Updated: Friday, October 2, 2026
Why do colleges use standardized tests, and how are testing policies changing? In this episode of the Just Admit It! podcast, IvyWise experts Tasha, Claire, and Carl discuss how colleges use test scores and provide tips on preparing for the SAT or ACT.
Hello everyone. Welcome to Semester 13, Episode 3 of the IvyWise Just Admit It! podcast, where former deans and directors of admission give expert insight into the complex college admissions landscape. I’m Tasha, your host.
I’m an admissions counselor at IvyWise and a former international admissions officer at USC and a former assistant director of international admissions at Boston University. In this season of the show, the college admissions rubric, we’ll be breaking down the eight components of the rubric, from grades to essays and everything in between. On today’s episode: test scores. And here to join me are two of my amazing IvyWise colleagues, Claire and Carl. Hi, how are you all?
Hi Tasha, happy to be here.
Hey Tasha, thanks for having me.
Of course. Let’s get started with Claire. Claire, could you please introduce yourself?
Absolutely. I am an admissions counselor here at IvyWise, so I work directly with students on the college admissions process, from students in eighth grade to those entering their senior year and actively going through the process. My admissions experience was at the University of Chicago, where I worked for four years as a senior assistant director of admission. I worked in a liberal arts context and a highly selective admissions context.
Great. Thank you, Claire. Carl, could you please introduce yourself to our listeners as well?
Hi, I am Carl Foreman, and according to my email signature I am a master tutor here at IvyWise. I mainly specialize in the SAT and the ACT, standardized tests for college admissions — the things that keep kids up at night. I’ve been with IvyWise for going on eight years, and I’ve been in test prep in some capacity for about 20 years.
Thank you so much for those introductions. Like I said, today we’re going to continue the season of the podcast in which we’re talking about all eight components of the college admissions rubric. As a reminder, the college admissions rubric is a framework that many U.S. institutions use to evaluate applicants based on a combination of hard and soft factors.
To apply to college strategically, it’s wise to familiarize yourself with these factors and this rubric so you can be competitive in each category. Our first two episodes focused on two of the hard factors: grades and course rigor. If you didn’t get a chance to listen to those, I highly recommend checking them out.
Today, we’re focusing on the third key hard factor: test scores. Carl, can you give our listeners a top-level description of what testing we’re talking about? What is a standardized test? What does standardized even mean, and how should students begin to approach understanding this part of the process?
When we say standardized, it means everyone takes the same test. High schools across the United States and equivalent schools outside the United States have different rubrics — different ways of measuring your achievement or your proficiency academically. So, when applying to a university or college that receives applicants from all over your state, the region, the country, and the world, it’s easier to evaluate them on one thing everyone has done.
Two tests are most commonly factored into college admissions at schools that accept standardized tests or require them: the SAT and the ACT. Institutions consider them equally. There is no publicly known preference for either test, so it’s not as if taking the ACT gives me a better shot at this school, or taking the SAT gives me a better shot at that school. Students can choose which test is right for them, because the tests differ from each other in ways that matter for students.
Thank you, Carl. That helps set up the scene for our conversation. Now I’d love to ask — and this may be a philosophical question, so approach it however you’d like — why are tests used as part of the college admissions rubric, and therefore the college admissions process?
The answer is actually not very philosophical at all. It’s quite practical. It’s so they can reject more people without having to read as many applications. This fact is clearer in the post-COVID years, when more schools decided that they wouldn’t require these standardized tests. What happened? More applications came in, and admission rates dropped. Why? Because there were fewer students self-selecting out of the admissions process.
For instance, if I know I have a 1000 SAT, I am not going to waste my application money applying to Harvard or Yale, because it doesn’t matter what my grades are. If I have a 1000 SAT and I submit that score, I’m not getting in. But if the SAT is not required and they don’t know, I’m going to shoot my shot. Maybe I’m going to get rejected anyway, but at least I tried.
So, it’s a way to weed out applicants without having to read all the applications. It is really a tool for colleges to make life easier for themselves.
I think that’s helpful. It is a practical tool, as you just described, but what is it actually assessing? How are colleges using test scores to determine a student’s possible success on campus?
