The aftermath of the COVID pandemic has introduced new types of uncertainty into the college admissions process. One of the biggest questions it’s raised is:
Do I still need to take the SAT or ACT now that many schools are “test optional”?
The good news is that I wrote a whole post answering this question in detail. I highly recommend you read that first before diving further into today’s post: it helps you understand what “test optional” even means (and DOESN’T mean) and how it affects admissions decisions. The answers are not necessarily what you’d guess!
Ok, all caught up on that other post? Cool.
So, in order to be able to figure out if YOU, personally, can skip your standardized test prep, we need to take a moment to understand some CRUCIAL FACTORS. (If you’re sick and tired of learning about the test prep process, I get it: this might just feel like one more complicated decision in a long series of complicated decisions. If you don’t feel like you’ve got enough time to do this background research/thinking yourself, consider scheduling a personal consultation with me. I know this stuff like the back of my hand, and can distill it for you, in a targeted-to-you way.) So here we go:
What matters most on a college application?
I’m so glad you asked! ;)
In college admissions, the most important factors tend to be:
Grades in general: your overall GPA across all the classes you’ve taken in high school.
Grades in college prep classes: your GPA in classes that are AP, IB, Honors, etc.
Academic rigor: did you take a challenging course load? An A- in AP Calc means more to admissions officers than a 100% in basket-weaving.
Standardized test scores (if a college requires them): your scores on the SAT, ACT, etc.
In addition to these more quantitative “top factors” above, there are many more subjective factors that can also carry weight. The degree to which they matter depends on the college in question.
These subjective factors also DEFINITELY affect your chances of being admitted to college:
College essays: this is why your applications matter!
Recommendation letters: shed light on who you are as a student and a person from the perspective of teachers who know you.
Interview: shows demonstrated interest. Also, an interviewer can look for red flags, like if it’s obvious the applicant didn’t really write the beautifully crafted essays they submitted in their application.
Demonstrated interest: Did you visit the campus? Have an interview? Talk to the college rep? Attend an information session? Take a tour (in person or virtual)? Have you visited the college’s website? Do you open the emails you get from that college? Believe it or not, with technology, admissions officers KNOW how often and for how long you visited their website AND if you opened the emails they sent you! (If you’ve got more questions about how to show Demonstrated Interest, yep: I’ve written a blog post about it.)
Extra-curricular activities: what do you DO with your time? What do you exhibit PASSION and LEADERSHIP in? WHO would you be on their campus?
Audition/Portfolio: if you’re applying to a visual arts or performance program, this is super important! Less so if you’re applying to a regular college or university, though it still shows passion and initiative.
Work experience/Internships: gives insight into your character, passions, and leadership abilities.
So, why are standardized tests generally in the TOP LIST, and not in the bottom list, if schools are willing to just give them up? A few reasons:
GPA is a less and less meaningful metric: in 1997, the most common grade given out was a B. 20 years later, in 2017, it was an A. (Yes, A is the new B.) These days, a 4.0 is QUITE COMMON for a GPA! Basically, grade inflation means that it’s hard for admissions offices to differentiate between the many, many high schoolers who routinely earn A grades. That’s where testing comes in.
Tests help to crudely sort applications—or at least weed out some. See, all high schools and school systems are not created equal, and it’s hard to compare an A at one high school with an A at another—and what that truly means in terms of a student’s preparedness for college. This is especially the case if you’re trying to compare a 4.0 from a rigorous college preparatory high school….to a 4.0 in a public high school in rural Kansas (not that there’s anything wrong with Kansas!).
Tests create a constant that spans the years: the percentile is linked to a certain score. A 29 on the ACT today will be the same percentile as a 29 on the ACT taken a few years from now.
College Rankings: outside of evaluating applicants, scores DO matter to colleges. In order to make it on the rankings lists in the US News and World Report, colleges do need to have a certain percentage of students submitting scores.
So what happens to these factors if you’re taking advantage of “test optional” admissions and not submitting an SAT or ACT score?
Take another look at that first list of top admissions factors up above. If you plan to take “Test Scores” out of the self-portrait you’re presenting to colleges, you’d better be sure that every other key factor on your application is DAZZLING. Given what I explained in another post about the effect of test-optional policy on admissions, it really needs to be the case that your SAT or ACT score was the ONLY Achilles heel of your application.
For instance: Let’s say you took 6 AP classes your junior year, got 4’s and 5’s in all of them on your AP exams, invariably got high 90’s in your coursework—AND won local and state acrobatics competitions…AND win prizes every year in Model UN. AND foster injured parrots in your spare time, when you’re not teaching yourself piano and cutting your third album that you figured out how to market and sell online for some spare cash. AND you’re the kind of self-aware, emotionally intelligent, down-to-earth, socially-conscious human all your teachers and classmates feel warm and glowy about (and are likely to write a glowy recommendation letter about).
Here’s a good way to think about it. Ask yourself, “Is there something(s) so exceptional about me that this college would be willing to LOWER THEIR AVERAGE SCORES to admit me into their institution?” (Because remember from that post I’ve sent you back to a couple of times already? “Test optional” policies RAISE the average scores of admitted students…which colleges LOVE.)
If you find yourself nodding along and thinking that Yes, everything else about you and your “package” IS, indeed, exemplary—that a college WOULD admit you despite lowering their stats—then congrats, kid: YOU ARE the perfect candidate to take them up on their “test optional” policy and NOT submit your score.
If, on the other hand, everything else in your transcript and application WOULDN’T be enough to get you in, then not sending in an SAT or ACT score won’t save you. In fact, you might need to do some prep and take the test precisely to up your chances of of getting in!
Now that you know how schools going “test optional” affects the admissions process, and now that you’ve had a moment to think through what YOUR applications look like in that context, you might have a gut sense of what’s going to be best for you.
If that “gut feeling” is a powerful feeling, then that’s great! Even if it means that you still need to study for and take the tests, you’re a step ahead of where you were before you read this post: you KNOW what you have to do, so now you can quit stressing about WHAT to do and get busy DOING it.
But if you still don’t know, don’t worry: I’ve got yet another post that walks you through my very concrete method for making this choice. It shows you how to find a given college’s average test scores, and how that info makes the “test optional” decision FOR you!
And as ever, if it all gets to be too much, reach out and let me take the big-picture thinking out of your hands so that you can focus on actually assembling your application.
