does california sat have essay

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, which colleges require the sat essay complete list.

SAT Logistics , SAT Essay

Planning to take the SAT? Before you sign up, you need to decide whether you're going to take the test with or without the optional Essay . How should you pick? Well, some colleges require that you apply with the SAT with Essay; others don't care whether you submit an SAT score with or without the Essay.

In this article, I'll provide you with a complete list of colleges that require or recommend taking the SAT with the Essay .

UPDATE: SAT Essay No Longer Offered

In January 2021, the College Board announced that after June 2021, it would no longer offer the Essay portion of the SAT (except at schools who opt in during School Day Testing). It is now no longer possible to take the SAT Essay, unless your school is one of the small number who choose to offer it during SAT School Day Testing.

While most colleges had already made SAT Essay scores optional, this move by the College Board means no colleges now require the SAT Essay. It will also likely lead to additional college application changes such not looking at essay scores at all for the SAT or ACT, as well as potentially requiring additional writing samples for placement.

What does the end of the SAT Essay mean for your college applications? Check out our article on the College Board's SAT Essay decision for everything you need to know.

What Is the Optional SAT Essay?

The redesigned SAT debuted in March 2016 with a now-optional Essay section. For the Essay, you have 50 minutes to read a passage (similar to those you see on the Reading section ) and write an essay dissecting how the author made the argument . Did the author use evidence to support the main claim? Appeals to emotion? Specific word choice?

If you take the SAT without Essay, the test length is three hours . However, if you take the SAT with Essay, the optional Essay adds 50 minutes . It also costs more to take the SAT with Essay : $64.50 vs $49.50 without the Essay.

Don't automatically assume you must take the Essay. Whether it's important for you depends on which schools (and scholarships) you're applying to and what the rest of your application looks like. I'll go into more depth later about how to decide which version of the SAT to take.

List of Schools That Require the SAT With Essay

Below, I've compiled a list of colleges that require or recommend taking the SAT with Essay. All data comes from the College Board and some individual schools we consulted separately.

Note: This list is subject to change, so make sure to double-check with each school you're applying to.

Surprisingly (and in contrast to how it's been in the past), top schools mostly do not require the SAT essay . Currently, no Ivy League School requires students to take the SAT with Essay; the same is true for Stanford, Caltech, Duke, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Northwestern, NYU, and UChicago. Many of these schools no longer even recommend students to take the SAT with Essay, which is a huge turnaround from just a couple of years ago.

Similarly, most liberal arts colleges do not require or recommend the SAT with Essay ; however, there are some exceptions, such as Soka University, which does require it.

In general, most state schools also do not require the SAT with Essay, though there's still a significant portion that do. There tends to be some weird variance even within states. For example, all University of California schools require the SAT with Essay, but most of the California State University schools do not.

Regardless of the types of schools you're applying to, don't assume that they all ask for the SAT with Essay . Check with every school to make sure you understand their testing requirements.

How to Decide Whether to Take the SAT Essay: 4 Questions

When making your decision about whether to take the SAT with Essay or the SAT without Essay, you'll need to consider the following four questions.

#1: Do Any Schools I Want to Apply to Require the SAT Essay?

If you're applying to any school that requires the Essay, then you must take the SAT with Essay . If you take the SAT without Essay, your application will be incomplete and you won't get admitted. By contrast, if you apply to any schools that don't require the SAT Essay, you can still take the SAT with Essay since these schools will accept both types of SAT scores (with or without Essay).

To reiterate, colleges that require the SAT Essay won't consider your score if you took the SAT without the Essay . The last thing you want to do is take the SAT without the Essay and get a good score—but then find out that one of your target schools requires you to take the SAT with Essay.

Remember that some colleges change their application policies from year to year, so make sure to double-check the testing policies of the schools you're applying to .

#2: Do Any Schools I Want to Apply to Recommend the SAT Essay?

If you're not applying to any schools that require the SAT Essay section but are applying to some that recommend it, then I'd still suggest taking it . This gives you another dimension schools can use to evaluate your application; however, there are some cases in which you shouldn't take the SAT with Essay.

If, for some reason, you do not qualify for SAT fee waivers and paying the extra cost to take the SAT with Essay would be a financial burden to you , then please don't feel as if you have to take it. In this case, it's fine to take the SAT without Essay instead.

In addition, if you really struggle to write essays under time constraints (due to anxiety), you might want to opt out of the Essay . That said, I only recommend this for students who normally have strong English and writing skills but struggle to write coherent essays when there's the added pressure of a time constraint.

For example, do you get As on essays you can work on at home but Cs on in-class essays because you get easily nervous? If that's the case, taking the SAT with Essay might not be a good idea.

#3: Am I Applying to Any Scholarships That Require an SAT With Essay Score?

Many scholarships (such as National Merit ) require you to submit SAT scores , and some specifically want SAT with Essay scores.

Therefore, be sure to check the requirements of each scholarship you're planning on applying for . While scholarships that don't require or recommend the SAT Essay should still accept your SAT with Essay score, scholarships that require the Essay section will not consider your SAT score if you took the no-essay version .

#4: Will the SAT Essay Enhance My Application in Other Ways?

Generally speaking, taking the SAT Essay if it's not required won't add a lot to your application. In truth, colleges that don't recommend or require the Essay really don't pay much attention to it.

Nevertheless, the Essay might be helpful for international students who want to prove they have strong English skills and who think they'll do especially well on it. If you fall into this category and feel confident you'll get a high score on it ( after doing practice essays , for example), definitely consider taking the SAT with Essay.

On the other hand, if you don't think you'll do well on the Essay, I recommend against taking it.

What's Next?

Need help preparing for the SAT? Read our ultimate study guide to get expert tips on prep and access to the best free online resources. If you're taking the test soon, learn how to cram for the SAT .

Want to learn more about the SAT Essay? Check out our step-by-step guide to writing a great essay .

Not sure where you want to go to college? Learn how to do college research right and figure out your SAT target score .

Ready to go beyond just reading about the SAT? Then you'll love the free five-day trial for our SAT Complete Prep program . Designed and written by PrepScholar SAT experts , our SAT program customizes to your skill level in over 40 subskills so that you can focus your studying on what will get you the biggest score gains.

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As an SAT/ACT tutor, Dora has guided many students to test prep success. She loves watching students succeed and is committed to helping you get there. Dora received a full-tuition merit based scholarship to University of Southern California. She graduated magna cum laude and scored in the 99th percentile on the ACT. She is also passionate about acting, writing, and photography.

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The Optional SAT Essay: What to Know

Tackling this section of the SAT requires preparation and can boost some students' college applications.

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Even though an increasing number of colleges are dropping standardized test requirements, students who must write the SAT essay can still stand to gain from doing so.

Although the essay portion of the SAT became optional in 2016, many students still chose to write it to demonstrate strong or improved writing skills to prospective colleges.

In June 2021, the College Board opted to discontinue the SAT essay. Now, only students in a few states and school districts still have access to — and must complete — the SAT essay. This requirement applies to some students in the SAT School Day program, for instance, among other groups.

How Colleges Use SAT, ACT Results

Tiffany Sorensen Sept. 14, 2020

Whether or not to write the SAT essay is not the biggest decision you will have to make in high school, but it is certainly one that requires thought on your part. Here are three things you should know about the 50-minute SAT essay as you decide whether to complete it:

• To excel on the SAT essay, you must be a trained reader.
• The SAT essay begs background knowledge of rhetoric and persuasive writing.
• A growing number of colleges are dropping standardized test requirements.

To Excel on the SAT Essay, You Must Be a Trained Reader

The SAT essay prompt never comes unaccompanied. On the contrary, it follows a text that is about 700 words long or approximately one page. Before test-takers can even plan their response, they must carefully read and – ideally – annotate the passage.

The multifaceted nature of the SAT essay prompt can be distressing to students who struggle with reading comprehension. But the good news is that this prompt is highly predictable: It always asks students to explain how the author builds his or her argument. In this case, "how” means which rhetorical devices are used, such as deductive reasoning, metaphors, etc.