If anyone’s really being honest with you, those tests don’t give a very good indication of how well you’ll do on campus. What studies and history have borne out is that the greatest indicator of how well you’ll do in college is how well you did in high school. That four-year sample is more reliable than the best Saturday morning of your life. And if you have a 1600 SAT and a C average, it’s not the flex you may think it is, because then you are very clearly an underachiever, and you will probably continue to underachieve.
The short answer is that they measure how well you take those particular tests. The standardized test is not necessarily indicative of most students’ experience on campus. If I’m an English major, as I was once upon a time, I’m not taking a bunch of multiple-choice tests. I’m writing papers. But because it’s a tool to whittle tens of thousands down to just thousands, it’s a bit of an indicator of whether you can handle timed pressure and keep your focus on certain math, reading, and grammar-related questions — and on the SAT, sometimes science.
Thank you, Carl. Claire, I want to shift over to you. I would love to get your expertise as a recent college admissions officer and application reader and hear about your experience using standardized tests, the SAT or ACT, as part of the application reading process. How did you approach test scores when reviewing an application?
Thanks, Tasha. As an admissions officer, your job is to take those statistics and numbers and translate them to the student’s entire application and profile, because many schools read applications holistically. As Carl alluded to, the test score is of course not the be-all and end-all. It doesn’t always tell the full story of where a student is academically, since it represents only where the student was on that particular Saturday morning.
I worked at a school that had a test-optional policy and was a trailblazer in that space. The University of Chicago went test-optional before COVID and recently doubled down on it, while a lot of schools have gone back to requiring tests. They changed their policy to no-harm testing, which we might get into later and which basically means a test score can’t hurt a student in the application process. Part of that experience was learning when a test score could help a student and when it could hurt — and evaluating students with and without test scores. In some academic fields, test scores are really important for predicting performance and how students will do in their future careers.
At UChicago, one thing we focused on was our pre-med students, who would later have to take the MCAT or board examinations and be in really high-stress scenarios as part of their future careers. Those were students we wanted to be comfortable in a testing environment and able to succeed there. There are many fields where you need to be able to overcome test anxiety and feel comfortable in a high-pressure situation to be successful, and that’s something we would look for in the process. But that’s not the case for every student applying to college.
There are lots of fields where you don’t necessarily need to be a strong test taker to come to UChicago or another school and be successful. So, we would look at the high school transcript to get a full sense of the student’s context across their high school years. Are they challenging themselves in their high school curriculum, and do we see that full story play out from ninth grade through senior year? That’s usually what’s going to reflect how they’ll be in the classroom at our college, rather than how they tested on the ACT or the SAT.
Great. Thank you, Claire. It definitely sounds like you’re coming from a very specific context at UChicago — pioneers in that space — but there has been a lot of movement in the testing space in the last few years. Carl, you alluded to it already when you mentioned the pandemic.
Whoever would like to take this question, go for it: Can you summarize what has happened with standardized testing from 2020 until today for anyone coming in cold, such as the parent of a student who wasn’t paying attention before and is now trying to catch up?
I’m happy to start here because right now it is a very transitional time with testing, and I think you’re seeing a lot of schools either recommit to test-optional policies or go back to how it used to be and require tests. It’s the best time to be paying attention.
Don’t assume that just because a school is test-optional or test-required right now, it will be the same way in two years. A lot of schools are starting to think deeply about what this means for their future. They’re listening to faculty feedback about their experience with students who came in test-optional. A huge trend right now is faculty at these universities saying that their students are coming in less prepared than they used to be and attributing that to the test-optional policies on their campuses. I’m not sure whether that’s actually true in the data. I’m not an expert there. But that’s something you’re seeing schools re-evaluate.
Test-optional policies have existed for many years, and I think some schools have had more success with them coming out of COVID than others. But one of the major trends we saw, back to Carl’s point, is that when schools went test-optional, it removed a barrier to entry at a lot of these schools. Now you could be a straight-A or mostly straight-A student who’s not a good test taker and, without that test score, could still look competitive to Harvard, another Ivy, or another really selective school.
