The big breaking news for the world of college admissions this week is that the College Board has decided to do away with the SAT Subject Tests as well as the SAT Essay.
Wondering about the impact? Keep reading for everything you need to know..
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: THE ESSAY
The essay will still be part of the test until June, but we recommend that students skip it if they can, as it will likely no longer be part of admissions considerations at any school.
For what it’s worth, we’ve been recommending that our students bypass the SAT Essay for a while now. We haven’t recommended it since before Covid, and even then, only for those for students interested in attending a school in the University of California System - they were the lone holdouts that required it. Once the UC System schools shifted to a test-blind system in Fall 2020, there was no reason for any applicant to pursue the essay.
If you’re currently registered for it, the College Board is waiving change fees for students who would like to eliminate the essay portion from their SAT registration, though students registered for a School Day SAT will likely still have to complete the essay.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: SUBJECT TESTS
While the dropped essay is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, the lack of subject tests could have more of an impact on some of our students’ overall strategy.
First, know that even though the essay will still be offered for a few more months as stated above, SAT Subject Tests will no longer be offered in the US effective immediately, and all existing registrations for the tests will be cancelled.
Subject tests will still be offered internationally for the May and June test dates this summer, but we do not recommend students going abroad to take the test during a pandemic!
That said, if you have already taken these tests, you will still be able to send those scores to colleges (and if you are a client, please make sure to discuss this option with us before deciding to send).
We know that a lot of students are celebrating right now - one less test to take! Not so fast, though. For certain applicants, this is not necessarily welcome news.
The lack of subject tests could hurt students in DC-area schools with little grade inflation who typically perform better on these tests than students in less competitive settings.
Other students who fall into the categories below have typically benefited from taking subject tests:
Homeschooled students
Students from less competitive or relatively new high schools that hope to attend highly selective colleges or universities (that’s not a typo - this change could hurt students at the most and least competitive schools)
Students at independent schools that do not offer AP coursework
All of those applicants can benefit from providing additional data points to colleges, who can use that data to measure academic achievement across students from different high schools with varying levels of known rigor.
How else could a college compare an A from TJ to an A from Potomac to an A from Ballou High School in Southeast DC to an A from a homeschool course graded by Mom or Dad?
Here’s the issue:
Students at highly competitive high schools like TJ or Potomac who worked harder than their counterparts at less competitive schools for the same (or lower) grades will have a difficult time proving that their version of the course was more challenging and work-intensive.
Students at less competitive high schools like Ballou who worked very hard to master the material despite their environment will have a difficult time proving that their school offered an equally competitive version of the course.
Don’t even get me started on homeschool students. Along with students at brand new high schools without established reputations (to a lesser extent), it’s going to be really hard to be able to standardize their achievement in a comparable way to students at any high school, competitive or not.
AP Exam scores will now the be the only source of data points to measure classroom achievement.
It’s not as simple as switching to an AP Exam instead of a subject test, even though some students will likely do just that. AP Exams are longer and much more comprehensive, and are meant to measure performance in standardized AP courses that share a common curriculum.
And that’s why it will be difficult for students at independent schools who have veered away from the AP program in recent years to avoid “teaching to the test.” While students from these schools may actually gain a deeper understanding of the subject matter than other students enrolled in the AP course equivalents, they are not typically as prepared to sit for the AP exams.
For example, the U.S. History Subject Test has always been a popular choice for 11th graders. This measured U.S. History knowledge and could theoretically be taken by students enrolled in a U.S. History course of any level at any school; on the other hand, the AP Exam in U.S. History is more appropriate for students who took a course that followed the standardized Advanced Placement U.S. History curriculum.
This shift will also likely have a larger effect on students interested in engineering and other subjects where more specialized standardized testing can be a more substantial factor in admissions.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
I’ve already taken the SAT with an essay, and while I was happy with my reading/writing and math scores, my essay score wasn’t great. Does this mean I should retake the test?
NO! Do not put yourself through that. One of the primary reasons that many colleges stopped requiring the essay a while ago - well before Covid - was that the scoring was highly flawed. We’ll tell you when to worry about something, but this is not something you need to worry about one bit. Colleges will not blink an eye when they see a low essay score, and it won’t be held against you. It will just be as if you didn’t take it in the first place. If you’re happy with your score otherwise, stick with it!
What does this mean for the ACT with writing?
Nothing has changed on our end - we don’t see any particular reason for students to take the writing section anymore now that the UC system has dropped this requirement. Whether the ACT goes the way of the SAT and drops it entirely or not, it doesn’t really matter: there’s no direct advantage or disadvantage to taking it. However, it does lengthen the amount of time that students need to spend at the test center - and that in and of itself arguably provides an indirect disadvantage as it could impact the student’s performance on other test sections. If you’ve already taken it, no problem, but if you’re registered, drop the writing section.
Why would College Board have gotten rid of SAT Subject Tests if they were so important?
They were important for specific groups of applicants - not the average American college-bound high school students that hope to attend their moderately selective flagship state universities. Those students would likely never have taken these tests, Covid or not.
Of the types of students who did regularly take these tests pre-Covid, hardly any in the HS Class of 2021 took them because subject tests have to be taken on the same test day as the actual SAT, and everyone was consumed with finding a slot for that instead.
With different strains of Covid spreading and a lot of unknowns about testing for the HS Class of 2022, it sounds to me like the College Board may have decided to double down on the more profitable AP test by getting rid of the subject tests.
Why could this be an issue for high schools?
Since this move eliminates a potential positive data point for applicants and may lead to to increased pressure on students to take AP exams, high schools may in turn face increased pressure to offer AP courses.