Luckily, the author’s argument is usually spelled out in the prompt itself. For instance, consider this past SAT prompt : “Write an essay in which you explain how Paul Bogard builds an argument to persuade his audience that natural darkness should be preserved.”

Due to the essay prompt’s straightforward nature, students should read the passage with an eye toward specific devices used by the author rather than poring over “big ideas.” In tour SAT essay, aim to analyze at least two devices, with three being even better.

The SAT Essay Begs Background Knowledge of Rhetoric and Persuasive Writing

Since your SAT essay response must point to specific rhetorical devices that the author employs to convince the reader, you should make it a point to intimately know 10-15 common ones. The more familiar you are with rhetorical devices, the faster you will become at picking them out as you read texts.

Once you have read the passage and identified a handful of noteworthy rhetorical devices, you should apply many of the same essay-writing techniques you already use in your high school English classes.

For instance, you should start by brainstorming to see which devices you have the most to say about. After that, develop a concise thesis statement, incorporate quotes from the text, avoid wordiness and other infelicities of writing, close with an intriguing conclusion, and do everything else you could imagine your English teacher advising you to do.

Remember to always provide evidence from the text to support your claims. Finally, leave a few minutes at the end to review your essay for mistakes.

A Growing Number of Colleges Are Dropping Standardized Test Requirements

In recent years, some of America’s most prominent colleges and universities – including Ivy League institutions like Harvard University in Massachusetts, Princeton University in New Jersey and Yale University in Connecticut – have made submission of ACT and SAT scores optional.

While this trend began as early as 2018, the upheaval caused by COVID-19 has prompted many other schools to adopt a more lenient testing policy, as well.

Advocates for educational fairness have long expressed concerns that standardized admissions tests put underprivileged students at a disadvantage. In light of the coronavirus pandemic , which restricted exam access for almost all high school students, colleges have gotten on board with this idea by placing more emphasis on other factors in a student’s application.

To assess writing ability in alternative ways, colleges now place more emphasis on students’ grades in language-oriented subjects, as well as college application documents like the personal statement .

The fact that more colleges are lifting their ACT/SAT requirement does not imply that either test or any component of it is now obsolete. Students who must write the SAT essay can still stand to gain from doing so, especially those who wish to major in a writing-intensive field. The essay can also demonstrate a progression or upward trajectory in writing skills.

The SAT essay can give a boost to the college applications of the few students to whom it is still available. If the requirement applies to you, be sure to learn more about the SAT essay and practice it often as you prepare for your upcoming SAT.

13 Test Prep Tips for SAT and ACT Takers

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The SAT Writing Section (Essay): Here’s What You Need to Know

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The SAT recently revamped itself to more accurately test what students learn in school. The new version is less deliberately tricky and confusing, but it’s still a challenging, exhausting test. Let’s say you’ve taken both the ACT and the SAT and you perform better on the SAT. Now that you’ve chosen it as your go-to test, how do you get through the essay portion, especially if you hate writing?

Fun fact: the SAT has plenty of new practice tests , which include essays. For the purposes of this post, I’ll be working from this practice essay , so it might be useful to have it open as you read. We’ll go through what’s expected, what scoring looks like, and how to go about writing the best essay you can.

Understand What You’re Being Asked to Do

The new SAT no longer asks you to make up ideas and references from scratch (which, honestly, is probably for the best). Instead, it provides you with an essay and asks you to analyze it, much in the same vein as an in-class analytical or an AP English Language essay.

The Assignment

The assignment reads as follows. At the top you’ll see a generic introduction for what to look for as you read:

As you read the passage below, consider how (the author of the passage) uses:

• evidence, such as facts or examples, to support claims.
• reasoning to develop ideas and to connect claims and evidence.
• stylistic or persuasive elements, such as word choice or appeals to emotion, to add power to the ideas expressed.

Then, at the bottom, the instructions get specific. For this essay, they read like this:

Write an essay in which you explain how Bobby Braun builds an argument to persuade his audience that the US government must continue to invest in NASA. In your essay, analyze how Braun uses one or more of the features listed in the box above (or features of your own choice) to strengthen the logic and persuasiveness of his argument. Be sure that your analysis focuses on the most relevant features of the passage. Your essay should not explain whether you agree with Braun’s claims, but rather explain how Braun builds an argument to persuade his audience.

What does this mean? Essentially, as you read, pick out the techniques the author uses to make his or her point, then write a detailed essay that covers a couple of the main ones. Brush up on your knowledge of literary terms and devices well in advance of writing the SAT essay. You don’t have to know them all, but know the most commonly used ones really well (tone, diction, imagery, simile/metaphor, allusion, rhetorical question, anecdote, and symbolism, to name a few) so you can rely on those. In an argumentative essay, like this one, an author will always use tone, diction (choice of words), and some kind of persuasion technique (Logos? Pathos? Ethos? Anecdote? etc.).

How is the essay scored? Two testers will read your essay and will provide a score of 1-4 on three different benchmarks: reading, analysis, and writing.

Did the writer understand the content? Did they quickly summarize the argument/point and then move quickly into their interpretation of it? Did they paraphrase and directly quote?

Did the writer not only identify the right literary terms/devices but assess their uses effectively? In other words, did the writer understand why the author used those devices and say so? Did the analysis integrate into the rest of the essay?

Is there a strong thesis, body paragraphs for each device, and a quick conclusion? (More on organization below.) Is the writing “strong,” i.e., sentence variety, no unnecessary words or repetition, strong words, and sophisticated reasoning?

The testers’ scores are then added together for an aggregate final score. So, a top score would be 8/8/8.

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Final Thoughts

Unless you’re being given extra time, you have exactly 50 minutes to complete the essay. This sounds like a lot (and it’s more than it used to be), but don’t be fooled. You’ll use the time.

Students with special accommodations might be able to take the test on a computer, but otherwise it’s a written test. Your test booklet will be scanned into a computer. If you make a mistake, don’t erase your work, because it causes smudges and can make it hard for the tester to read. Simply cross out and rewrite. The testers are trained not to read crossed-out material. If you’ve been told your handwriting is impossible to read, write a little more slowly than you might otherwise. Choose the style that’s more legible for you: print or cursive. When you write practice tests, give it to someone and ask if they can read it.

You’ll take the SAT essay last, after every other section has been completed. So you’ll be exhausted. There’s no way around that, unfortunately, beyond bringing snacks and water on test day and walking around during breaks to take the focus off your brain for a couple minutes. Practice is key; you’ll want to be able to read an essay quickly, pull out devices, and write a straightforward essay with a minimum of confusion and anxiety. Only practice and memorization of the right information will get you there.

As you prepare to take the SAT, take a look at some example essays that scored highly. It won’t be the same subject matter, but the structure and language will be aspects you can emulate.

Read with the Assignment in Mind

Imagine that your proctor has told you to turn to the essay section. You already know the basic assignment, so you can actually skip the top introduction and dive right in to the essay. Don’t get bogged down with unfamiliar words or the most complex sentences. You don’t need to absorb every single word of the essay. Read to find devices you can use. Circle them and ID them as you go. Don’t be picky right away—just observe and note what you see.

Go ahead and skim the bottom instructions, but even then the first sentence is the only really important one. In this case, the gist is: how does Braun persuade his audience to invest in NASA? Then, go back to the devices you found, and pick out the three strongest and/or most used devices to structure your essay. Can’t find three? Remember, an author always uses tone (point of view) and diction (word choice) so those are two easy ones if you’re stuck.

The process of reading and pulling out devices should take no more than eight minutes.

Make a Quick Outline

I know this one sound counterintuitive, given what I said about time limits, but bear with me. Just starting to write without a clear path is hugely problematic for timed essays. Even the best writers make a mental note of their general direction. Without planning, you might change directions mid-essay, forget your thesis and end up arguing something else, or wander off completely without realizing it.