So, a lot of these highly selective schools saw their application numbers increase significantly — more than they had the capacity to read. Their admissions officers were having to read double the number of applications, which was really hard on colleges with limited resources. So, a lot of schools started to think about how they could lower their application numbers and be more discerning in the application process. That’s why you’re now seeing a trend within higher education of a lot of colleges going back to test-required policies.
I also think something else is at play here: With test-optional policies, the only students who started feeling comfortable submitting test scores were students with perfect or near-perfect scores. You see a lot of students submitting only if they’re within or above the middle 50% ACT or SAT range, which at some of those really selective schools gets quite high. You’re looking at 35–36 on the ACT or 1550–1580 on the SAT. And you have a lot of students who are just outside of that range choosing to apply test-optional, nervous that their test score won’t help them.
But in many cases, some of those students would have been helped by submitting their test score. At a lot of these schools, a 1520 would be a really great score and would help a student’s application. I have heard from colleges that by going back to requiring tests, they’re encouraging students who have scores at or really close to that middle 50% to start submitting their scores again.
One of the other main things COVID caused went beyond making tests optional to accommodate the fact that a lot of kids couldn’t get to the testing centers. The test makers also decided they would never again lose this sweet, sweet admission ticket money, and so the SAT went digital. The exam today is markedly different from what it was from 2016 to 2023 (2016 was the previous change). It’s only available digitally, and it has an adaptive aspect, as the GRE and GMAT do, for any parents out there who are familiar with those tests.
There are two modules of reading, writing, and math, and depending on how well you do on the first module, you will get a harder or an easier one on the second. You want the harder one, because it means you did OK. If you got the easier one, that means you’re in trouble, and you don’t find out until you get your scores back.
It puts students at a bit of a disadvantage because they don’t know where they stand, and not every error is worth the same deduction anymore. Errors made in module 1 count against you more than errors made in module 2. The SAT isn’t terribly transparent about that; it’s something people in this field have deduced through the scientific method. I think any student planning to take the SAT or leaning toward that test should take that into account. Going digital also made the test shorter. Both tests used to be about 3 hours long, and now they’re closer to 2 hours long: 2 hours and 14 minutes specifically for the SAT, and I think 2 hours and 5 minutes for the new ACT.
In response to the SAT going digital, the ACT, which was losing customers, made its test shorter and also available digitally. The difference is you can still take the ACT on paper, and the substance of it is pretty much the same as it was before the change — it’s just shorter, and you get a little more time per question. But it’s not as fundamentally different as the SAT. For instance, a 2022 officially administered practice SAT is useless to a student preparing today, mostly because of the format and some of the question types, while a 2022 ACT is still a useful tool. In fact, I’ve seen some of the questions repeated even in the new format. So that’s the difference from an SAT and ACT tutor’s perspective.
I think a lot of students, especially in this moment when many institutions have gone back to test required, think of a test-optional school as one they do not have to submit tests to, which is technically correct. But what else can you tell a prospective student who is thinking about standardized testing as part of their college application process? How should they be approaching schools with test-optional policies? Should they submit scores? Should they not? What barometer should they use, as you already alluded to, Claire? That was a lot of questions at once, but whoever would like to give it a go?
I’m happy to take a shot at this one because it’s a really interesting question. The current landscape of testing, with some schools being test optional and some being test required, has placed the burden on a lot of students to do their own research and think pretty philosophically and deeply about whether to submit a test score. That was not the question I had to go through when I applied to college, because everywhere required testing.
I certainly don’t envy the situation for seniors and juniors right now, but there are a few things you can keep in mind when you’re going through the calculus of whether to submit a test score, especially to test-optional universities. The first thing is that test scores are incredibly contextual, and I think that’s something students don’t necessarily understand. They see a middle 50% for a college as super black and white: If I don’t have a test score within this range, then I should not submit it. I am not comfortable submitting it — it’s not going to help me.
