Blog

Earlier today, the College Board officially announced that it will no longer administer the SAT essay and the SAT Subject Tests (the College Board’s multiple choice exams in subjects like math, biology, literature, Spanish, etc.). The loss of the essay won’t change much since it’s been optional for a while. The bigger deal is the end of the Subject Tests. These had been losing traction for years, but the pandemic likely dealt the death blow as no college would officially recommend these tests this past year, and schools like MIT and Yale refused even to accept them. We’ve been preparing for this moment for a while, though we didn’t expect it to come quite so soon. Here’s a quick FAQ to what you should know.

What if I’m already signed up or prepping for a Subject Test?

The College Board has discontinued the Subject Tests immediately in the US and are just offering twice more internationally (in May and June). Students who have signed up will get a refund. Unless you’re an international student looking to get a top score with minimal prep, we would not recommend continuing prep for these tests; that’s simply time better allocated elsewhere. (See below.) If you’d like to discuss more, just respond to this email, and I’m glad to be in touch personally.

Will colleges still take my scores for Subject Tests I’ve completed?

It’s impossible to say, and colleges are likely to have different responses. We wouldn’t be surprised if certain schools that have historically favored the Subject Tests (like Georgetown) are still interested in seeing them. For the majority of schools, however, it may be easier to compare applications by eliminating the metric entirely, as Yale and MIT did this past season.

Should we study for APs instead?

The College Board would certainly like you to. It designs the PSAT, SAT, SAT Subject Tests, and APs; the Subject Tests and APs have always been close cousins of each other, and the College Board is clearly hoping to double down on the APs (and save costs). “AP provides a much richer and more flexible way for students to distinguish themselves,” said the head of the College Board, and he’s not wrong: the APs tend to be more difficult and comprehensive tests with clear rubrics and much more generous scales, so we’ve preferred them in many ways too.

The catch for our New York families is… most of the NYC private schools have eliminated AP courses over the past few years. Does that mean you should still sign up to take an AP test to prove proficiency? No. Colleges know that good grades at the top private schools show true proficiency. If you’re currently homeschooling, however, you should definitely consider enrolling in as many AP classes as you can perform successfully in order to prove proficiency. You can find free online AP courses that suit your studies here and learn how to register for the tests here. And if you are in an AP class, a good AP score is extra valuable since you won’t be able to contextualize it with an additional Subject Test score.

What else can I do instead?

Academic research mentorships. Over the past year, we’ve seen demand for academic mentorships explode—for good reason. These not only allow students to perform meaningful research in their academic field of interest at a high-level, but give students a clear accomplishment to distinguish their college portfolio from their peers. On Subject Tests and APs, at your very best, you’ll match the standards of your peers, rather than stand out from them. With research mentorships in areas ranging from astrophysics to African law, students are able to do much more than just prove academic proficiency; they’re able to show genuine contributions to the field.

What does this mean for the regular SAT (and ACT)?

The ACT still maintains its essay, but this is optional for all schools, so there isn’t a compelling reason to take it. As for the SAT? The College Board also announced that it will be tweaking the SAT as well with a “more flexible” test that’s primarily digital. Does that mean it will design an “adaptive” test, like the GMAT or GRE, where the questions get more difficult the better you do? Or does it just mean that, like the ACT, that the SAT will start allowing students to retake individual sections? We’ll need to wait until April to see, but it’s unlikely they’ll make tests materially harder in a way that would cause them to lose market share to the ACT.