Merit awards and the SAT

My 2021 has been preparing to take the SAT, but it keeps getting canceled in California. He was hoping a good score would increase his potential for merit scholarships. Before we travel to Arizona or Nevada for him to take the test, I contacted a few private liberal arts colleges, and have gotten different answers. Is anyone in a similar situation? I believe most have gone SAT optional for admissions. If that is the same case for merit awards, then there appears no point in traveling out of state for him to take the SAT. Thanks in advance, I am new here.

You would need to contact the colleges to find out what they are doing for merit aid criteria if they are not using SAT or ACT scores. This likely will vary by college.

@socal2021dad I agree with @thumper1 that you should contact each school to see what their particular criteria will be for merit aid. For us, most of the colleges are test optional for admission, but either still require an SAT/ACT score for scholarships, or it is optional where it won’t hurt your application if you don’t have it, but it can help you get more scholarships if you do have a score, we have decided to drive to another state to take the SAT. Our S21’s 10/3 SAT in WA was canceled, so we are driving 4.5 hours to ID to take the exam. This is only because we are chasing merit aid and need an SAT score before the 12/1 scholarship deadline. If it was only for admission, we would not have done it, or would have tried to schedule for another local Nov SAT exam (and prayed it also wouldn’t be canceled).