The outline can be short and sweet. For example, with this practice essay, it could look like this:

Intro: Braun argues that continuing to invest in space tech and research keeps us competitive in the world economy. Devices: logos, imagery, allusion

Body 1: Logos (logic): paragraph 3, 5, 7

Body 2: Imagery: paragraph 4, 6

Body 3: Allusion: paragraph 8

Don’t even bother to include your conclusion in your outline. It’s pretty much the same content as your intro. Also, remember that you don’t need to tackle every aspect or device in the essay. Highlight where your devices are, then focus your analysis to those sections. In the outline above, I’ve structured the devices so that you’re going through the essay in almost chronological fashion. You don’t have to do this, but it makes the essay-writing a bit easier.

The process of outlining should take no more than two minutes.

Write Quickly but Methodically

Don’t waste a lot of breath with a big, drawn out introduction. State the argument of the author in one sentence, then your thesis, which should be a list of the three devices you plan to use. Keep it simple and easy, then move on.

For each body paragraph, make a quick topic sentence explaining which device you’re analyzing. Spend one sentence (ONLY one) summarizing how the author is using the device. Begin to use quotes or paraphrase; after each example, analyze why the author uses the device and the effect it has. About three quotes or examples are usually standard. Then, at the end of the paragraph, use one sentence to sum up the effect the device has on the whole essay. Use sample essays for examples of this structure.

See the numbers at the side of each paragraph? When you quote directly or summarize directly, put the number of the paragraph in parenthesis afterwards to cite where you’re getting the information from.

For your conclusion, simply restate what you’ve said before. If you’re feeling extra-confident, feel free to add a key takeaway from the analysis, but it’s not necessary. So, your conclusion can be two sentences just like your intro.

What if your writing style isn’t advanced or similar to the example essays? Work with a teacher or tutor who can help you develop your skills if you have the time. If not, just write simply and clearly. Don’t use overly technical words. Don’t make really long sentences just for the sake of doing so. Even simple, forceful language can be effective so long as your argument is good. So focus your attention on ensuring that you know what good analysis is and how to replicate it.

You’ll have 35 minutes to write. Keep an eye on the clock, but mostly just focus on writing quickly and clearly.

Leave a Few Minutes for Proofreading

Again, I know you’ll be flying through this essay at lightning speed to get everything done effectively. But this one’s important too. When you write quickly, grammar and spelling can fall by the wayside. That’s totally normal, so don’t freak out. But you will be graded on such aspects in your final score, so leave 5 minutes max at the end to skim through your essay, pinpoint where you made mistakes, cross out the word or phrase, and write the correct word or phrase above it. Try to make corrections clearly so that the tester knows which version to read.

And that’s it! Easy, right? (Totally kidding.) As with everything else, practice will help. If you’re not already doing this kind of essay in class, do a few practice essays at home. Make sure you do the EXACT process start to finish: time yourself, write an outline, and so on. Part of success is building the muscle memory to go into the essay with a solid base of experience and confidence that you’ll succeed.

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College & Careers

SAT and ACT slip in priority among California high school students

Some still take tests for scholarships and placement even if exams are not considered for admission..

Larry Gordon

November 9, 2021.

In a normal year, high school senior Marissa Cuellar would have prepped a lot before she took the dreaded SAT exam, working for a solid score to bolster her college applications. After all, she is a very good student, with a lot of extracurricular activities, and could be a competitive candidate for such campuses as the University of California San Diego and Stanford.

But this fall, the student at Ernest Righetti High School in Santa Maria is dropping SAT activities as she applies to colleges as a computer science or mechanical engineering major. She canceled her registration to take the exam last month because none of the universities she is applying to requires it anymore. She’d rather concentrate on polishing application essays, keeping up her grades and her involvement in folk dance and philanthropic clubs.

“I just didn’t want to add extra stress by studying for and taking up so much time on the SAT,” Cuellar explained.

That attitude has spread among many high school seniors in California and elsewhere. Many fewer are taking the SAT or its rival ACT, counselors say. Of those who do take the tests, more will not submit their scores if they are not happy with them. Test prepping mania and exam anxiety have eased for many.

Marissa Cuellar of Ernest Righetti High School in Santa Maria.

Last year during the pandemic, many test centers closed. Now, while more testing opportunities are available, fewer colleges and universities demand it.

The University of California’s nine undergraduate campuses and the California State University’s 23 won’t even look at standardized test scores this year. Many prestigious private campuses say exams are optional, meaning that admissions offices will consider scores if submitted as part of the application but won’t penalize students who don’t send scores.

The result was noticeable at the Long Beach Unified School District, which offers high school seniors a chance to take the SAT for free during a school day. Students can avoid the $55 fee and the more traditional Saturday exam days. Still, the recent October test day drew about 2,100 seniors.  That’s a big drop from the 3,500 who took the test in fall 2019.  District officials attribute the decrease  mainly to UC and CSU dropping the test mandate.  

Many Long Beach students “have very clear goals in their going to Cal State or UC. So it doesn’t really make sense to take it,” said Kimberly Johnson, an administrator in the high school counseling division. Plus, with the economic downturn, more students will stay at home and attend Long Beach City College, which offers two years of free tuition, she added. Even among those who took the test, Johnson sensed less prepping, whether through free online services or expensive private lessons.

Of course, there are students around California who prepared for the test seriously because they are applying to out-of-state or private schools that require or treat the exam as optional; in addition, scores might play a role in scholarship and course placement in college. Some students don’t trust “test optional” policies and don’t believe the colleges’ pledges that their chances won’t be harmed by not submitting scores.

At Ernest Righetti High School in Santa Maria, before the pandemic, about 90% of students considering a four-year campus took standardized tests. This year, after UC and CSU policy changes, less than 50% are expected to take the tests, according to Eric Blanco, a school counselor.

That is a welcome decline, said Blanco, formerly president of the California Association of School Counselors . Students who don’t test well benefit from the extra emphasis on high school grades, activities and essays in admissions, he explained. By eliminating costs for tests and prep classes, students “can shift their resources, use the money toward another college application or other supplies,” he said. Without test anxiety, they can spend more time on their applications.

Because of the UC and CSU changes, Taft Charter High School in Woodland Hills, in the San Fernando Valley, allowed seniors for the first time to get parental permission to opt out of the free in-school SAT testing in October, according to college counselor Wendy Gomez. As a result, 120 of the 532 seniors decided not to take the exam mainly because they will apply only to those state universities, she said. Of the students who did take the test, many seemed unprepared and skeptical of the purpose, she said: “Many of the students asked why they should be taking it. They were not happy.”

At the Los Angeles Unified School District, the largest in the state, a spokesperson said officials did not know yet how many students took the SAT during the free October sessions at its high schools and how that compared to pre-pandemic years when UC and CSU required the exams. The district spokesperson said it offers the tests “to maximize student postsecondary choices and opportunities,” especially for some scholarship applications.

Beyond UC and CSU, about 100 California colleges and universities will not require ACT or SAT scores for fall 2022 admission, according to the National Center for Fair & Open Testing organization, or FairTest, which generally opposes testing. Those colleges include such competitive private schools as the University of Southern California, where tests are now optional, and the California Institute of Technology, which won’t look at scores. Both institutions will review their policies after they admit students for the fall of 2023.

Nationwide, the trend has accelerated so much that about three-fourths of the 2,330 bachelor-degree granting colleges and universities this year are either test-optional or test-blind, meaning they won’t look at them at all in admissions, FairTest says.

Stanford’s website advises that if “you feel that your scores are a positive reflection of your academic preparedness, then you are welcome to self-report them. Your application will not be at a disadvantage if you choose not to report your scores.”

In an affluent oceanside area of Los Angeles County, most seniors at Palos Verdes High School used to take the SAT or ACT. That dropped to about 20% last year because it was difficult to find open test centers. This year,  students taking one of the tests is expected to rise to about half of the seniors, according to Joanne Lewis, director of PVHS College Career Center. Some of that increase is driven by parents who “are worried that their student could suffer in the application or scholarship process without the test,” no matter what test-optional schools say publicly, Lewis said.

