The novel coronavirus slammed the door on more than a million first-time SAT takers in the high-school class of 2021 who weren’t able to sit for the exam this spring. Now, the College Board, which owns the exam, is urging admissions officials to “provide flexibility” to the next round of college applicants.
After all, for some rising seniors, finding a place to take the exam in the coming months might not be easy.
During a webinar on Tuesday, David Coleman, the College Board’s chief executive, said that the organization would continue to expand the availability of test centers where possible, but that numerous locations would have fewer seats because of social-distancing guidelines. In many states and districts, there are still plenty of seats for test takers, according to the College Board.
But elsewhere, seats are filling up for the August and September administrations of the SAT. Massachusetts, for instance, is at 75-percent capacity for the August exam; New Jersey is at 58-percent capacity.
“There are pockets in key states and markets across the country where capacity is constrained,” Coleman said, “and it is the unfortunate reality that students in the most densely populated areas hardest hit by Covid-19, such as Boston, Denver, and New York City, will face the greatest challenge in finding open seats in these initial testing windows because of scarce test centers.”
Coleman asked colleges to consider three ways of adjusting to testing disruptions by:
- Accepting SAT scores as late as possible by extending their early score deadlines “to take some pressure off of students and give them more time to test and send their scores,” in October, November, and later.
- Giving equal consideration to applicants who were unable to take the SAT because of Covid-19 as to those who were able to submit scores. (Essentially, to go test optional.)
- Recognizing that students who do submit scores might not have been able to take the exam more than once, perhaps keeping them from raising their scores.
Also on Tuesday, Coleman said the College Board would hold off — for now — on introducing an online, take-at-home version of the SAT. Such an exam, he said, would require technical capabilities that many households lack: “We do not want to introduce the stress and uncertainties that could result from extended at-home testing in an already disrupted admissions season”
The announcement comes on the heels of a tumultuous month for the College Board. In May, the organization for the first time administered modified versions of Advanced Placement exams online in an ambitious — and controversial — push to keep its global testing program rolling despite school shutdowns. Though College Board said that the vast majority of more than 4 million exams were completed successfully, tens of thousands of students around the world were unable to submit their answers, leaving them with the choice of taking makeup exams in June or forgoing a chance to earn college credit.
In late May, the University of California’s Board of Regents voted unanimously to phase out its ACT/SAT requirement. The system, which enrolls nearly a quarter of a million undergraduate students, plans to either adopt a new college-entrance exam in 2025 — or go “test blind” for good.
On social media, several admissions officials responded to the College Board’s announcement with a shrug — and sarcasm. Franklin Gaglione, senior admissions counselor at Lake Forest College, in Illinois, tweeted: “Please completely alter your application calendar and practices so that we can maintain control.”
In a written statement, Robert A. Schaeffer, interim executive director at the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, or FairTest, said the College Board was “conceding the inevitable” during a time of crisis: “The realities were already clear to admissions professionals: Many students will not be able to take the SAT (or ACT) this year because of test-site cancellations, and the technical capacity to administer an at-home, e-SAT does not exist (as demonstrated by last month’s Advanced Placement fiasco).”
