The junior class of 2025 at Jackson-Reed High School in Washington, D.C., recently took the SAT standard exam on campus.

The test was first introduced by the College Board in 1926 and has experienced various tweaks ever since, often changing every few years to better evaluate a student's academic abilities. During Covid, most colleges and universities waived the requirement for an SAT altogether, however, schools are starting to require standardized tests again. This is a good time to consider if the test is an equitable assessment of a student’s academic abilities and future success. 

The SAT represents a financially burdensome process for many students and families due to its associated costs. From registration fees, to preparatory materials and tutoring sessions, the cumulative costs of preparing for the SAT are not feasible for many students and families across the United States. In addition, the quality of schools across the country varies greatly, so some students are more prepared than others for the exam. 

Some schools offer a complementary SAT exam, but it is often the case that students take the exam two or three times in order to receive optimal test scores. With each individual SAT comes a registration fee of $60, $30 fee for late registration, an additional $25 to change your testing location, or a $35 charge to cancel the registration. Affording these costs is a burden for many Americans. Low and middle income families don’t receive the same opportunities as children from high-income families since the expenses associated with taking the SAT dissuade many students from retaking the test and increasing exam scores.

Students from wealthier families can afford expensive SAT preparatory classes that other students cannot. For example, SAT tutoring company Kaplan chargers $799 for an online course. Private tutors can be in the thousands of dollars. These expenses can serve as barriers to achieving high scores on the exam, especially for those who come from low-income backgrounds. 

David Deming, the Isabelle and Scott Black Professor of Political Economy and the Academic Dean of the Harvard Kennedy School, wrote, “For children from the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution, only about a quarter of them take an SAT or ACT test. Among those, only about 2.5 percent score 1300 or higher. You can see right there what we’re up against in terms of economic inequality in college admissions and success in college and in life.”

In a recent study, Opportunity Insights, a group of academics and policy analysts located at Harvard University dedicated to identifying barriers to economic opportunity, discovered that children from the wealthiest one percent of American families were 13 times more likely than those from low-income homes to achieve a score of 1300 or above on the SAT/ACT. 

Although some may argue that the SAT is an accurate prediction for a student's future success in college, others argue that this test fails to accurately measure the intellect of a student, being that there are only a few specific criteria that the test evaluates. The SAT only tests students on reading comprehension, grammar and math from courses that they may have taken three years ago. The quality of those classes can vary depending on the school and educator. Once again, students from private schools or wealthier areas benefit from better schools. 

In February, Dartmouth, Yale, and Brown announced that they reinstated admission requirements that applicants submit standardized test scores, ending pandemic-era policies that made submission optional. The California State University system permanently removed SAT and ACT scores from its admissions requirements. Different schools are making different decisions. Before other schools decide to reinstate the SAT testing policy again it must be made clear that the test adds another barrier to low-income students gaining acceptance to these elite institutions.

Instead of college acceptance being weighed by a test which the wealthy, the College Board should eliminate the SAT, or college admission committees should not consider a student based off of their score. Other aspects of a student's application should be weighed higher to replace the importance of the SAT. For example, AP tests which are college-level courses, personal essays, extra-curricular activities, and teacher recommendations should replace the SAT. No money is required to succeed in these areas. The student must be diligent, pay attention in class, and be involved in their community, not have their parents spend thousands of dollars to enhance their score.