She urges families to examine colleges’ past record of test scores for accepted students and to weigh whether their own scores are competitive before submitting them. Lewis said that “is a very individualized decision.” For students who are applying exclusively to UC’s and Cal States, “we are grateful to say: Forget about testing! I only wish it could be so easy for all students.”

Zachary Dawson, a senior at Palos Verdes High, said he took the SAT three times before this fall and had some private coaching. His scores are very good, but he fears that they might not be strong enough for the most competitive universities where he is applying, including Stanford and Vanderbilt. Those scores “are not going to help me at Stanford,” said Dawson, who wants to major in business or economics. He will rely on his excellent high school grades, his essays and extracurricular activities for those campuses, as well as to UCLA, UC Berkeley and others.

He said he considers the new testing policies “as a form of relief. It was an opportunity to get accepted into these cutthroat schools.” UC’s test-blind admissions “is a great idea, even though that makes the application process even more selective.”

Zachary Dawson of Palos Verdes High School.

The most competitive campuses at UC and CSU have seen a substantial jump in applications since test-blind rules emboldened more students to apply.

The share of California high school seniors who took the SAT dropped dramatically when the pandemic shuttered test centers . According to a College Board study , only 24% of the state’s 2021 graduating class took the SAT, compared with 67% in the previous class, most of whom took it before shutdowns.

The College Board, which sponsors the SAT, said that it is gaining back test takers.  “While the pandemic is still affecting students’ ability to take the SAT, we’re seeing the situation improve significantly since last fall,” College Board spokesman Zachary Goldberg said. Registrations among Californians were up by nearly 20% over last year for the November testing, he said.

But the nonprofit organization did not respond to EdSource’s request for current statistics comparing this year to pre-pandemic times or projections for the state or nation.

The ACT also did not provide such data but insisted its exam remains an important tool for course placement and scholarships.

“It will likely take many years for us to fully understand the implications of recent changes to admissions policies, including the expansion of test-optional admission policies, on ACT test-taking patterns—in California, and for students nationwide,” Catherine Hofmann, ACT vice president of state and federal programs, said in a statement.

Eliminating test requirements was supposed to reduce anxiety. But that can backfire as top schools garner more applications and students fret over whether to submit their scores. “Instead of reducing stress, I think this has added huge stress,” said Katy Murphy, director of college counseling at Bellarmine College Preparatory, an all-male Catholic school in San Jose.

She said nearly all of her school’s 407 seniors have taken standardized tests because many apply to out-of-state and private universities that still require scores. But she expects that a larger percentage than ever will not submit scores to test-optional campuses if their scores fall below averages of past pools of accepted applicants.

Murphy, former president of the National Association of College Admission Counseling (NACAC), also advises students not to repeat taking the exams in hopes of boosting scores, as they might have in pre-pandemic years. If students are not great test takers and are trying for test-optional colleges, “then why bother taking it again?” she asked.

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Tomm 2 years ago 2 years ago

Why would kids take these tests if it doesn't affect their application? Seems obvious. Many of these kids are plenty smart but received an inadequate K-12 education and that's not their fault but a fault in the public education system, as I did. They can succeed in college and life if the support system is there. Unfortunately that falls to the colleges and remedial courses. At this point, just needs to … Read More

Why would kids take these tests if it doesn’t affect their application? Seems obvious. Many of these kids are plenty smart but received an inadequate K-12 education and that’s not their fault but a fault in the public education system, as I did. They can succeed in college and life if the support system is there. Unfortunately that falls to the colleges and remedial courses. At this point, just needs to be there. Hope we can agree that more funding for colleges is a high priority.

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SAT Essay Scores Explained

On january 19th, 2021, college board announced that they will no longer administer the sat subject tests in the u.s. and that the essay would be retired. read our blog post  to understand what this means in the near term and what the college board has in store for students down the road., our articles on subject tests and the sat essay will remain on our site for reference purposes as colleges and students transition to a revised testing landscape..

Why are there no percentiles for the essay on an SAT score report?

No percentiles or norms are provided in student reports. Even colleges do not receive any summary statistics. Given Compass’ concerns about the inaccuracy of essay scoring and the notable failures of the ACT on that front, the de-emphasis of norms would seem to be a good thing. The problem is that 10% of colleges are sticking with the SAT Essay as an admission requirement . While those colleges will not receive score distribution reports from the College Board, it is not difficult for them to construct their own statistics—officially or unofficially—based on thousands of applicants. Colleges can determine a “good score,” but students cannot. This asymmetry of information is harmful to students, as they are left to speculate how well they have performed and how their scores will be interpreted. Through our analysis, Compass hopes to provide students and parents more context for evaluating SAT Essay scores.

How has scoring changed? Is it still part of a student’s Total Score?

On the old SAT, the essay was a required component of the Writing section and made up approximately one-third of a student’s 200–800 score. The essay score itself was simply the sum (2–12) of two readers’ 1–6 scores. Readers were expected to grade holistically and not to focus on individual components of the writing. The SAT essay came under a great deal of criticism for being too loosely structured. Factual accuracy was not required; it was not that difficult to make pre-fabricated material fit the prompt; many colleges found the 2–12 essay scores of little use; and the conflation of the essay and “Writing” was, in some cases, blocking the use of the SAT Writing score—which included grammar and usage—entirely.

With the 2016 overhaul of the SAT came an attempt to make the essay more academically defensible while also making it optional (as the ACT essay had long been). The essay score is not a part of the 400–1600 score. Instead, a student opting to take the SAT Essay receives 2–8 scores in three dimensions: reading, analysis, and writing. No equating or fancy lookup table is involved. The scores are simply the sum of two readers’ 1–4 ratings in each dimension. There is no official totaling or averaging of scores, although colleges may choose to do so.

Readers avoid extremes

What is almost universally true about grading of standardized test essays is that readers gravitate to the middle of the scale. The default instinct is to nudge a score above or below a perceived cutoff or midpoint rather than to evenly distribute scores. When the only options are 1, 2, 3, or 4, the consequence is predictable—readers give out a lot of 2s and 3s and very few 1s and 4s. In fact, our analysis shows that 80% of all reader scores are 2s or 3s. This, in turn, means that most of the dimension scores (the sum of the two readers) range from 4 to 6. Analysis scores are outliers. A third of readers give essays a 1 in Analysis. Below is the distribution of reader scores across all dimensions.

What is a good SAT Essay score?

By combining multiple data sources—including extensive College Board scoring information—Compass has estimated the mean and mode (most common) essay scores for students at various score levels. We also found that the reading and writing dimensions were similar, while analysis scores lagged by a point across all sub-groups. These figures should not be viewed as cutoffs for “good” scores. The loose correlation of essay score to Total Score and the high standard deviation of essay scores means that students at all levels see wide variation of scores. The average essay-taking student scores a 1,080 on the SAT and receives just under a 5/4/5.

College Board recently released essay results for the class of 2017, so score distributions are now available. From these, percentiles can also be calculated. We provide these figures with mixed feelings. On the one hand, percentile scores on such an imperfect measure can be highly misleading. On the other hand, we feel that students should understand the full workings of essay scores.

The role of luck

What is frustrating to many students on the SAT and ACT is that they can score 98th percentile in most areas and then get a “middling” score on the essay. This result is actually quite predictable. Whereas math and verbal scores are the result of dozens of objective questions, the essay is a single question graded subjectively. To replace statistical concepts with a colloquial one—far more “luck” is involved than on the multiple-choice sections. What text is used in the essay stimulus? How well will the student respond to the style and subject matter? Which of the hundreds of readers were assigned to grade the student’s essay? What other essays has the reader recently scored?

Even good writers run into the unpredictability involved and the fact that essay readers give so few high scores. A 5 means that the Readers A and B gave the essay a 2 and a 3, respectively. Which reader was “right?” If the essay had encountered two readers like Reader A, it would have received a 4. If the essay had been given two readers like Reader B, it would have received a 6. That swing makes a large difference if we judge scores exclusively by percentiles, but essay scores are simply too blurry to make such cut-and-dry distinctions. More than 80% of students receive one of three scores—4, 5, or 6 on the reading and writing dimensions and 3, 4, or 5 on analysis.

