Your senior year of high school is a year of excitement, endings, and inevitable stress. If you’ve chosen to apply for college it’s now a question of where, with Decision Day looming in the distance. Between your regular school work, jobs, saving up for application fees and college admission consultants, and your social life, there’s not a lot of extra time for things like taking the SAT or ACT. But does that even matter? Do you need to take the SAT and ACT to get into college in 2023?
Taking the SAT or ACT used to be a non-negotiable requirement if you wanted to go to college. Now, it’s not that simple. This change took place after the COVID-19 pandemic, when the testing structure of the SAT and ACT needed to be changed. For safety reasons, many schools on FairTest’s list of test-optional colleges became test-optional temporarily to provide flexibility to students applying in 2020 and 2021.
If you excel at standardized testing and want that boost on your application, don’t worry — you can still submit your scores to your college of choice. The flip side, though, is that you won’t be penalized for not submitting any test scores.
The SAT and ACT have many similarities, starting with the fact that they are both standardized tests given to high school seniors in order to determine scholarship awards and college acceptances. The SAT sections include reading, writing, and math, while the ACT includes English, reading, math, science, and writing an optional essay.
Most colleges and universities accept the scores of both standardized tests, so it’s up to you to pick the test you think you will do best on. The only way to really know what test you’ll do best on is to take free practice tests for both the ACT and SAT. You should also note the price of both tests, which could factor into your decision of which one you might take (if you take either at all): The ACT can range from $63 to $88, while the SAT registration fee is $60.
If a college is test-optional, it means you don’t have to submit your SAT or ACT scores when you apply. You can still submit your test scores if you want to, but leaving them out will not hinder you. A test-flexible college will still require you to submit exam scores. However, these scores can instead from other relevant exams, like Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB) exams you might already be taking for your classes, instead of the ACT or SAT. A test-blind college will not accept standardized test scores.
If you’re planning on applying to only test-optional colleges, it wouldn’t be a total waste of time to still take the SAT or ACT. As long as you have the time to study for the exam and can pay for the fees, it certainly won’t set back your chances of getting in. And if your scores end up not being as great as you thought they would be, you don’t have to include them in your test-optional school applications.
The bottom line is that you don’t need to take the SAT or ACT to apply to all of the colleges in the United States anymore. Although some colleges still require you to submit your exam scores with your application, not all do.