You prep…you get there…you wait in line like a rock concert with 1000 kids …Wi-Fi fail. What a joke of a system.
Officially cancelled. Test optional for us.
I’m sorry that happened, I’m familiar with how this feels, I had 2 2021 HS graduates, first test canceled the day before, my kids spent time with a tutor and were very prepared. Canceled again the next month, and then the next month, and the next. One was just planning on our flagship and they barely give merit, but my daughter wanted OOS so needed a good score. Ended up with a 33, she pretty much gave up after months of studying and getting cancelled. By the time they were actually able to test (after driving to test centers out of our local area) they had stopped prepping altogether.
Having a score can help with acceptances and merit.
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Why optional ? There are other tests. At some schools it’s required or helps. So depends on your list.
I would expect OP would have a difficult time finding an SAT test opening near SF for the rest of the year. (But they should still take a look.)
Some west coast counselors sent this letter to CollegeBoard:
Dear David Coleman, President Jeremy Singer, and the College Board,
We are writing on behalf of the Seattle Area Independent Schools (SAIS) and Bay Area Independent School College Counselors (BAISCC) to address our growing concerns about test center availability for the SAT up and down the West Coast. We know the students at our schools/organizations aren’t the only ones impacted by the College Board’s negligence, but we are the institutions with the capacity and resources to speak up.
For nearly a decade, students at our schools have experienced trouble finding accessible test centers. Over the last eight years, with even more acute issues recently, thousands of students in both the Seattle and San Francisco Bay Area (which encompasses multiple, large municipalities) have experienced countless issues: same-day test cancellation, the misplacement of testing materials, inconsistent test site procedures and start time delays, and, most egregious, a complete absence of test sites within 100 miles of students’ homes and schools. These incidents caught the attention of The Seattle Times and resulted in an article titled Students left scrambling after SAT unexpectedly canceled twice at Franklin High School in Seattle in September 2019. The Seattle incident follows on the heels of a similar 2015 incident in San Francisco. In March 2024, the same issues persisted. Communication regarding test sites has been, and continues to be, abysmal.
In this past academic school year, fewer than 24 hours after the College Board released an email on May 23 titled “August–December Weekend SAT Registration Is Now Open,” Seattle students’ only options for the August SAT exam were six locations ranging from Arlington (55 miles north) to Moses Lake (178 miles east) and Vancouver (165 miles south). This was confirmed after speaking with a representative from the College Board. Over the last year in the San Francisco Bay Area, students have been repeatedly faced with finding transportation to Vacaville (70 miles northeast of San Francisco) or contending with the time and expense of flying or driving hundreds of miles to the next-closest testing locations in Southern California. These are not isolated incidents, and they do not support the College Board’s message of equity and access.
Some students, as per the stories above, have resigned themselves to taking exams hours away from home, sometimes even in a different state. Many students, however, don’t own a car or have a parent or guardian who can drive them for hours to take the exam. In affluent communities, this is a logistical hurdle. However, for most families, travel of this nature is prohibitive to taking the exam. Schools have therefore been strong-armed into offering the SAT during the school day, given the dearth of weekend test sites. The College Board is stealing time away from learning and the meaningful substance of a high school education. This standard is atrocious.
Planning, proctoring, and overseeing access to these exams is a logistical nightmare, and most importantly, not the responsibility of a high school or its staff. Since colleges request test scores and the College Board acts as the agent for the colleges, high schools should not be responsible to shoulder the burden, especially without compensation from the College Board. Colleges and the College Board need to assume responsibility for the administration of the exam, including hosting, proctoring, and managing the SAT in its entirety.
If colleges want to see these tests accessed equitably, it should fall on the colleges or the College Board to host or manage test center sites. The College Board seems able to outsource the exam to readily available test centers, similar to those offered for takers of the LSAT, MCAT, or GRE. In the absence of consistently accessible test centers, the College Board must act on what representatives have referred to as “actively seeking test centers” and produce testing sites and proctors for students to take their exams.
The “equity” that many colleges have cited as a reason for bringing back standardized testing does not make sense for students unable to gain access to these exams. As college counselors, we have experienced firsthand the frustration of sitting with a student as they try to register for an SAT, well in advance of the registration deadline, only to see “no test center available on this date”— or, if they are “lucky,” a test center many miles away, perhaps only accessible by ferry or requiring an overnight stay in a costly hotel accompanied by a parent or guardian.
When we share these stories with colleges and universities, they are shocked. All they see is a test score, if a student was able to secure one, and not the reality of the often physically taxing process of acquiring the test score. We’re not talking about intellectual capacity or academic ability here, but the grueling hoops, barriers, and inequity involved in gaining access to standardized testing on the West Coast.