What do colleges expect?

It’s unlikely that many colleges will release a breakdown of essay scores for admitted students—especially since so few are requiring it. What we know from experience with the ACT , though, is that even at the most competitive schools in the country, the 25th–75th percentile scores of admitted students were 8–10 on the ACT’s old 2–12 score range. We expect that things will play out similarly for the SAT and that most students admitted to highly selective colleges will have domain scores in the 5–7 range (possibly closer to 4–6 for analysis). It’s even less likely for students to average a high score across all three areas than it is to obtain a single high mark. We estimate that only a fraction of a percent of students will average an 8—for example [8/8/8, 7/8/8, 8/7/8, or 8,8,7].

Update as of October 2017. The University of California system has published the 25th–75th percentile ranges for enrolled students. It has chosen to work with total scores. The highest ranges—including those at UCLA and Berkeley—are 17–20. Those scores are inline with our estimates above.

How will colleges use the domain scores?

Colleges have been given no guidance by College Board on how to use essay scores for admission. Will they sum the scores? Will they average them? Will they value certain areas over others? Chances are that if you are worrying too much about those questions, then you are likely losing sight of the bigger picture. We know of no cases where admission committees will make formulaic use of essay scores. The scores are a very small, very error-prone part of a student’s testing portfolio.

How low is too low?

Are 3s and 4s, then, low enough that an otherwise high-scoring student should retest? There is no one-size-fits-all answer to that question. In general, it is a mistake to retest solely to improve an essay score unless a student is confident that the SAT Total Score can be maintained or improved. A student with a 1340 PSAT and 1280 SAT may feel that it is worthwhile to bring up low essay scores because she has previously shown that she can do better on the Evidence-based Reading and Writing and Math, as well. A student with a 1400 PSAT and 1540 SAT should think long and hard before committing to a retest. Admission results from the class of 2017 may give us some added insight into the use of SAT Essay scores.

Will colleges continue to require the SAT Essay?

For the class of 2017, Compass has prepared a list of the SAT Essay and ACT Writing policies for 360 of the top colleges . Several of the largest and most prestigious public university systems—California, Michigan, and Texas, for example, still require the essay, and a number of highly competitive private colleges do the same—for example, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford.

The number of excellent colleges not requiring the SAT Essay, though, is long and getting longer. Compass expects even more colleges to drop the essay requirement for the classes of 2018 and 2019. Policies are typically finalized in late spring or during the summer.

Should I skip the essay entirely?

A common question regarding SAT scores is whether the whole mess can be avoided by skipping the essay. After all, if only about 10% of colleges are requiring the section, is it really that important? Despite serious misgivings about the test and the ways scores are interpreted, Compass still recommends that most students take the essay unless they are certain that they will not be applying to any of the colleges requiring or recommending it. Nationally, about 70% of students choose to take the essay on at least one SAT administration. When looking at higher scoring segments, that quickly rises to 85–90%. Almost all Compass students take the SAT Essay at least once to insure that they do not miss out on educational opportunities.

Should I prepare for the SAT Essay?

Most Compass students decide to do some preparation for the essay, because taking any part of a test “cold” can be an unpleasant experience, and students want to avoid feeling like a retake is necessary. In addition to practicing exercises and tests, most students can perform well enough on the SAT Essay after 1–2 hours of tutoring. Students taking a Compass practice SAT will also receive a scored essay. Students interested in essay writing tips for the SAT can refer to Compass blog posts on the difference between the ACT and SAT tasks  and the use of first person on the essays .

Will I be able to see my essay?

Yes. ACT makes it difficult to obtain a copy of your Writing essay, but College Board includes it as part of your online report.

Will colleges have access to my essay? Even if they don’t require it?

Yes, colleges are provided with student essays. We know of very few circumstances where SAT Essay reading is regularly conducted. Colleges that do not require the SAT Essay fall into the “consider” and “do not consider” camps. Schools do not always list this policy on their website or in their application materials, so it is hard to have a comprehensive list. We recommend contacting colleges for more information. In general, the essay will have little to no impact at colleges that do not require or recommend it.

Is the SAT Essay a reason to take the ACT instead?

Almost all colleges that require the SAT Essay require Writing for ACT-takers. The essays are very different on the two tests, but neither can be said to be universally “easier” or “harder.” Compass recommends that the primary sections of the tests determine your planning. Compass’ content experts have also written a piece on how to attack the ACT essay .

Key links in this post:

ACT and SAT essay requirements ACT Writing scores explained Comparing ACT and SAT essay tasks The use of first person in ACT and SAT essays Understanding the “audience and purpose” of the ACT essay Compass proctored practice testing for the ACT, SAT, and Subject Tests

About Art Sawyer

Art graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, where he was the top-ranked liberal arts student in his class. Art pioneered the one-on-one approach to test prep in California in 1989 and co-founded Compass Education Group in 2004 in order to bring the best ideas and tutors into students' homes and computers. Although he has attained perfect scores on all flavors of the SAT and ACT, he is routinely beaten in backgammon.

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Hi! I’m a high school junior who took the October and November SATs. I got a 1500 on October and then retook it to get a 1590 in November. I’m very happy with my score, but my essays are troubling me. I got a 6-4-6 in October and thought I would improve in November, but I got a 6-3-6. I really cannot improve my actual SAT score, but I don’t understand the essay. I’ve always been a good writer and have consistently been praised for it in English class and outside of class. Is this essay score indicative of my writing skill? And will this essay hurt my chances at Ivy League and other top tier schools? None of the schools I plan on applying to require it, but, since I have to submit it, will it hurt my chances? Thank you so much.

Maya, The essay is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Honestly, a 6-4-6 is a fine score and will not hurt your chances for admission. It’s something of an odd writing task, so I wouldn’t worry that it doesn’t match your writing skills elsewhere.

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, does the sat still have an essay.

Hi! I've heard mixed information about the SAT essay. Does the current SAT still include an essay section or has it been removed? I'd appreciate any clarity on this!

Hello! The SAT has undergone a range of changes lately, and in June 2021, the College Board eliminated the optional Essay section from the SAT. This means that the current SAT no longer includes an essay portion, and you'll only be assessed on the Evidence-Based Reading and Writing and Math sections. With this change, it's essential to focus on maximizing your scores in these two sections to demonstrate your academic abilities to colleges and universities.

Additionally, many colleges now place greater emphasis on personal statements and supplemental essays in their evaluation of your writing abilities instead of turning to your SAT Essay score. To make sure your essays are as strong as possible, consider utilizing CollegeVine's Free Peer Essay Review Tool, or submitting your essay for a paid review by an expert college admissions advisor through CollegeVine's marketplace.

Best of luck with your SAT!

About CollegeVine’s Expert FAQ

CollegeVine’s Q&A seeks to offer informed perspectives on commonly asked admissions questions. Every answer is refined and validated by our team of admissions experts to ensure it resonates with trusted knowledge in the field.

New blow to SAT empire shows California’s key role in diminishing college admissions tests

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One by one, the California blows against the SAT and ACT kept coming.

First UC Berkeley announced last May that it wanted to disregard SAT and ACT test scores in admissions decisions for some students in a pilot study. The same day, University of California regents unanimously voted to phase out the tests over five years. After that, Caltech nixed them for at least two years. And in September, a California state judge ordered UC to immediately suspend all use of test scores in admissions.

Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic leveled its own hits — upending the testing environment nationwide by severely limiting testing opportunities and prompting the massive California State University system and three-fourths of U.S. colleges to suspend testing requirements for fall 2021 applicants.

But when the College Board announced Tuesday that it was scrapping the SAT subject tests and optional essays to “reduce and simplify demands on students,” amid the pandemic, testing experts nationwide pointed to California as a prime accelerator in crippling this mainstay of the college admissions process for millions of students over the last half century. Because of the outsize influence of the state’s higher education institutions, some believe the SAT and ACT could be headed for eventual demise.

