Hand completing a multiple choice exam. Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/albertogp123/

In 1926, high school students took the SAT for the first time after the College Board appointed a commission to develop a new test designed to measure general intelligence.

Over the decades, prospective college students pulled out their No. 2 pencils and spent hours bubbling answers on the Scholastic Aptitude Test, which became one of the largest determining factors in the college-admissions process.

Most students take the SAT for the first time in the spring of their junior year and a second time during the fall of their senior year. This year those students will discover the college admissions test is nothing like their father’s Oldsmobile.

The revamped, turbo-charged SAT will debut at test centers across the country on March 5. It is expected be more closely aligned with the bells and whistles of the Common Core curriculum, which equates to increased rigor and deeper thinking.

Students should expect lots more reading, according to prep tutors. In the math section, more questions will relate to real-life situations, even though be quite a bit of algebraic equations and some trigonometry.

In “Everything You Need to Know About the New SAT,” The New York Time reports that the new test will take cues from the Common Core — math and reading benchmarks adopted by most states.

From those standards, the SAT will emphasize evidence-based interpretations of texts, vocabulary used in college and careers, and depth-over-breadth math skills.

The revamped test will require students to put on their critical-thinking caps to analyze text and provide well-thought-out written responses.

Even the math portion will require more reading, with fewer questions based on equations and more word problems.

The looming question making its round on the Internet is, which version should a student take?

It really comes down to when you take the test. Students have only three more chances to take the current SAT. The final testing date is Jan. 23.

An advantage to taking the current version is because if its familiarity and there are plenty of review materials available.

Is the new SAT harder? The jury’s still out but you can rest assure that more students will have problems with the longer reading passages, the math equations and questions that require multiple stages to find the answer.

After nearly a century, the all-new SAT is loaded with new accessories that will mark the arrival of Common Core assessment on a national scale.

The new SAT is changing drastically from the old SAT. In terms of content, no other SAT changes in the past few decades have been this dramatic.

While success on the current SAT is related to a student’s ability to solve math, reading and writing items, the new SAT seeks to measure fluency and gauge a student’s deeper understanding of tested content.

The latter approach will yield a more complete picture of a student’s comprehension, but it makes for a test that may scare off many potential customers.

Read more about the new SAT here.