A recent Washington Post article stated, “Researchers at Dartmouth concluded that scores were one of the best indications of success in college — and helpful in identifying first-generation and low-income high school hopefuls.” What is missing here are the lost students: those unable to even get their hands on a standardized test in the first place. How is this equitable?
We ask the College Board to:
- Book and staff test centers so students can take the exam with ease
- Coordinate with colleges and universities to offer standardized testing
- Communicate when new test sites are available within a reasonable timeframe
Incessant emails and phone calls to the College Board are no longer enough to document the lack of standardized testing sites. We’ve raised the access issue to the College Board’s attention many times and have communicated the severe lack of testing to college officials through conversations and school profiles. It is essential for colleges to consider a student’s ability to find an SAT test center as they consider the move back to requiring standardized testing. It is hypocritical for the College Board to claim to champion access, equity, and inclusion yet ignore the real inability of many students to successfully register for and sit for an exam.
Sincerely,
Seattle Area Independent Schools
Bay Area Independent School College Counselors
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Too funny. Parents and school systems in some of the poorest and most remote places on Earth-Kyrgyzstan, Vietnam, Jordan-manage to operate multiple functional test centers, but large school systems on the US West Coast can’t handle it. The College Board is not going to bail them out.
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Wow. I had no idea this was such a huge problem. Our state(Illinois) requires a SAT for HS graduation requirement. The schools administer a test during a school day. No wonder UC admissions is test blind.
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It doesn’t matter what any of us think about the roles of the HS, counselors, college, CB and/or colleges in providing and ensuring access to the SAT test.
What’s important is that the system is not working for many students, and as always a dysfunctional system harms relatively low income students to a greater degree. And certainly limits OP options to get another test.
To take one example, I don’t really understand how people expect social emotional counselors to run SAT testing, and in many California HSs that’s exactly what’s resulted in relatively few HSs running tests over the last decade or so. That’s not the only issue, but it’s a significant one.
That is good, but it doesn’t cover private and parochial schools, and the students don’t have to satisfy the requirement until graduation (potentially too late for college admissions.)
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All the private and parochial schools I know also provide the free test during the school week. And most schools do it in spring of junior year.
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My D25 had issues with the wifi today too. Luckily they got it up in running just 2 minutes before they were going to have to cancel it (9:13).
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1900 kids and only 400 could take it?? This was my second time taking the test and both times we had internet issues. Fortunately, it was sorted within an hour back in March (this was the first time it was done digitally, too, so theoretically it should’ve gone better this time around). I feel like the organization was done extremely poorly and this all could’ve been avoided if the communication had been better from the get go.
It isn’t a dysfunctional system; it is exactly the system the citizens of those school districts want, vote for, and pay for. Obviously they could change things if they wanted to do so; they are no less competent, and often better funded, than the citizens in 48 other states ( and 179 foreign countries) who administer the test effectively. If those systems choose not to do so, it is not the College Board’s role to provide an end-run around that system.
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Welcome back. I missed your insights and empathetic tone.
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It’s literally the College Board’s test and their problem. It’s not like this is state testing, it’s a company that foists its tests onto our students
The SAT is not the responsibility of schools to provide. It is College Board’s responsibility
Not accurate. Many schools in CA offer the test during the school day. My kid took PSAT in 10th, can choose PSAT or SAT in 11th and SAT in 12th. The issue is the ability to take extra tests to improve scores etc. It’s a college board racket
Many epic fails
A) there was a loud party going on in ball room disturbed the small number of students who had wifi
B) toilets not sufficient
The staff didn’t even know about hotel
C) they made parents students run around three times even for check-in of the few hundred up and down and the elevator did not work in one direction
D) the contractor or people handling the Crowd are not from hotel and they have no idea - some kind of minimal wage people hired
They are totally clueless
E) total chaos
It is an optional test. The local schools there do not require it. Literally millions of parents in far more dire situations than living in the Bay area manage to host it, so the College Board is unlikely to subsidize it there when it does not do so, in, say, the Mekong Delta. Nor should it-there are far more needy cases to worry about. Empathy is for those who are in need and didnt choose to be in this situation.
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You can always take the ACT or go test optional.
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There are relatively fewer ACT test seatings on the west coast as compared to SAT. Only 4% of Cali HS students class of 2023 took an ACT.
Test optional is not an option if one wants to apply to FL or TN publics, some GA publics, several Ivy League schools, MIT, Georgetown or the military academies.
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