While that might be the case for some students, you have to remember that your test score is a reflection of your context. If you look at the data on what test scores correlate with, it’s often your parents’ education levels and your household income. So, the context in which you’re testing is going to be really important. I’ll use my admissions experience at UChicago as an example. My first few years, I was the first reader for southern Texas, and I would see students apply with a 1250 on the SAT, which sounds like it would not be a super competitive test score. But for this high school, this was the highest test score anyone there had ever seen. The counselor noted that in their recommendation, and I brought it up in our committee, saying that the student’s 1250 was a standout in her high school’s context. Colleges are aware of that context.
If you’re applying from an elite private high school that tends to see ACT scores and SAT scores in the 1500s and the 1530s, that might be a sign that you should apply test optional if your scores aren’t quite there. But if you’re not in that situation, you’re in a different context. Think about what your test score reflects within your community or your school, because that’s a really helpful thing to keep in mind when deciding whether to apply test optional.
The second thing to consider when deciding whether to apply test optional is to look closely at the school’s testing policy. Not all test-optional schools are the same. Some will say that if you don’t submit test scores, they will not make any assumptions based on what’s missing — they will look only at the transcript, and it will not hurt you. At some schools, you need to submit test scores to be eligible for scholarships or other opportunities, so be aware of that before you elect to apply test optional.
Some schools have no-harm testing: If you submit a test score and it doesn’t help you, they will not consider it. That’s the type of school where you would probably still want to submit test scores if you had them, even though they are technically test optional. And some schools can’t unsee a test score. If you submit a 1520 and then try to redact it, they will see that later on, and you won’t be able to reverse that choice. So, be aware of the subtext within those policies. It’s really important to do that research so you don’t accidentally make a mistake.
My final point on test-optional policies is that there are a lot of different types of testing out there. Maybe you’re not a great test taker on the SAT or the ACT, but you did really well in your AP exams. See if the school will consider your AP exams as part of their testing requirement. There are schools that allow you to do that. Or you can apply test optional on the SAT and ACT but still submit those fours and fives, or other really good AP scores. So, there are different avenues for showing colleges that you perform well in those high-pressure scenarios.
Thank you, Claire. One other thing I’d mention about test-optional policies is that some colleges — not all — have released data in recent years showing the percentages of admitted students who submitted test scores and those who did not. That doesn’t give us a complete picture, but it can offer some insight into how a college views testing. At the same time, stronger students with stronger scores are often more likely to submit them, and those students may have been more competitive anyway.
So, it’s not a perfect measure, but if you can access that information — often through the Common Data Set, the official data colleges release each year — it can help you gauge how important testing may be in a school’s admissions process. If students who submitted scores were admitted at a higher rate, that may suggest the college places some value on testing, though it could also reflect the fact that stronger test takers were more likely to submit scores in the first place. I just wanted to add that final point.
Carl, is there anything you’d add about test-optional policies from your experience as a tutor?
I would just build on what Claire said about investigating the specific college’s testing policy. Sometimes the data is available on the percentage of test-optional applicants who were accepted versus those who submitted tests. The no-harm policy is great, but sometimes you just can’t unsee a score, so it’s hard to tell.
I defer to counselors when it comes to making that recommendation to a student. I just work with students who have decided to give the ACT or the SAT a shot, and we try to do our best. If it falls in that middle 50%, great. If we can’t get there, then you can talk to your counselor about whether it’s a good idea to send that score to that particular college.
But from college to college, like Claire was saying, there’s a lot more diversity of opinion on that. Back in my day, I just assumed I was doing it right, and that took some of the pressure off mentally. It’s like, either it was good enough or it wasn’t, in combination with other factors. The other thing I would say is that it’s not the be-all and end-all. It’s not the only thing that affects the outcome. If you have a 36 ACT and a B-minus average, they’re going to want to know why, and it’s going to raise more questions than it answers. So, you still have to do well in school.
Yes, definitely. Carl, I want to ask you specifically — as our tutor in this conversation — what seems like a very simple question: How can students prepare for these standardized tests? If you had to give us a three-step or five-step process, besides working with you, of course, what would it be?
The first thing I would say is don’t just register and take the test, because that puts you at a major disadvantage. A lot of students, especially if they’re applying to competitive schools, are preparing fairly extensively.
