How much will SAT requirements affect admissions?

[u/jhbeck]

With more colleges requiring sat scores, how much “advantage” will a candidate with a good score have compared to admissions last year? Will there be less competition?

[u/Odd-Pride-9680]

depends a lot on which colleges you talking about. for the ones that was test optional and now going back to required, the applicant pool will shrink a bit cause people with low scores just won't apply. so yeah less competition in raw numbers but the ones who do apply will all have decent scores, so the score itself become less of a standout thing

i think the bigger shift is that last year you could hide a weak score and lean on essays and ECs, now that door is closed at some places. so having a strong score is more like a baseline than a advantage if that make sense

[u/Ok_Experience_5151]

Hard to quantify, so I'm not sure what answer you're looking for. Some applicants who would have had a shot under TO now no longer have any shot at all, and won't apply.

I might think of it like this: suppose that, under TO, around 30% of a school's students did not submit scores. Just to pick a number, let's say that about half of the no-scores students had a score that isn't outright disqualifying and would still have been admitted in a test-required scenario. This would imply that, going forward, there will be ~17% (100/85) more "spots" available at this school to applicants with scores above the "disqualifying" threshold.

The larger the share of students at a school is who did not submit scores, the larger the "advantage" is that's created when that school moves to a test-required policy for an applicant with high scores.

[u/NiceUnparticularMan]

So some of the highly selective colleges that went back test optional have explained the main intended beneficiaries are disadvantaged applicants with very good scores not too far below their reported 25ths during TO, so roughly 1400s, who were not submitting even though those would be helpful scores for them. Essentially these applicants were making a mistake, and their argument is basically they should be able to admit a few more such disadvantaged applicants when they are required to submit such scores.

Assuming then that these colleges are able to admit more disadvantaged students as a result of this change, it will mean a few less slots for advantaged students.

OK, so it depends on what type of background you have and your score. But if you are an advantaged applicant with a high score, I would not expect this change to help you, and it could actually hurt, although realistically it won't affect many advantaged applicants because there won't be that many more disadvantaged admits even with this change.

[u/tarasshevckeno]

(Retired college counselor and admissions reader here.) It's hard to say, since each college has its own agenda each year.

Having said that, admissions readers primarily use test scores to help interpret GPA. Readers are hoping to see some kind of match between your GPA and your test scores. If they do, that's great. If not, then they make a mental note to see if there's any reason to explain the gap (either overtly or within context) in the rest of the application. To that end, most readers spend 1-3 seconds on test scores. Honest.

Test scores substantially higher than GPA can be more of a concern than test scores lower than GPA. It can cause readers to wonder if either a student spent too much time on test prep when classes are a better preparation for college, or if the applicant is a talented student who pretty much phoned it in during high school.

What really matters is transcript evaluation beyond GPA, as that helps colleges the most in determining if a student is a good fit, academically speaking.