The College Board has announced new changes to the SAT that promise to de-mystify the college admissions test as well as offer an optional essay.

According to the Huffington Post, the new SAT will go back to being scored our of 1,600 points. The point total was originally used before 2005, the year the writing and essay sections were added to the test.

The essay, which will be scored separately, will take up to 50 minutes to complete while the mandatory sections of math and "evidence-based reading and writing" will take up to three hours.

The College Board owns the SAT and the new changes were made to ease the pressure caused by the school. It is also meant to encourage meaningful learning in the classroom and make test prep less mysterious. David Coleman, named president of the nonprofit College Board in 2012, presented the changes Wednesday at the SXSWedu conference in Austin, Texas.

"We plan to make an exam that is clearer and more open than any in our history," Coleman said in the speech. "We need to get rid of the sense of mystery and dismantle the advantages that people perceive in using costly test preparation.'"

These changes will take affect in 2016, Inside Higher Ed reported, and are no doubt an answer to the increasingly loud criticism of the SAT. Widely regarded as the most important college admissions test, the SAT and preparation for it has long been a stressful subject for high schoolers across the nation.

Now, instead of deducting one-quarter of a point for a wrong answer, nothing will be taken away if a test taker marks the wrong answer in the multiple choice section. Now, students can focus more on making educated and informed guesses while worrying less about leaving an answer blank or using other strategies.

The all-important SAT vocabulary will also be simplified to include less ambiguous words and replace them with words more commonly used in college and the workplace.

The changes were also made to narrow the scope of the test so preparation does not have to cover such a wide range of topics. Students will soon be able to feel confident that the material they study will be in the test.

"It is time for an admissions assessment that makes it clear that the road to success is not last-minute tricks or cramming but the challenging learning students do every day," Coleman told USA Today.

For a more in-depth look at the new SAT changes, visit the College Board's website.