Generally, I would start with a diagnostic test for both the ACT and the SAT, because you may be surprised at which one is a better test for you. I know that regionally, in the Northeast, for instance, the SAT is pretty popular, and in other parts of the country the ACT is more prevalent. A lot of times kids and families go, well, I know about this one, so we’re going to do this one, or I don’t know that much about that other one, so we’re not going to do that. But that might not be the right test for you. So, see how you do on the diagnostic right out of the gate.
The subject matter mostly overlaps. Algebra 1 is on both tests. There’s some Algebra 2, some geometry, some problem solving, and a tiny sprinkling of trig — with a heavier sprinkling on the ACT. There are grammar rules on both tests, but they’re measured differently. There’s reading comprehension on both tests, also measured a little differently.
You might prefer reading a full passage to going bite-size, question by question, which might wear you out more. Or you may say, well, I’ve never seen the law of cosines, so I don’t think I want to take the ACT, because I might see a question on it toward the end of that test. Or you may say, I’m heavy into Sudoku and I do puzzles all the time, so I think the gamesmanship of the SAT is right up my alley. Or you may say, I don’t like all that stuff, I feel deceived, and I want something more straightforward, so I think I want to take the ACT. You need to know what you’re dealing with stylistically. Then pick a test and prepare for that one.
It’s harder to prepare for both at the same time, because the same things are not always rewarded. There are strategies that overlap, and the foundational work overlaps for sure. But if you start down the road of one test and decide it’s not working, I would try to make that decision within a month or so to give yourself enough time to prepare. Ideally, I would start preparing about six months before my first exam. I don’t think sophomore year is too early to start. In a lot of cases it’s ideal, because SAT math in particular is a lot of eighth-, ninth-, and 10th-grade material that, by senior year, leaves you thinking, wait, what was that again? What are those exponent rules? You can end up rusty on material you’ve forgotten.
At the same time, the summer after junior year is not too late either, because you still have three bites at the apple for the SAT, at least: August, September, and October, before Early Decision deadlines. You have two, September and October, for the ACT. At the very least, get a prep book from a reputable source — the big boys: Princeton Review and Kaplan. Go to the College Board and ACT websites, which offer official resources so you can practice with official materials.
Find a good instructor, whether in a classroom setting or in one-on-one tutoring — different kids learn in different ways — because I think having someone else point out flaws in your process is key. It’s like when you’ve never roller skated before and you just put on a pair of skates: There will be some people who take to it like a fish to water, and some who are going to sprain an ankle right away. And there are people who say, well, I know how to ice skate, so maybe I can roller skate, and vice versa. Someone will say, oh, actually, do this with your feet and that’ll make it easier. I’m a terrible skater; I just want to put that out there. I’m awful at both forms. But having someone else to help guide you, encourage you, reinforce the good things you’re doing, point out things you could do better, and help you along the way is very helpful. And know that just because you had a certain diagnostic test score doesn’t mean you can’t improve dramatically.
Great, Carl. And what about tutoring?
I’m a big proponent of tutoring, as a completely unbiased observer. As I said, I’ve been in the game a long time. I’ve taught SAT prep classes of, not exaggerating, 50 students in the same room, and the problem is that you can’t reach everybody exactly where they need it. You have to teach toward some median, toward the mean. Some kids are going to need more support, some will need less. What I like about working with kids one-on-one is that I get to know their tendencies.
Once you develop a working relationship with a student, they tend to be a little more honest with you about their personal sticking points. You can track their progress closely over the course of weeks and months. You can support parents, and parents can support you by giving reminders. I always assign homework between sessions, because that’s where the real learning takes place, when you’re applying it. I can give you instructions, but it’s like watching a YouTube video about how to make a new recipe: You’re getting the instruction on how to do it, but until you’re actually in the kitchen measuring the ingredients, seasoning, and setting the heat, you won’t really know how you’ll perform in that scenario. Your first cake is not your best cake. So, you practice. I’m full of metaphors today.
It’s also OK to take a test more than once. Most schools still accept superscores. A superscore is when I have my best reading and writing score on one test and my best math score on a different test, and I can combine them into my best overall score, as opposed to my best single Saturday morning. The ACT works the same way: my best reading, my best English, my best math, and optionally my best science. That’s another thing that has changed a lot. The science test was scaring a lot of kids off the ACT, and now it’s an optional part of the exam. So, unless you’re going into a very math- or science-focused major, the college may not really sweat you about that.
