Yes. You Should Take Standardized Tests

The short version: You should take the SAT or ACT. That’s true even if you consider yourself a poor test taker or if they cause you stress. Why? Because they can only help you.

You’re still not convinced? Ok, read on.

Standardized tests still matter

For the high school class of 2021, every college became test-optional for the SAT and ACT because most test dates were canceled due to the COVID pandemic.

Even though the pandemic has officially ended, most colleges remain test-optional today. Given that most colleges are test-optional, surely it’s ok to skip the test, right? Not quite.

**Test scores are a pillar of holistic admissions**

If you have read my post on holistic admissions, you will remember that testing is one of the pillars to a strong application. If you don’t submit test scores, the rest of your application needs to be stronger to compensate. We can see this from last year’s University of Virginia announcement. For the Class of 2026, only 58% of the applicants submitted tests, but those that did made up 74% of the acceptances. Testing still matters.

Consider taking it twice

So you have gotten your scores back, and you are not particularly happy with them. What do you do?

The first thing is that if you have only taken a test once, seriously consider taking it a second time. Almost all colleges superscore, meaning that they take the best score from each section across all your attempts. Suppose for example, on your first attempt you scored a 760 math and a 710 reading/writing, for a total score of 1470. On your second attempt you received a 710 math and a 750 read/writing for a total score of 1460. But your superscore will take the 760 math from your first test and the 750 read/writing from your second test, giving you a total score of 1510.

Note that the ACT allows you to choose retaking only specific section(s), eliminating the need to study for sections where you are happy with your score.

How to Choose Where to Send Scores

So by now you have taken the SAT or ACT. How do you decide where to send the scores? Follow these simple guidelines:

If you are an “unhooked”Applicants that do not benefit from "hooks". Examples of hoo... More student, submit scores if your composite score is above the midpoint of the 25/75 score spread.
If you are a “hooked” student, submit scores if you are above the 25th percentile.
However the rules change slightly if you intend to major something highly related to English or a STEM field. For example, if you intend to become an English major, your English score should be at least at the 75th percentile if unhooked and midpoint if hooked. Likewise if your interest is in engineering, your math score should be above the 75th percentile if unhooked and 50th percentile if hooked.

Before any statisticians point out that the composite 25th percentile is not the sum of the two individual 25th percentile section scores, I already know that’s true. But it’s a sufficiently good approximation, and the same is true of the 75th percentile as well.

Let’s look at an example. Suppose you are applying to Michigan, and you have the 1510 superscore shown above. Should you submit your scores? Their SAT EBRW spread is 660-740, with a midpoint of 700. Their SAT Math spread is 680-790, with a midpoint of 735. The sum of the two midpoints if 1435, considerably below your superscore of 1510. Therefore, you should definitely submit your scores to Michigan.

The test-optional ratcheting effect

Students may have noticed that reported test scores have gone up significantly over the last few years. The reason for this is that with test-optional, students are resistant to send in scores unless they are above the median. The result is that almost all submitted scores are above last year’s median, meaning next year’s median will be higher. This repeats each year until only students with extremely high scores submit.

But admissions officers are smarter than that. Back in 2020 when most colleges required all students to submit test scores, they were happily admitting students with the 25/75 breakpoints in use at the time. Therefore, in determining whether or not to send scores to a particular college, you should also use the 25/75 breakpoints for the year 2020. To make it easy, I have compiled that information for many colleges below.

Test spreads for high school class of 2020

I have organized the 25/75 test spreads for 2020 by selectivity tier, with full coverage for tiers S1 through S3, and likely more tiers in the future. Colleges within the same tier are listed alphabetically. Note that this information was not available for some colleges (for example UChicago did not reveal this for 2020). In those cases, you can look at other colleges within the same selectivity tier to provide you a guideline.