How long does it take for SAT scores to be sent?

drusba
Thu, 17 Oct 2013 16:57:09 +0000

What usually happens in the modern world of electronic delivery:

College Board’s method of sending schools now is via electronic delivery and for most, if not all colleges, that now means the college has a secure electronic on-line account with CB and CB “sends” scores by putting them in that electronic account. That now includes the method for doing rush deliveries, which are no longer mailed. (Several years back what CB did to get laggard colleges to convert to this method of on-line delivery was establish fee schedules for colleges which charged a college less per applicant score for the on-line account/electronic delivery than the amounts it charged for any other forms of delivery).

If you identify the college as one to automatically receive scores in your test registration for an SAT or SAT subject tests, e.g., as one of your free sends, then, absent some reason for delay, such as suspected cheating or a system failure, the scores will be put into the applicable college’s on-line account on, or up to two days before, the day scores are released on-line to you. That is the fastest form of delivery for any test that you you will be taking and that designation must be made by the second Monday after the Saturday (or Sunday for some) that you take the test.

If you wait until scores are released to send scores then you have the choice of regular delivery for a fee, or rush delivery, for a more outrageous fee. How long that can take varies. If you are ordering scores at a calm time and not right after the scores for any test have been released, then regular delivery likely will not take more than three days to process and get the scores into the college’s account and rush delivery possibly a day quicker. If you order scores right after test scores have been released, then regular delivery can be anywhere from two days to a a little more than a week and rush delivery about a day less in the same period. It just depends on how fast they can process orders since CB gets many thousands of them right after scores come out.

Because of electronic delivery, your score will have been delivered to the college once it is placed in the college’s on-line account. As to the college actually doing what is necessary to download scores and show them as received in the applicant’s on-line application file, that time varies. Some download daily, others weekly, some wait even longer between downloads, and then it can take a day to even another week before the college actually shows receipt in the applicant’s file.