Great. Thank you so much, Carl. Claire, do you have any input or any thoughts on whether students should take the science section of the ACT?
Definitely. My take when it comes to college admissions materials, and especially optional materials, is that it’s worth doing. I would hate to advise a student not to take the science section of the ACT, and then in senior year they add another school to their list that requires the science section, and now we’re scrambling to get into that September test date, get that score in time, and hope it’s good. It’s not a situation you want to be in. I know those tests are no fun, and I feel bad telling them to take another section and stick around for another 30–45 minutes, but I really do think it’s worth it.
If it’s a school that doesn’t consider the science section, then most of the time they ignore it, so it’s not going to hurt you. So, my recommendation usually is to go ahead and take that section. That’s how it was with the SAT and ACT writing sections when they were around. When in doubt, put yourself in that uncomfortable position if you can, get that score, and pray you don’t have to use it.
Great. Thank you. I like to tell students that each component, and each optional component, is just more information for a school, and potentially more information that could give them a reason to view their application positively. I think about this when advising international students who might have been in an English-language curriculum most of their lives but whose first language is still not English. There’s a little bit of wiggle room and gray area over whether a school will still ask them for a TOEFL or IELTS score. I usually say, why not just send it if you’re going to do really well on it? It just gives them more information. That’s a whole other aspect of testing that we won’t get into much in this conversation: English language proficiency. It’s always a better idea to have a score, if you can, to give schools additional information so they feel very confident about your English language ability.
So, to wrap up our conversation, I have more of a logistical question for you all that I want our listeners to think about: how students report test scores, which has changed a little in the last six years or so, whether through official test reports or self-reporting. Claire, can you walk us through that?
Definitely. There are usually a few different ways you can submit test scores. The first is when you register for the ACT or the SAT. You usually get the option to send your scores for free to a couple of different colleges right then and there. When I took the test, I think you could send three scores for free, maybe. That’s a risky option, in my opinion, unless it’s a school where you’re pretty confident your ACT or SAT score will be within target.
When you’re looking at your broader college list, that might be more suitable for your likely or target schools, which you’re very much within profile for. But you’re probably not going to send that ahead of time to your reach or far-reach schools, because you don’t want to have to redact that test score from them.
After that, when you get your test score, you have the option to pay College Board or the ACT to share that official score with a college. They will send it directly to the college admissions office, which will process it and attach it to your college application. If you get that score back and you’re excited about it, you talk to your college counselor, and they say it’s within profile, then go ahead and send it. Why not?
But increasingly, colleges are allowing students to self-report. This is really great because it saves families money. You don’t have to pay that fee to every single school you’re applying to for that test score, which makes things a little more accessible. At UChicago, we allowed students to self-report, and we only asked for verification after they’d been admitted. So, you’ll only have to verify in the case that you’re admitted. If you’re not admitted, you don’t have to worry about it. We’re going to take your word for it.
Some schools will also allow you to submit test scores through your high school counselor. That was a way we allowed students to submit official test scores. Your college counselor goes in, gets verification that you got that test score, and emails it to the admissions office, and we say, we trust the college counselor, we want to support them, and that’s good enough for us. So, there are a few different ways, all meant to be really accessible, so you don’t end up racking up all those fees to College Board and the ACT throughout the process.
Great. Thank you, Claire. I just want to end with a final question for both of you: What else do applicants need to know, or what else should they be thinking about, when it comes to test scores as a hard factor in the college admissions rubric that we haven’t already talked about? Or maybe we’ve covered it all?
I’m happy to add a few small things. One, with test prep, I think it’s important to mimic your test-taking space when you take practice tests. I worked with a student once who was a great test taker. He was doing amazingly well on his practice tests, and we were expecting him to go in and ace the SAT. He drove 30 minutes to the test site, and when he was there in person, the environment itself was so stressful that he felt he couldn’t perform to the best of his abilities.
