College Blog
Insight. That’s the whole point of this essay. Colleges are looking to better understand your student: Who are they? What do they care about? What are their passions? Their dreams? What have they experienced in life, and how have those experiences shaped who they are? These are all questions that students seldom ask themselves. Amid the bustle of high school: the classes, the AP tests, the SAT or ACT, extracurriculars, volunteering, sports, who has the time to stop and think about these things?
How long will your student’s application be looked at? Fifteen minutes, tops. Maybe as little as eight minutes. Considering there is demographic data, transcripts, letters of recommendation, and activities to contend with, too, what about the essay? How long does that get? Try two, maybe up to five minutes.
Two to five minutes. Students will agonize for two to five months over something that will be read in two to five minutes. Granted, it will often be read by multiple people at each college. And it will be read at each college your student applies to. But still… two to five minutes.
Again, I always like to err on the side of being overprepared. It’s better to have the SAT or ACT score and not need it, than to need the score and not have it. And in general, more data points are better than fewer data points when it comes to admissions. But standardized testing has undergone a lot of change since 2019, not least of which include the digital SAT and this new world of test-optional admissions policies.
With the test optional landscape having flourished since 2020, the question of when or if to submit your SAT or ACT scores to colleges has been asked time and again. Generally speaking, colleges that have opted to go test optional have seen the number of applications increase as students with less-than-stellar test scores perhaps feel they have a better chance of admission without scores than with them. The other reality is that some colleges are looking to increase their statistics for ranking purposes, as higher rankings improve application numbers, so having a higher SAT or ACT score can be a definite plus from the admissions office’s perspective. But does applying without a test score signal that you scored poorly on the SAT or ACT? Not necessarily.