“California’s universities are playing national leadership roles in weakening the SAT/ACT in college admissions,” said Jay Rosner, executive director of the Princeton Review Foundation, a nonprofit advocate for fair testing. “Announcements of their test-free policies last spring led to dozens more colleges around the country becoming temporarily or permanently test free.”

The College Board, however, said the SAT remained popular and that it would be further revised to streamline the content and deliver digitally. In addition, the testing nonprofit said it would possibly expand testing opportunities this fall.

“There’s still a clear demand from students to take the SAT as a way to show their strengths to colleges,” the College Board said in a statement. “The pandemic has highlighted the importance of being innovative and adaptive to what lies ahead.”

Students can take the SAT with the essay through the June 2021 SAT administration. But both the essay and SAT subject tests — which assessed mastery of high school subjects including history, biology and math — have dropped out of favor with universities in recent years.

“The College Board is simply acknowledging the economically inevitable: the number of colleges and universities requiring either the SAT ‘essay’ or Subject Tests ... was rapidly declining pre-pandemic and was essentially zero in the current admissions cycle,” said Bob Schaeffer, public education director for FairTest, the National Center for Fair and Open Testing.

UC regents on Thursday discussed whether to go beyond phasing out the SAT and ACT and permanently drop the use of any standardized tests in admissions decisions but took no action.

Unlike UC, the Cal State system has not announced any plan to phase out the standardized tests. It’s also unclear whether the hundreds of colleges and universities that made the SAT and ACT optional amid the pandemic will revert to again requiring the tests.

But Michal Kurlaender, a UC Davis education professor, said California’s leadership in seeking alternatives to the SAT is sparking interest nationwide.

“As California goes, so goes the nation,” she said.

Kurlaender said she has been contacted by several states about her research showing that the Smarter Balanced K-12 assessment test used in California and a dozen other states does as good a job in predicting college success as the SAT with less racial bias.

Some K-12 administrators and college counselors hailed the decision as long overdue.

Lauren Cook, a college counselor at Jewish Community High School of the Bay and immediate past-president of the Western Assn. for College Admission Counseling, said it was well past time to drop the subject tests because they were required by few universities — mostly STEM-focused institutions. But in the last year, some of the elite institutions, such as Harvey Mudd and Caltech, dropped the requirement in order to reduce application barriers, she said.

“It was just adding to the stress and volume in the college applications process,” Cook said.

As a counselor, Cook said that the constant changes amid the pandemic to the SAT, ACT and AP test administrations as well as to university admissions policies have been “maddening.”

“Families definitely look to their college counselors to light the way and tell them how to make sense of all this,” Cook said. “With how rapidly things have changed, its sort of crazy-making for a counselor to try to stay on top of it and be able to synthesize what’s happening and give good advice in real time.”

At Lynwood Unified, where 91% of students are living in poverty, scrapping the SAT subject tests and essays is only the first step needed to remove barriers to college, said Supt. Gudiel Crosthwaite.

“Given the circumstances, canceling subject tests and the essay portion is the right thing to do, and colleges must revisit their admissions process to be inclusive and equitable,” Crosthwaite said.

But there also needs to be a broader discussion about the place of standardized within the college admissions process, he added. “Standardized testing and the College Board represent a multibillion-dollar industry that, although meant to support students, has reinforced and perpetuated inequities,” Crosthwaite said.

Many students still felt compelled to take a standardized test this year if they could. Hailey Heirigs, 17, a senior at Palisades Charter High School, believed a high test score would boost her chances of admission to a top university. Her family saved earnings from her father, a tattoo artist, to hire a student tutor for ACT prep. She began studying during the summer before her junior year.

“A lot of people have a 4.0 or above a 4.0,” Heirigs said. “If you don’t have that extra oomph … that extra number, it’s hard to stand out from the crowd.”

As the pandemic intensified , she was frustrated in attempts to take the test. After her spring and summer 2020 test dates were cancelled, she flew to Wisconsin in the fall in search of a test, only to find it, too, had been cancelled.

Cynthia Medrano, a college counselor at Alliance-Marine Innovation & Technology 6-12 Complex, a Los Angeles Unified charter school, wasn’t happy that the essay will be dropped because it gave many of her students who are not good multiple-choice test takers a chance to shine. She also raised concerns about the College Board’s development of an online SAT exam, questioning test security and fairness if it is administered in students’ homes.

“If I have a student who shares a room with three siblings and parents, how can we make this equitable?” she asked. “Maybe at home the WiFi is really bad or the student feels really uncomfortable or the parent … cannot give the student three hours without noise. We’re going to need to continue this education reform.”

Rosner, of the Princeton Review Foundation, said he plans to begin raising another potentially explosive issue about the SAT: Its founder, Carl Brigham, was a Princeton professor and supporter of the eugenics movement — a racist ideology that sought to use science to improve the human race by promoting traits deemed superior and breeding out those judged undesirable.

He believes the origins of the test cannot be dismissed.

Amid the nation’s intensifying racial justice movement, universities across the nation have removed the names of eugenics supporters from their buildings and honors — including Caltech , USC , Stanford and Pomona College. UC Berkeley last October disclosed it had discovered a $2.4-million eugenics research fund, frozen its use and launched a review into how the university could have accepted such a gift in 1975.

A College Board spokesman said the test today has been completely revamped to eliminate biased items, such as vocabulary and “esoteric math.”

Times staff writer Howard Blume contributed to this article.

More to Read

Letters to the Editor: If the inequitable SAT is back, bring test prep to all high schools

March 21, 2024

Editorial: Why it’s smart for universities to bring back the SAT requirement

March 17, 2024

Opinion: So Dartmouth will require the SAT again. Here’s what really matters for Californians seeking degrees

Feb. 13, 2024

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Teresa Watanabe covers education for the Los Angeles Times. Since joining the Times in 1989, she has covered immigration, ethnic communities, religion, Pacific Rim business and served as Tokyo correspondent and bureau chief. She also covered Asia, national affairs and state government for the San Jose Mercury News and wrote editorials for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. A Seattle native, she graduated from USC in journalism and in East Asian languages and culture.

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SAT Discontinues Subject Tests And Optional Essay

Elissa Nadworny

Eda Uzunlar

Updated at 5:03 p.m. ET

The College Board announced on Tuesday that it will discontinue the optional essay component of the SAT and that it will no longer offer subject tests in U.S. history, languages and math, among other topics. The organization, which administers the college entrance exam in addition to several other tests, including Advanced Placement exams, will instead focus efforts on a new digital version of the SAT.

In the announcement, the organization cited the coronavirus pandemic for these changes: "The pandemic accelerated a process already underway at the College Board to reduce and simplify demands on students."

College entrance exams have had a hard go of it during the pandemic. Many in-person testing dates for the SAT were canceled because of social distancing needs and closed high school buildings; a previous digital version of the SAT was scrapped in June after technical difficulties; and hundreds of colleges have removed the exam from admissions requirements , in some cases permanently.

Few colleges require the optional writing portion of the SAT or the subject tests, though students can still submit them to supplement their college applications. The AP exams have become far more important in demonstrating mastery of subjects and, in some cases, providing college credit.

The Coronavirus Crisis

Colleges are backing off sat, act scores — but the exams will be hard to shake.

"Removing the subject tests can remove a barrier for students," says Ashley L. Bennett, director of college counseling at KIPP Sunnyside High School in Houston. But, she adds, "I believe that standardized testing in general needs to be less emphasized in the college search process."

Elizabeth Heaton advises families about college admissions at College Coach in Watertown, Mass. She thinks the changes could help put some students on a more level playing field. "For students who aren't getting great advising, it is nice to see that they haven't been eliminated from competition just by virtue of not having a test that they may not have known about."

But Catalina Cifuentes, who works to promote college access in Riverside County, east of Los Angeles, has reservations. She worries that removing the SAT subject tests will create more barriers for her students, rather than less.

"Hundreds of my students take the subject tests in Spanish and other languages because it provides them an opportunity to show their understanding of a second language," explains Cifuentes.