So, we started having him go to his local library, put himself in a study room with no distractions, and practice that 30-minute drive, his meal beforehand, and drinking water, so he had that routine before the test. The next time he took the SAT, he did way better. So don’t minimize those small factors.
I know Carl can probably speak to his experience with students, but part of prepping is being in the right mental headspace and practicing those little things, like getting good sleep, eating a good meal, and getting used to an environment that will be pretty quiet. It probably won’t feel like studying in your bedroom, where your cell phone’s right there and you have music in the background. You need to mimic that test-taking environment.
Big time. I fully agree. If you’re listening and not watching, I was nodding my head the whole time, because you think those are just things people say, but they really make a difference. Last week, one of my students really underperformed on a practice test. I asked, well, did you eat breakfast? When did you take it? Did you take it in the morning or later in the day? In the morning. I said, well, did you eat? He said, no. I said, well, you had a lot of mental mistakes, a lot of “oh, I missed something I totally should have gotten.” I was like, well, yeah, your brain was hungry. I think he was so mad at himself. He took another one the same day we went over the scores, and he crushed it. I won’t mention his name here, but he knows who he is. Those are all really important things, like getting a good night’s sleep the night before.
I’d rather you practice at a library than sit on the floor or in your bed and take a test, because it’s not going to be like that on test day. Even if it’s a digital test, you’re still, for the most part, not taking it at home.
And I just want to add one final thing, which is to share what we as IvyWise counselors tend to start with when working with students, which is what Carl already talked about: a diagnostic to see if a student feels more comfortable with the SAT or the ACT. The thing I really want to drive home is that we do recommend doing that, and we do recommend trying a test and starting the process. Because of the test-optional environment, there are some students who might think, I know I’m not a good test taker, or I’d prefer not to go through this part of the process and decide to forgo it.
But I think that can be really limiting, because quite a few schools have gone back to being test-required. It’s not nearly what it was in 2021 and 2022, when the test-optional trend from 2020 was still continuing. Once a student starts to prepare and starts to take the test, that’s when they can, based on their test results, start to make decisions about their school list and about prioritizing test-optional schools, depending on where they fall in that school’s middle 50%. But I wouldn’t recommend that a student start with test optional as that baseline, because then they could shut themselves out of a lot of places they might want to apply to. I just want to say that as a wrap-up to this conversation, as general advice for approaching this part of the college admissions rubric. I want to thank you both, Claire and Carl, for joining me.
Thank you so much, Tasha.
Thanks for having us.
Of course. I just want to plug next week’s episode, in which we’ll be speaking about the fourth hard factor in the college admissions rubric: the strength of school.
That just about wraps up this episode. If you have suggestions about what we should cover, please email us at [email protected]. In the meantime, you can catch up on all our previous episodes by visiting our podcast page, and bookmark our KnowledgeBase for additional help navigating the complex and competitive admissions process.
As a reminder, at IvyWise, we bring together a team of former deans and directors of admission at top universities to give students, parents, and fellow educators the most up-to-date information and advice. Our experts help students navigate everything from college applications and K–8 planning to graduate school admissions and standardized testing. Visit ivywise.com today to embark on your journey to your best-fit schools with the world’s leading educational consultancy. From IvyWise, I’m your host, Tasha, and this has been Just Admit It! See you next time.
Editor’s Note: This transcript has been cleaned up and edited for clarity and readability.
The math sections of the ACT and SAT can be a challenge for many students, especially those who tend to struggle in these subject areas. However, there is good news for students who are looking to improve their math scores on these standardized tests: by mastering a few easy concepts you can be well on your way to reaching your goal scores.
Every year, another group of students prepares for a fresh cycle of test prep, each with their own set of strengths and weaknesses. One of the most difficult (and time consuming) parts of the SAT and ACT is getting through the reading comprehension passages efficiently and effectively. I’m here to give you some tips on how to conquer the reading passages on the SAT and ACT.
The SAT and ACT are the most often used exams for college admissions in the U.S., and given that they are standardized, they must be taken under strict time constraints. Students can struggle with the limited amount of time per question, leaving points on the table when they’re unable to finish certain sections. Simple pacing strategies, however, can help students improve their test performance and overall scores.
