Should You Send SAT Scores to Colleges or Apply Test Optional?

College applications are open and now you have to answer the tough question: should you submit your SAT or ACT scores to the colleges you’re applying to? Well, that depends on whether or not the colleges you’re applying to are test optional, which over 80% of colleges are right now. But recently, a number of top tier colleges went back to requiring SAT or ACT scores of 100% of applicants. So, Harvard, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, Caltech, and they join public colleges in states like Florida, Georgia, Texas, Indiana, and Tennessee in requiring scores for all schools, some schools, all majors, some majors. Make sure you read the fine print carefully and find out what their policy is for this fall because a number of colleges said a month or two ago, “Ask us August 1st, then we’ll have a decision.” So guess what? Now it’s time to get to work and get the answer to that question.

And most schools use what’s called Score Choice, which means you can submit just the scores that you’re most proud of from the days that you want. And a lot of colleges, most colleges, are willing to Super Score your SAT or your ACT, meaning taking the best of each subject, even if they’re from different dates. About 90% will Super Score the SAT, about 70% will Super Score the ACT. So you should find out on their website what their score practice is.

Now the big question right now, because the SAT just changed and this year’s rising seniors took a combination of the old paper and pencil test and the new digital test, is whether or not colleges will Super Score between those two tests. That’s an important question that if you can’t find on their website, you should give them a call and ask them directly for that crystal clear answer.

Now many schools will accept what’s called self-reported scores, meaning in the application they just ask you to tell them your scores, scout’s honor. But once you’re accepted, if you choose to go there, then you have to send the official score report. So you have to tell the truth. Otherwise, you get an acceptance and then it gets revoked. Other schools are not willing to accept self-reported scores. You have to go directly to SAT.org or ACT.org and pay the money to submit your scores to the colleges you’re applying to.

But a good way to find out whether or not you should actually send your scores is to see what is that college’s typical range, what’s called an “interquartile range”, from the 25th to 75th percent. That’s the middle half. And you can find it in a college’s Common Data Set. So Google the name of the college and Common Data Set. Try to find the most recent year, which at the time of this recording is the ‘23-’24 Common Data Set, and you’ll see what their freshman class looked like last school year to get an idea of the freshman class they’re looking for for the next school year.

So you can find that 25th to 75th percent, and if you are above the 75th percent number, you should definitely submit your scores. And if you’re in the range between 25th and 75th, generally we encourage students to send scores. That’s typically considered the safety zone. But certainly you can call up the college and ask: At this score, would that make me competitive or would it hurt my application? And they might tell you. Or they might demure and say, “Well, it’s a personal choice.” Come on guys, just tell me what you want from me.

If you’re below that 25th percent, then generally speaking, you do not want to send your scores if the school is test optional, even though 25% of last year’s freshmen who submitted scores were below that number. And the frustrating thing is for colleges that are test optional, they might tell you what percent of students applied last year without scores. They might tell you what percent of students got in last year without scores. But very rarely will they tell you both of those numbers. And if the percentages are the same, then you can trust that not sending scores won’t hurt your application. But if a very high percent doesn’t send scores, but a very low percent gets in without scores, then we can agree not submitting scores hurts your chance. So try to get both those numbers if you can, but I doubt you’ll be able to find it for most colleges.

And a very important thing to understand about that 25th to 75th percentile (that you can find, again, in the Common Data Set), is that that is an average across all students, for the honors college and the regular college, for their most competitive major to their least competitive major. And for public schools it’s also out-of-staters and in-staters. In-staters generally can get away with lower scores than out-of-staters. So just because you have a score in the range for an out-of-state school, it doesn’t mean that you’re competitive against the other out of state candidates.

And keep in mind, you’re also competing with the students who are applying from your school. One thing Dartmouth said when they went back to requiring scores is they don’t just look at your scores, they look at your scores compared to the scores in your high school. So if your high school is very high achieving, your “okay” achieving isn’t as good as if your school is very low achieving. Suddenly, your “okay” achieving looks pretty good by comparison.

So there’s a lot to consider. There’s a lot to research. There are a lot of websites to browse through, questions to ask. I always recommend you only look at the college’s official website, not third party websites that may have outdated information. Get it directly from the horse’s mouth whenever you can. So get going, take great notes, and if you have questions, call us at 732-556-8220. We are here to help.