Should I still take the SAT (even if it's optional)?

Question:

Should I still take the SAT (even if it's optional)?

Answer:

Yes. The only exception would be if it’s optional and you know you’d do poorly on it and you have excellent bona fides otherwise.

Explanation:

While only approximately 20% of four-year colleges currently (as of 2026) require the SAT or ACT, schools still like to see good standardized test scores because it mitigates concerns that your high school education was not rigorous. In other words, how else would a college know if you just took easy classes in high school or went to a school where grade inflation was common? They have to worry about this concern less if you have great grades and you’ve scored well on a standardized test. It’s still a concern (and the converse could also be true—you could have had a very rigorous high school education, but simply performed poorly on the SAT), but it’s a somewhat mitigated concern.

When schools don’t have standardized test scores, they rely on other factors to assess your admissions profile, including:

•  GPA
•  Transcript, including both individual course grades and the types of classes you took
•  Class rank
•  Extracurriculars (clubs, sports, competitions, leadership roles, etc.)
•  Personal essays
•  Letters of recommendation
•  Engagement with your chosen field of study (e.g., building a robot and entering it into a competition if you plan to study robotics)

If these areas are all quite strong, you could probably get away with not taking the SAT. You will almost certainly be more competitive, however, if you do, provided that you score at or above the average score for the school’s admitted applicants from previous years.

If you have taken practice tests and consistently scored below the average score for the school(s) to which you’re applying, then taking it may work against you. It’s even more important in this case to ensure your other qualifications are strong enough to compensate for the concerns a school may have when you choose not to submit standardized test scores.

Finally, remember that you can take the SAT without sharing your scores with any colleges, so there is little downside to taking the test to see how you do, and then submitting later. The cost to send scores later is $15 per school (as of writing in 2026) and you can choose to submit your scores only to the school(s) where you scored at or above the average.