College Board about who is writing the Khan Academy material. The quantity of practice tests and the similarity of the questions to real questions are the most important factors in the quality of prep material. It had 10 full practice tests in addition to the practice tests available in the Official SAT Guide. The Online Course had questions written and edited by the same people who wrote the real test.

In my opinion, Khan Academy is much, much worse than was the old Official SAT Online Course.
