JUNE SAT CANCELED–MAKEUPS SCHEDULED

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As many of you know, the June SAT has been canceled. The SAT announced some bold plans to help students left in the lurch (some April, all of May and June test-takers). Quarantine permitting, they will offer an SAT every month in the fall starting in August, and those SATs will have increased capacity to deal with the bottleneck of students.

If things are not back to normal in August, the SAT will roll out in-home testing. The College Board (maker of the SAT) also administers the AP exams, so they’ll have a partial run-through this may. I expect the in-home SAT to be more secure and follow the traditional format of the SAT (unlike the abbreviated AP exams) Details are scant at present, though I anticipate that the security will look much like the recently introduced GRE, GMAT, and TOEFL.

If that’s the case, students will need to take the exam in a room alone, with no headphones, no food or drink, and they will be required to use a computer–probably not a tablet. The GRE and GMAT require PC’s and do not allow the use of Mac or Linux systems. Students would need a webcam that can show the entire room, and they would be monitored by a live proctor. The proctor would also have remote access to the student’s computer, able to see their screen and take control of the computer should circumstances warrant.

WHAT ABOUT THE ACT?
The ACT announced, not-so-coincidentally, today that they would be offering flexible scheduling and adding test dates in the fall. They also have the ACT On Campus solution (where students can test on college campuses) which gives them an easier time–most likely–in dealing with overflow. They too said they’ll be ready for in-home testing later in the fall should it be necessary.

At present, students can reschedule any June or July test date without cost and the June 13 test date is proceeding as scheduled.

TEST OPTIONAL
So, will this lead to a bunch of schools jumping on the test-optional bandwagon? Some, for sure. At present we’ve seen about 30 go that way, at least for a year. I don’t think we’re at the tipping point where colleges run to it en masse.

The schools we’ve seen go test-optional have been either very selective private schools or low-selectivity schools. The exceptions are some of the state university systems in the west, where the virus hit early and harder. I expect you won’t see the bulk of schools in the middle, or most elite schools, go that route. Unless things continue to be shut down through the end of summer. In that event, colleges are going to have much bigger problems on their hands and it’ll be tough to predict what they do.