Are SAT verbal and critical reading the same thing?

No, SAT Verbal and SAT Critical Reading are not the same thing, although they are closely related. The terms refer to different versions of the SAT.

* SAT Verbal: This refers to the verbal section of the SAT before 2016. This section tested vocabulary, analogies, sentence completion, and reading comprehension.

* SAT Critical Reading: This refers to the reading comprehension section of the SAT from 2005-2016. While it was part of the overall SAT Verbal score, it focused solely on reading passages and answering questions about them.

The current SAT (introduced in 2016) does not have a separate "Verbal" or "Critical Reading" section. Reading comprehension is now integrated into the "Reading" section, which also includes some questions about evidence-based reasoning and information interpretation from both literary and informational texts.