Should I submit my 1460 SAT to Stanford this year when they are going test optional

I took the SAT at the end of my sophomore year and got a 1430. I was registered to take the SAT in march this year, but it got cancelled. I live in southern California so they still haven’t administered the SAT since then.

I’m currently registered for September, but there’s a chance that it will be cancelled too. I plan to apply to Stanford REA so if it gets cancelled I won’t get another chance.

If that happens, or if i get a sub 1500 score on the SAT, should I not send my score?

I have a 4.0UW/4.5W GPA, 4s and 5s in 10 APs, over 720 on a couple SAT subject tests, and good extra curriculars. Would sending the score hurt my chances?

*I’m not a recruited athlete or part of an underrepresented group.

Others opinions may differ, but IMO it would look a bit odd for you to have subject test scores and not submit an SAT score, only because typically the SAT/ACT is the priority. I would give some thought to submitting both or none.

No reason not to submit all your AP scores, though.

With a interquartile range at Stanford of 1440-1550 last year, I probably wouldn’t submit either a 1460 (title) or 1430 (post). I’d say 1500 is about the cutoff.

Given that Subject Tests are almost always taken in May or June, often before Junior year, just like APs, but SAT/ACT are commonly started late Junior year, when they started to be cancelled in 2020, I don’t think a Subject Test from Sophomore year or earlier and no SAT/ACT would look odd.

AP test scores should certainly go. Subject Tests depend on the topics and how much “over 720”. 730 is probably fine for anything but the native-speaker-heavy foreign languages, where it’s well below median, and, arguably, Math 2.

One thing colleges like to see is a steady trend upwards in terms of ranking. The rankings, in turn, are based on test scores, rejection rates, etc.

They will accept students who are lower than their previous averages, but only in select cases. These are typically athletes, URMs, donors, etc. How far below their averages would they be willing to go? Imagine a class of 1000 students with an average of 1500 on the SAT. And then they admit 10 students with a score of 1000. These 10 low scores would barely change the mean (lower by 5 points). They could easily offset this by just adding more students with an average over 1500.

The bottom line is that they will accept students with lower SAT scores, but it has to be for a compelling reason. If you’re lower than the 25th percentile, then I’d say its a low chance they would accept you unless you are URM/athlete/etc. In this case I would say to stay test optional.

Don’t you imagine most/all schools will see a downward tend this year due to so many students taking the tests only once (those who report), test prep courses being limited, junior year grades being P/F when usually junior grades raise GPAs.

I would think it would be a good idea to submit test score that are “near” previous 50% for a given school. Especially if it is a sophomore year or early junior year score. I know that is what our plan is for my D21 but if others think differently I’d love to discuss.

1 Like

@techno13: I don’t believe that GPA is part of the formula used to calculate rankings. Since each HS uses a different system to calculate GPA, it would be difficult to apply a standardized formula across all situations. The standardized test scores (ACT/SAT), on the other hand, are a well known part of the formula.

While I agree that most schools will see a downward pressure on test scores/GPA, the ultra competitive schools like Stanford will still be able to pick and choose. They definitely don’t want to go down in rankings due to taking a bunch of kids with lower scores than their previous classes.

Good news is that the standardized testing is playing a smaller role in the rankings formula than in prior years.