Kaisar Alam, Ph.D.

After the many COVID cancellations in 2020, disruptions to the tests have been minimal in recent months. SAT is offered 7 times a year (March, May, June, August, October, November, and December). SAT is generally offered on Saturdays, but if you cannot take the test on a Saturday for a religious reason, Sunday alternate dates are also available. Some school day tests are also given, and your school will generally notify you about them.

The table below provides SAT test dates, normal registration deadlines, late registration deadlines, and score release dates for the 2021-22. The tests dates are primarily late Spring and in the Fall. This allows juniors to take the test before the summer. The seniors also get multiple chances to hit their score target.

* For mail registration, late registration deadline is about 1 week earlier.

Registering for the SAT

Begin by signing into your College Board account and going to the registration link is: registration link. The SAT costs $52.00. If you don’t know which test center is best for you, you can find the closest centers here. SAT scores are released in approximately 2 weeks, except for the June administration.

Are top SAT scores still helpful? Yes!

Many colleges have adopted test-optional policies in response to COVID-19, at least temporarily. However, college admission tests still play an important role even for test optional colleges. If you receive a good score for the college (top 25% for the college) or a 99^th percentile SAT score, my personal advice will be to submit it and give yourself an advantage in admission test scores.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, test optional policies might make it more difficult to get admitted to top schools. The class of 2023 (2019 freshman class) was the first test-optional class for University of Chicago, but their admission rate dropped 1.3% (7.2% to 5.9%). Even more interesting, the average test score increased 15 points!

Many colleges including Yale and Princeton have announced that standardized testing remains optional for 2021-22 admissions cycle and have indicated indirectly that they intend to resume testing requirements for 2022-23 admissions cycle.

Despite the test-optional policies, 1.5 million students still took the SAT in 2020. Clearly, most applicants are still submitting test scores to test optional schools. You can submit a great score to enhance your application!

SAT Test Prep

It’s never too early to start preparing for the SAT. If you need help with your test preparation, please check out our blog and YouTube channel. Prep Excellence offers several industry-leading test prep courses and top SAT tutoring that you can take advantage of.

© 2021 Prep Excellence. All rights reserved.

Kaisar Alam, Ph.D.

© 2021 Prep Excellence. All rights reserved.

Today, January 19, 2021, the College Board made a major announcement that it is discontinuing the SAT subject tests and the SAT essay.

The cancellation of SAT subject tests in the U.S. is effective immediately. Students currently registered for a future subject test will have their registration fees refunded. Outside the U.S., College Board will offer two more administration of subject tests (May and June 2021) .

The optional SAT Essay will be discontinued after the June 2021 administration. Thereafter, it will continue to be available in the states where it is required as a part of SAT School Day administrations.

While the pandemic might have expedited their demise, the subject tests and the optional essay were losing ground for some time. In fact, the College Board announcement mentioned that the pandemic was a catalyst for these changes, “The pandemic accelerated a process already underway at the College Board to reduce and simplify demands on students.”

While the decision to discontinue the subject SATs does not affect the SAT immediately, the organization will reportedly focus its efforts on the AP exams and developing a more flexible, streamlined, and digital SAT, which would be administered at testing centers by live proctors.

No additional details are available on the upcoming changes to the main SAT. College Board attempted to develop an “at-home” digital SAT last year after the pandemic played havoc with test administration. David Coleman, CEO of the College Board, said it would provide more information in April, but provided no time frame for the digital SAT.

According to the College Board, there have been 2.2 million registrations for the weekend SAT in 2020. However, only about 900,000 tests were administered because of exam center closures due to coronavirus.

The College Board’s statement said, “The pandemic has highlighted the importance of being innovative and adaptive to what lies ahead. We are committed to making the SAT a more flexible tool, and we are making substantial investments to do so.”

SAT Subject Tests

SAT subject tests were multiple-choice tests and were offered in 20 subjects like biology, chemistry, literature, mathematics, physics, US history, world history, and a few foreign languages. Each test lasted an hour and were scored out of 800.

While subject tests were not required by all universities in recent years, many students still submitted them to bolster their college applications. Ivy League and other top schools including Georgetown, Harvard, and Princeton required scores from the subject tests in addition to the SAT or ACT. Approximately 220,000 students from the high school Class of 2017 took one or more subject tests.

The importance of the subject tests, however, has gone down in recent years and few colleges still required the SAT subject tests. Furthermore, subject tests have a lot of overlaps the Advanced Placement (AP) exams, also offered by the College Board. AP exams have become widespread in recent years. Taking the AP subjects can help demonstrate the mastery of a subject and scoring high in the AP exams can provide college credits, which can help a student graduate faster and save money in college. According to the College Board, the widespread access means that SAT subject tests are “no longer necessary for students to show what they know.” Over 1.2 million students in the high school Class of 2019 took one or more AP tests.

The College Board CEO David Coleman said that the aim was to eliminate redundant exams and not to increase the number of students taking AP courses and tests. Coleman said, “anything that can reduce unnecessary anxiety and get out of the way is of huge value to us.”

There might be some unintended repercussions. For example, SAT subject tests allowed many students an opportunity to demonstrate mastery of a second language such as Spanish. These students will have to find other ways to accomplish the same.

SAT Essay

The SAT consists of reading, writing, and math and takes three hours excluding breaks. The optional essay was 50 minutes long and was scored separately.

The essay prompt was introduced in 2005. The current version of the SAT began along with a new essay in 2016. (The ACT also includes an optional essay.) For the SAT essay, the student has to read a passage and explain how the author made an argument to persuade an audience.

Since late 2019, I have advised against taking the SAT Essay (unless a student is applying to school requiring or at least recommending it, such as West Point and Howard). Many colleges have decided that the SAT essay scores were not useful for admissions decision. SAT essay was dropped as a requirement by Harvard and many other selective colleges in 2018. According to Jeremiah Quinlan, Yale University dean of undergraduate admissions and financial aid, Yale recently stopped considering SAT subject test scores and the SAT essay score never really became a part of Yale’s review process. He also expressed support for a more flexible, accessible, and digitally available SAT.

Because the SAT Essay was graded manually and the graders had minutes to grade each Essay, objective grading might have been an issue. A 2005 New York Times article reported that Dr. Les Perelman of M.I.T. found that the old version of the essay rewarded long essays and the students were not penalized for factual errors. Dr. Perelman said about SAT Essay, “I would advise writing as long as possible and include lots of facts, even if they’re made up.” I am not aware of any such study for the 2016 version of the test; however, if one of my students was insistent on taking the SAT essay, I would advise him/her to write longer SAT essays to have a chance for a good score. Thankfully, the students will no longer have to worry about the SAT essay going forward.