To Test or Not to Test.

Insights from a former director of admissions

My experience as a director of admissions & admissions officer:

So, you’re thinking about standardized testing - but what should you do?

Before making too many decisions regarding testing, develop a testing plan:

  1. If you’re super early in this process - as in, a freshman in high school, you don’t need to worry about this right now. Focus on other things, such as developing good study habits and building your resume through student activities. Testing won’t really begin until at least sophomore year. (Okay, there is a PSAT 8/9, but most students don’t take this test.)

  2. If you’re a sophomore, you might be taking the PSAT 10. This is a high school decision, and you can only sign up through your high school if the school offers it. The vast majority of schools only offer the PSAT in the 11th grade, but you can check with your counselor.

  3. The first test (besides state or district-wide testing throughout your schooling) that you will likely take is the PSAT/NMSQT - or the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. This is commonly referred to as the Pre-SAT, but it’s more than that. If you score well enough on the test compared to others, you might qualify for National Merit Semi-Finalist/Finalist status, which could earn you both recognition in the college admissions process as well as scholarship money from select institutions. That scholarship piece is well beyond the scope of this page, but just know that scoring well could matter.

  4. I suggest you at least complete a practice PSAT. Part of taking standardized tests is knowing what to expect - the format, how it’s administered, what’s timed and how long do you have, etc. You’ll be more prepared for the day (which is in October of junior year, unless you’re taking it in earlier grades).

  5. You could begin taking the SAT or ACT at any time, honestly. There’s no standard start time among students (though junior year is pretty popular); just make sure you understand what you’ll be tested on and that you’re prepared for those sections. If you’re not a “math person” and think you might struggle a bit, then take some practice tests, sign up for testing preparation courses (I can give you a referral), and work on that section. The same is true for the Evidenced-Based Reading and Writing section.

  6. Map out when you might begin taking the test - and note, virtually no college these days has a preference for one test over the other. I suggest taking a practice test for each one, and then looking at your results on a concordance table. Perhaps your school offers school-day testing in March of your junior year. Maybe that’ll be the first time taking the test - or maybe you want to take it earlier than that. That’s up to you.

  7. After taking the test, it’ll take a few weeks to get your results. Once you have the results, take a look at them. How well did you do? What’s your national percentile (comparing how you did compared to others nationally)? If you already have a draft list of colleges, how does it stack up to their admitted or enrolled student test scores? A way to do this is by visiting the college’s Common Data Set. For example, if you are interested in Southern Methodist University (SMU), you can simply Google, “Southern Methodist University Common Data Set”. Find the latest year - they might offer multiple - and open it up. Here’s the example I’m reviewing. They’ll all look similar - they might have different PDFs for each section or one long PDF. For testing, you’ll want to find section C: First-time, first-year (freshman) admission, and then table: C9. You’ll see both the percentage of enrolled students submitting testing as well as the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile for that college.

  8. So looking at the SMU example, we can see that out of 1600 points on the SAT, 25% scored at or below a 1340 SAT; 50% scored at or below a 1420 SAT, and 75% scored at or below a 1480 SAT. That’s of the enrolled students, and if you ever find testing for admitted students, it’s usually higher. The reason is: not all admitted students will enroll because they have other options, and conventional wisdom dictates that those with higher scores typically have more options. You can see the same stats for ACT below that.

  9. So now you have your score, and you can start looking at your score in comparison to those enrolled at the school(s) of your choice. What now? Well, if you’re in the bottom 50% or so, you’ll probably want to take the test again, or take the other test. The tests are most often superscored, meaning the college will take the highest sections, regardless of test date, to create a “super” composite score - benefiting you in the end. If you’re in the top 50%, or even the top 25% of scorers (which is above the 75th percentile), it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take the test again - you might want to for other colleges. But it does mean you did well compared to students at that college.

  10. Now let’s say you’ve taken the test 2, 3, maybe 4 times, and your score isn’t budging. Or you only went up by 20 points and you’re just DONE taking the test. That’s ok. Most colleges these days are still optional - there are exceptions to this among the highly selective colleges, so if you want to attend Dartmouth, you have to submit your scores and honestly, you have to do very well to get into a place like Dartmouth. But if you’re applying to a college that has a test-optional policy, you might choose to apply test-optional.

  11. Go back to the Common Data Sets and look again at C: First-time, first-year (freshman) admission, and then table: C9. If you take the SMU example again, just 15% of enrolled students submitted the SAT and around 10% submitted the ACT in 2024. That means the vast, vast majority of students applied test-optional - so is that going to be a big disadvantage to applying without testing? Probably not. If the example showed that 85% submitted one of the tests…. then maybe rethink applying test-optional. They have the policy for a reason, but you never want to be the exception to the rule in this case.

  12. Now all that said, there are some important caveats when deciding whether or not to apply test-optional. They might be test-optional for admission - and that might be fine, but they could also be test-required for merit scholarships. If you want to be considered, you’d have to apply with testing (in that case - not all colleges are like this). So you have to read the fine print. Another caveat is that you could be part of a cohort that generally doesn’t test as well nationally - that could be because students like you don’t usually have access to expensive test preparation services. Low-income students like me often have lower test scores because of those very reasons (and other reasons that have nothing to do with a student’s actual ability). So if you’re first generation to college, or low-income in the admissions process, or maybe an international student with severely restricted access to the SAT or ACT, then colleges will often understand this and read your application - and testing - in the context of others like you.

  13. Finally, testing is the end-all, be-all in college admissions. Some colleges place more emphasis on testing than others - that’s true. But a lot of colleges look at testing in the context of your school, grades, curriculum, and other academic and social contexts. I think the very best colleges are seeing testing as part of a threshold - given all of this information, can the student do the academic work here? And if so, what else do they bring to campus. That's in stark contract with the colleges that think a 1530 is wholly different than a 1520 (it’s not).