Many of her students speak a second language at home and would be the first in their family to go to college.

She says her college-bound students often enroll in the University of California and California State University systems, which both require two years of coursework in another language for admission. The SAT foreign-language tests sometimes filled that requirement, but the removal of these exams means Cifuentes will have to shift gears.

"We will need to work closely with our world language teachers to expand on ideas ... for students who already read, write and speak another language," she says.

Her job is all about helping school districts adapt to decisions from colleges and organizations like the College Board, Cifuentes explains.

"Every decision they discuss — there's real repercussions. There's no right or wrong decision, but with everything they do, it should be students first."

Eda Uzunlar is an intern on NPR's Education Desk.

Correction Jan. 20, 2021

A previous version of this story misspelled Ashley L. Bennett's name.

​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Freshman: Testing Requirements

The California State University (CSU) no longer uses ACT or SAT examinations in determining admission eligibility for all CSU campuses. If accepted to a CSU campus, ACT or SAT test scores can be used as one of the measures to place students in the proper mathematics and written communication courses.  Visit the  CSU Student Success  site for further information on course placement. For more information on admission criteria, please visit the  First-Time Freshman Guidance  and the  First-Time Freshman Frequently Asked Questions  pages. ​

Testing Requirements​

​freshman prior to admission.

Reporting ACT and SAT Scores

If you choose to take the ACT or SAT tests, you may still report your scores for consideration in course placement.

• Write in your ACT ID correctly onto your Cal State Apply application in the Standardized Tests section. Unsure of your ACT ID? Visit ACT.org.
• On the ACT score report, you should have listed at least one CSU campus, as the score recipient. This will allow the CSU to send the scores to all campuses in which you applied, based on the matching ACT ID number – so make sure you type this in correctly.
• You can check to see if your ACT score has been matched to your Cal State Apply application by logging in and reviewing the Check Status page.

If you notice that your ACT scores have not been attached to your Cal State Apply application, contact the  Applicant Help Center .

• Write in your College Board ID correctly onto your Cal State Apply application in the Standardized Tests section.
• On the College Board score report, you should have listed a CSU campus, or the CSU systemwide institution code (3594), as the score recipient. This will allow the CSU to send the scores to all campuses in which you applied. To check where your scores were sent, or for more information on locating your College Board ID, visit  this page .
• You can check to see if your ACT score has been matched to your Cal State Apply application by logging in and reviewing the Check Status page. If you notice that your ACT scores have not been attached to your Cal State Apply application, contact the ​ Applicant Help Center .​

Students may earn general education or lower-division major credits by taking a CSU-accepted external examination in place of a course.

The CSU faculties have determined the passing scores, minimum units of credit earned, and certification area (for General Education Breadth and/or U.S. History, Constitution, and American Ideals) of standardized external examinations, such as Advanced Placement (AP) , International Baccalaureate (IB) , and College-Level Examination Program (CLEP) .

Each campus in the California State University system determines how it will apply credits earned by external examinations toward the degree major.

GRADES IN “A-G” COURSES

EARLY ASSESSMENT PROGRAM (EAP)

The Early Assessment Program (EAP) lets you know if you are ready for college-level work in English and mathematics at the end of your junior year of high school.

This early signal gives you the chance to improve your skills during your senior year or the summer before attending a CSU or community college.

Learn more about the CSU Early Assessment Program ​

Supportive Pathways for First-Year Students Program

This program offers intentional pathways and support structures for incoming CSU students to prepare them for success before their first day on a CSU campus.

Ready for College Math & English?

Your Early Assessment Program (EAP) results will let you know if you need to participate in the Supportive Pathways for First-Year Students Program the summer before you start college.

The California Promise​ Program

This program enables a specific number of campuses of the CSU to establish pledge programs for first-time students who are interested and able to complete a baccalaureate degree in four years.

Learn More ​​​

After Admission: Placement & Other Tests

The CSU requires new students to be tested in English and mathematics before enrolling at a CSU campus, unless they are exempt by having scored well on specific tests.

Harvard becomes latest Ivy League school to backtrack on SAT admissions requirement

Harvard University and the California Institute of Technology said they plan to reinstate the SAT or ACT as requirements for admission, joining a growing group of elite US schools returning to standardized tests after a pause prompted by the pandemic.

Harvard said the new policy will apply to students seeking admission in fall 2025, backtracking from an earlier decision to make testing optional for several more years. Caltech also said Thursday it would require applicants to submit scores when they apply this fall, a year before its moratorium on testing had been set to expire. 

The schools announced their decisions amid a broader rethinking about standardized tests and after the recruitment landscape shifted after the Supreme Court ruling last June that schools can’t consider race in admissions. Dartmouth, Yale and Brown all recently said they would bring back testing, arguing it can give admissions officers greater context about whether less-privileged applicants are likely to succeed at the schools.  

“Fundamentally, we know that talent is universal, but opportunity is not,” Hopi Hoekstra, dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, said in the statement. “With this change, we hope to strengthen our ability to identify these promising students, and to give Harvard the opportunity to support their development as thinkers and leaders who will contribute to shaping our world.”

Read more: Why US Colleges Are Reviving Standardized Tests: QuickTake

Testing opponents have long argued that the requirement favors wealthier students who can afford tutoring and preparation courses. Prestigious colleges started to bypass testing when it became impractical at the height of the pandemic as test centers closed. 

Since then, however, some of the most elite US schools have grown concerned that not using tests made it harder to identify talented students from less privileged backgrounds. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology restored test requirements two years ago. 

A report last year from Harvard professors including economist Raj Chetty found that standardized tests were important in identifying students from under-resourced schools and that SATs and ACTs were “highly predictive” of post-college outcomes.  

The Harvard Crimson first reported the school’s decision on testing.

Harvard, the oldest and richest US college, said in a statement that test scores are considered along with other information about an applicant’s experiences, skills, talents, and contributions to their communities. The school also assesses academic qualifications relative to students at applicants’ high schools. Yale said when it reinstated testing that scores can help establish a student’s academic preparedness for college-level work.

Yale, MIT and Harvard are among the schools stepping up efforts to recruit students from rural backgrounds who haven’t typically applied to elite colleges. Having a test score lets colleges know more context about an applicant compared to peers from their high school. Harvard said in December that students from rural communities and small towns made up 10% of those accepted to date. 

Harvard is bringing back testing requirements while grappling with changes in recruitment. The school said last month that 54,008 students sought admission for next fall’s freshman class. It was the second consecutive year that undergraduate applications declined. They’ve dropped from 61,220 two years ago, a spike that was helped by scrapping the testing requirements.

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Harvard and Caltech will require test scores for admission again

The colleges join other selective universities that have recently made similar decisions in the wake of new research.

Harvard College will require applicants to submit standardized test scores once again, becoming the latest highly selective school to reinstate the requirement after making the choice optional during the pandemic .

The California Institute of Technology also announced Thursday that, effective immediately, SAT or ACT scores will be required of applicants for undergraduate admission.

Harvard’s undergraduate school had previously said it would remain test-optional through the 2025-2026 application cycle. But on Thursday, it said students applying to the college for fall 2025 admission — hoping to join the graduating class of 2029 — will now have to submit standardized test scores as part of their admissions package.

Dartmouth College , Yale and Brown universities announced similar changes in recent weeks, after officials cited data suggesting that SAT and ACT scores were the best predictors of students’ academic performance at their schools — and that making the tests optional could further disadvantage applicants from more challenging backgrounds.

At Caltech, the highly selective private university in California, applicants’ scores weren’t visible to the admissions office under the moratorium imposed during the pandemic. But an increasing number of applicants had been taking the tests each year, according to university officials. More than 95 percent of the most recently enrolled class took the standardized exam.

Caltech officials said Thursday the decision reaffirms Caltech’s “commitment as a community of scientists and engineers to using all relevant data in its decision-making processes.”

