Different, but I wouldn’t say irrelevant. A hook isn’t a guarantee, and we weighed whether to provide the SAT score with that in mind.
Wellesley College class of 2026:
Approximately 55 percent of the applicants chose not to submit test scores, and about 40 percent of the admitted students did not submit SAT or ACT scores for review.
@jmjmm has already given the example of Boston College. Check any highly selective college that provides this info and is test optional.
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This is what makes is so hard to decide. Also makes is hard to know whether to ED and to which school. Potential majors include Political Science, Civic Studies, Media/Digital communications. Grades in core classes are all As and A- (taking IB Calc Analysis, IB English, and Studio Art at the HL Level). IB extended essay on art and power of persuasion (Thomas Nast, Banksy, etc). Won Silver Key art award in Scholastic Art and Writing. ECs revolve around advocating for responsible use of tech/social media wellness. Considering these reach schools: Tufts, Wesleyan, Middlebury, Hamilton. But also maybe BC, Villanova. Really appreciate the advice. TO and the stats from the last two cycles are just hard to interpret and apply.
My D22 was wise about ED. When I asked her if she should ED to the top-ranked college on her list, she said she would only ED to the school she liked best.
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I would submit a 1500 SAT to all of these schools. Also, ED will give you an edge at all of these schools. Since money is not an issue for you, if you have a favorite, ED is the smart play. Also, full disclosure, DD was admitted to BC ED1 last year and DS was admitted to Tufts RD pre-Covid.
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I would work on his interests and major. Your list of schools for political science probably will be different than your list for communications. Especially if he’s interested in the technology aspect. But yes, do submit the score.
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Submit a 1500 SAT to these schools definitely. Most of these are reaches, so add some matches/targets and likelies/safeties.
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Everyone agrees to submit a 1500.
In general, I would differ from some of the above opinions on when to submit. I would submit above 25th percentile (using pre-TO enrolled student score ranges). 75th is far too high a bar in my view.
The MIT thread had some interesting thoughts from an admissions officer. They treated score as a threshold level to show the student was sufficiently capable. Higher than the threshold wasn’t going to help the applicant, as the application review moved on to other factors. (http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/t/mit-reinstates-act-sat-test-requirement/, well worth a read) While other highly-selective schools may well use scores differently than MIT does, it seems to me that a score smack in the middle (let’s say 40th percentile) clearly shows the student would fit academically at a school.
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I strongly disagree that a 1500 should be submitted by an unhooked non-URM everywhere, but I do think it is okay for you to submit it to these particular schools. I’m a little on the fence about Tufts.
I think the flaw in the argument that submitting a below-unhooked-median score will automatically elevate an applicant over an otherwise equally qualified non-submitter is that it doesn’t cost the school’s test scores anything to take the non-submitter. The odds are against you either way, but I don’t think it is far-fetched to think your chances are slightly better without test scores than in the pool of other unhooked test-submitting kids with higher scores.
Now is a good time to remember two things: one, all of us are straight-up guessing about all of this, and two, a 1500 is a fantastic score that you should be very proud of 
.
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Wellesley:
Applicant pool 55% TO
Accepted students 40% TO
Two ways to parse it:
- TO definitely a disadvantage
- Almost half of acceptances were TO
Either way, I think 1500 is good to submit at the schools on your list, and at most schools (less than a dozen exceptions, and subtract MIT since they are now test-required…)
I hope all schools release the numbers someone posted above for Wellesley. Would be interesting to compare schools on that point.
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But you are missing a major data point which might be the correlation between test optional and generally less academically qualified students.
If the highly selective school wants the student for their own reasons (special achievements that the school feels are important or desirable, URM, geographical, donor, recruited athlete, maybe legacy), they will take that high GPA student with the 1500 score (which is a very nice score). If they don’t want the student for any of the above, or some other reason, even if the score were 1600, it would not make any difference, as shown by all the absolutely incredible unhooked applicants with perfect GPAs, tons of 5s on AP exams, perfect SATs, 3 yrs of varsity captain but not a recruited athlete, amazing charity work, high musical achievement, etc, who were rejected by all the top schools this year.
So in my opinion, unless your child feels that they really could have done much better on the SAT if they’d done a little prep, it is not worth the time to take it again. Your child should focus on showcasing what he has done into something that would make the top schools want him - and a 1600 is not it.
If he wants Tufts, then the best way to show sincere interest (Tufts is VERY concerned about their yield rate) is to apply ED. Personally, I think that this would be a very appropriate way to use his one ED application. The school is very highly respected, and his interests are a great match for Tufts.
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Which specific schools and majors are you thinking about? 1500 is pretty good for about 99% of colleges. If you are interested in schools like MIT, CMU, CalTech, Stanford and majors like CS, quant, engineering, even 1600 might not be enough.
1500+strong everything else+full pay = >90% chance of admission to a matched school if you play your cards right in EA/ED.
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If you read the MIT thread referenced above, a score is good enough to not get you excluded. No score will get you in.
I think there is a very clear correlation between submitters and ED applicants at the TO schools. Wesleyan admitted a record-breaking 63% of its freshman class ED this year. What percentage of admitted students were score-submitters? Sixty percent.
If that’s true, then ipso facto non-submitters generally will face far lower admissions odds in the RD round.
But that’s the whole issue here, accurately ascertaining what a matched school is in a test-optional world where the median accepted student SAT score at NYU is 1540 (!).
ED is no longer anywhere near that sure of a thing, even for full-pay students who are objectively overqualified, at least at the most selective schools. If 75-90%+ of ED students are being rejected/deferred, and the real number is higher than that for the unhooked, it’s going to impact even the highest-flying applicants (and there is a mountain of anecdotal evidence from the last two cycles to support this).
My philosophy is, if you don’t want to reveal your 1500 SAT score, someone else will reveal their own, and all things being equal, that person will have a leg up that you don’t. Might as well call it by its true name: a hook.
New Common Data Sets for these schools have been released, should you be interested in their middle range (25th–75th percentile) SAT and ACT profiles (for attending students, fall 2021, who submitted scores):
SAT, with percent submitting
Tufts: 1450–1530 (31%)
Hamilton: 1440–1520 (32%)
Middlebury: 1400–1520 (31%)
Wesleyan*: 1310–1490 (51%)
ACT, with percent submitting
Tufts: 33–35 (23%)
Hamilton: 33–35 (20%)
Middlebury: 32–34 (23%)
Wesleyan*: 31–34 (27%)
*Wesleyan, I believe, requires students to submit scores as a condition of enrollment, if available. This deflates its apparent profile in relation to those of the other schools.
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This confirms what some of us were saying: that not submitting a 1500 SAT score was being overly cautious and even counterintuitive, IMO.
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I don’t believe anyone said the decision not to submit a 1500 wouldn’t be highly contextual and institution-specific.
A quick look at the 2021–2022 CDS for Yale, Brown, Pomona, and CMU shows that “always submit a 1500” seemingly would not have been sound advice for an unhooked student.
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