What the 2025 Enhancement Changed

The redesign shortened the clock by shortening the test, not by making it gentler. The legacy version ran 215 questions across four sections: English, math, reading, and science. The enhanced version runs 171 questions, a drop of 44. Fewer questions mean less reading and less working, so the reportable Composite test now takes 125 minutes instead of 175. Science also moved out of the required Composite entirely, becoming a separate optional section that a student can take for a separate science score without it touching the Composite at all.

Here is the part that trips people up: a shorter test is not an easier target. Scores still land on the same 1 to 36 scale that has always been used, and that scale did not shift to match the new length. Fewer questions just means each one carries slightly more weight in the raw-to-scale conversion. A student who treats the shorter form as a free pass on accuracy will find the same scaled penalty for the same proportion of misses.

This matters for how the rest of the test's structure fits together. Timing-per-question, section order, and which sections build the Composite all flow from this one redesign. A Composite earned in early 2025, before the change, used the old 215-question, four-section format, but it reads on the identical scale as a Composite earned after September 2025. Neither needs conversion. Someone comparing two scores from different years is comparing the same ruler, just applied to a test that got shorter in between.