Standardized tests have been debated for decades, with critics saying they added a roadblock for disadvantaged students, among other concerns. When the coronavirus pandemic shut down testing sites across the country, many colleges made the tests optional, and then continued to provide flexibility as they studied the issue.

The changes are another pivot in an unusually tumultuous time for selective college admissions amid fallout from last year’s Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action , and a disastrous rollout of a new federal financial aid form.

Standardized tests are just one part of a package of information applicants send, including grades, essays and recommendation letters. But millions of students study for, take and retake the tests in hopes of optimizing their scores.

Most students who enrolled at Harvard during the test-optional years had submitted test scores with their applications even though they weren’t required, according to the school.

Still, the shift could come as a surprise for some applicants who hadn’t planned to take a test.

In announcing its decision Thursday, university officials cited research by Harvard professors Raj Chetty and David J. Deming, and co-author John N. Friedman of Brown University, who used data from hundreds of universities and more than 3 million undergraduate students per year to explore socioeconomic diversity and admissions.

“Critics correctly note that standardized tests are not an unbiased measure of students’ qualifications, as students from higher-income families often have greater access to test prep and other resources,” Chetty said in a statement Thursday. “But the data reveal that other measures — recommendation letters, extracurriculars, essays — are even more prone to such biases. Considering standardized test scores is likely to make the admissions process at Harvard more meritocratic while increasing socioeconomic diversity.”

In “exceptional cases” when applicants are unable to take the SAT or ACT, the school will accept certain other scores, including AP and IB tests. The policy will be formally assessed at regular intervals, school officials said.

Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Hopi Hoekstra said the tests are a means for all students, regardless of their background and life experience, to provide information predictive of success in college and beyond.

“Indeed, when students have the option of not submitting their test scores,” Hoekstra said in a statement, “they may choose to withhold information that, when interpreted by the admissions committee in the context of the local norms of their school, could have potentially helped their application. In short, more information, especially such strongly predictive information, is valuable for identifying talent from across the socioeconomic range.”

Other highly selective schools remain test-optional, including the University of Chicago, Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania, which announced last month that it would not require the scores for the 2024-25 application cycle. The University of California system is test-blind — schools don’t consider the scores as a factor in admissions.

What does a solar eclipse look like from Mars? NASA shares photos ahead of April 8 totality

Nasa shared timelapses on x of mars' two moons completely separate transits of the sun in preparation for today's north american total solar eclipse..

While we earthlings prepare for a rare total solar eclipse  that will pass over North America, Mars had one of its own earlier this year.

A timelapse of  photos taken by NASA's Perseverance rover Feb. 8  showed the Red Planet's tiny doomed moon Phobos crossing in front of the much-larger sun. One month earlier, Mars' other moon, Deimos, completed a transit of its own.

The U.S. space agency shared timelapses of the incredible celestial events last week in preparation for the total solar eclipse that today will shroud a long swath of the U.S. in uncharacteristic darkness .

By now, the millions of Americans who plan to witness today's total solar eclipse likely have some concept of what's in store . But for those wondering what an eclipse looks like on another planet in the solar system, here's what to know about what Mars experienced.

Solar eclipse experiment: Here's why NASA is launching 3 sounding rockets into space during the total solar eclipse

Mars solar eclipse: See Phobos, Deimos, transiting the sun

From Mars' Jezero Crater, the Perseverance rover, which  landed on the planet in 2021 , captured a series of images on Feb. 8 of the odd-shaped tiny moon Phobos passing in front of the much-larger sun. Engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory later  uploaded 68 images  of the solar eclipse to an online collection.

The rover's left  Mastcam-Z camera  is one of two scouting imagers placed high on the mast of Perseverance that is famous for capturing panoramic landscape views of the Red Planet. On that day, though, the camera was instead angled skyward as the asteroid-sized Phobos passed overhead.

Like Earth, any planet with a moon can experience eclipses . But for planets with moons as small as those of Mars,' the bodies may be either too small or too distant to create a total solar eclipse such as the one  fast approaching Earth .

In the case of Phobos, the Martian moon's size and shape ‒ roughly 17 miles long on its longest side ‒ make it impossible for it to completely cover the sun's disk to create a total solar eclipse on Mars like the one headed Earth's way in only a matter of hours .

Same goes for the smaller Deimos, despite being 16 times closer to the planet than our moon is to Earth. Deimos recently had a transit of the sun of its own in January, a timelapse of which NASA shared Thursday in a thread on the social media site X along with Phobos' eclipse of the sun.

The visuals NASA shared show a silhouette of Deimos, which is just 7.5 miles in diameter, transiting the sun. The transit took about two minutes, though NASA said it sped the video up for social media.

As for Phobos, the transit is shown in real time.

Mars rovers have observed solar eclipses for years

It's not the first time Mars rovers have observed Phobos, which is on a collision course with the Red Planet, crossing in front of the sun. But each time these eclipses are observed, scientists say they can measure subtle shifts in Phobos’ orbit as that fatal day approaches.

While Spirit and Opportunity made the first observations in 2004, it wasn't until 2019 that  Curiosity became the first to record video  of the event, NASA has said.

"Each time these eclipses are observed, they allow scientists to measure subtle shifts in Phobos’ orbit over time,"  NASA explained  after a previous eclipse in 2022. "The moon’s tidal forces pull on the deep interior crust and mantle of the Red Planet; studying how much Phobos shifts over time reveals something about how resistant the crust and mantle are, and thus what kinds of materials they’re made of."

Phobos is on a collision course with Mars

Translated as "fear" in Greek,  Phobos  is one of two Martian moons discovered in 1877 by American astronomer Asaph Hall.

Orbiting Mars three times a day, Phobos is much closer to the planet's surface than its brother Deimos, according to NASA. Gouges from thousands of meteorite impacts mark the moon, which scientists believe was nearly shattered by a giant impact long ago.

But unlike  D e imos  ("dread," in Greek), which is drifting ever-outward and will eventually leave Mars' orbit, Phobos is on a collision course with the Red Planet.

Mars' strong gravity is drawing Phobos about six feet closer to it every century.

Don't worry: The worlds' impending collision won't occur in our lifetime. Sometime within the next 50 million years, the moon is expected to either crash into Mars or break up into a planetary ring like Saturn's.

Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]

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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Saw Working at The National Enquirer During Donald Trump’s Rise’

Inside the notorious “catch and kill” campaign that now stands at the heart of the former president’s legal trial..

By Lachlan Cartwright

Read by David Linski

Produced by Jack D’Isidoro and Aaron Esposito

Narration produced by Anna Diamond

Edited by John Woo

Original music by Aaron Esposito

Engineered by Corey Schreppel and Steven Szczesniak

Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify

At the center of the criminal case against former President Donald Trump in Manhattan is the accusation that Trump took part in a scheme to turn The National Enquirer and its sister publications into an arm of his 2016 presidential campaign. The documents detailed three “hush money” payments made to a series of individuals to guarantee their silence about potentially damaging stories in the months before the election. Because this was done with the goal of helping his election chances, the case implied, these payments amounted to a form of illegal, undisclosed campaign spending. And because Trump created paperwork to make the payments seem like regular legal expenses, that amounted to a criminal effort at a coverup, argued Alvin Bragg, the district attorney of Manhattan. Trump has denied the charges against him.

For Lachlan Cartwright, reading the indictment was like stepping through the looking glass, because it described a three-year period in his own professional life, one that he has come to deeply regret. Now, as a former president faces a criminal trial for the first time in American history, Cartwright is forced to grapple with what really happened at The Enquirer in those years — and whether and how he can ever set things right.

There are a lot of ways to listen to ‘The Daily.’ Here’s how.

We want to hear from you. Tune in, and tell us what you think. Email us at [email protected] . Follow Michael Barbaro on X: @mikiebarb . And if you’re interested in advertising with The Daily, write to us at [email protected] .

Additional production for The Sunday Read was contributed by Isabella Anderson, Anna Diamond, Sarah Diamond, Elena Hecht, Emma Kehlbeck, Tanya Pérez, Frannie Carr Toth and Krish Seenivasan.

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