Keep the SAT® in Your Sights: Standardized Testing is Here to Stay

The Decline and Return of the SAT® in Admissions Decisions

In the past three years since the COVID pandemic hit, college admissions as well as prospective applicants and their families faced a unique cross-roads. As many testing and preparation facilities shut down amidst the lockdown, the SAT® was simply not accessible to large swaths of the population, both inside the US and abroad. As public schools began closing in early 2020, College Board decided to suspend the SAT® through March, May, and June. While the number of test-takers declined significantly, those students who did sit for the test during the pandemic years saw declining score averages from 2021 to 2022. 

As a response, and to accommodate students testing and graduating during these difficult years, numerous universities and colleges made the SAT® and ACT optional components of their applications. However, many others — such as Georgetown University, University of Pennsylvania, Barnard College, and Cornell — did not. For students only looking to apply to SAT®-optional schools (including University of California and California State schools, Brown University, California Institute of Technology, and Carnegie Mellon among others), avoiding the test entirely became a tantalizing and in some cases acceptable option. Among the schools that shifted to test optional, the majority plan to revisit this decision in 2025, though a few, such as Dartmouth, have already revised their guidelines.

The Return

At over 1.9 million, figures show SAT®-takers are once again increasing to pre-pandemic numbers. Students, counselors and admission officers are simply not ready for a fully test-optional world, and for good reason.

According to many college admissions experts, as covered in EducationWeek, it is better to tough it out and take the test. The biggest reason is that, if your SAT® score is higher than average, it is an asset to your application. Conversely, a low SAT® score can simply be omitted in the application for SAT®-optional schools. Even now, despite the post-pandemic proliferation of test optional policies, a solid SAT® score can be proof to a student’s dream school of their academic preparedness. Additionally, if your student happens to add an SAT®-required school to their application list at the last minute, it is better to have an SAT® score ready to submit rather than scrambling to prepare and sit for a last minute (and thereby extremely stressful and high-stakes) exam. A decent SAT® score can serve to cover one’s bases and as a means of diversifying a student’s college list. Students applying during or after 2025 should not assume any current test optional schools will remain so once they become seniors, and taking an SAT® during senior year is not best practice.

Additionally, college admissions experts point out that some scholarships and merit-based grants still require an SAT® or ACT score in their applications.

In March 2022, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced it would be reinstating the SAT® and the ACT as a mandatory part of its application process. Far from simply being an ‘equalized’ method of testing students’ academic preparedness, school representatives asserted, MIT would be using SAT® results to promote equity, showing extra favor towards students from lower income backgrounds with fewer resources who score exceptionally well. As other schools consider following suit, it seems increasingly likely standardized testing will make a large-scale comeback.