Changes to the SAT

Some of you may have heard that the College Board recently decided to discontinue the SAT’s optional essay and subject tests. The news was published yesterday, and you can get more information here. What does that mean for students in the college admissions process? Time will tell.

The authors of most articles published online yesterday in newspapers such as The New York Times and The Washington Post wonder the same thing : will this change help or hinder current high school students? While some claim that the change will increase admission chances for low-income applicants, others worry that this transition means that opportunities to make one’s university admissions application better may have just gotten a little bit slimmer than before.

On the other hand, the good news is that, unlike U.S. students, international students such as those in France still have two opportunities to take subject tests : one in May, and one in June of 2021. Please visit the College Board’s website for more information. The other positive fact is that the standard SAT remains otherwise unchanged.

In the past year, only one of my students has chosen to take the SAT’s optional essay, and one a Math subject test. Therefore, most of my students should be largely unaffected. In the meantime, though, I recommend that students swing for the fences (i.e. “try really hard”) to prepare as well as possible for each standard SAT test date. After all, we never know when an upcoming SAT will be cancelled due to new Covid restrictions. Therefore, it is better to do well on an earlier SAT, rather than to wait for a later SAT that may or may not actually happen. Strategising pays off in the end!

Keep dreaming big and studying hard,

Meg