The College Board administered the first online SAT this month, on March 9th. In conjunction with this change and with the shift in so many colleges’ testing requirements, I thought I would offer a primer on the basics of testing and how to proceed if you are the parent of a younger high school student. To start, let’s look at some basic definitions:
Testing Defined
Test Blind-When a college is test blind, no scores are considered. The University of California is test blind. They do not look at testing, period.
Test Optional-Test Optional colleges give applicants the choice to send in scores if the applicant feels that they support their candidacy or opt to apply without them.
Test Flexible-Colleges in this category require students to send in some sort of testing. This could be SAT, ACT or possibly scores from the AP, IB, PSAT or other tests.
Test Preferred-This is a category that requires some reading between the lines. One has to carefully read the college’s position on testing and discern the school’s position on testing.
Test Required-You must submit an ACT or SAT score to colleges that are test-required.
What You Need to Know
You can count on colleges that were test-optional before the pandemic to do a holistic evaluation.
Statistics have become murkier-at the beginning of the pandemic, many schools were transparent with their numbers and shared exactly how many students applied with and without test scores, as well as the percentage of admitted students that applied test-optional. As time passed, fewer schools share granular statistics, so it is hard to know how sending test scores does or does not impact their admissions.
As I write this in March of 2024, there are still colleges that are announcing their return to requiring test scores. (This seems a little less than student-centered. If one of those schools is on your list, you now need to prep and take one of the tests, perhaps sooner than later).
If you are the parent of a student in ninth or tenth grade, you should plan on having them prepare for and take either the SAT or the ACT.
In Conclusion
Testing is all over the news and garnering big headlines. There is one group that says testing favors the rich, others say that testing is an advantage for under-resourced students, and everything in between. At the end of the day, you and I have no control over this facet of college admissions. Have your student prep and give it their best effort.
PS-I thought this was an interesting perspective on how colleges might use scores moving forward.
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