What do I do after my SAT or ACT?

Many sources provide you information about the preparations and studying you need to perform before your test date, but it is also important to consider what you need to do after your test.

If you know what colleges you want to apply to and are confident that you received a good score on the test, you can send four free score reports to those colleges up to 9 days after your test date. The only issue with this is that you won’t know your score on the SAT/ACT before you send it to your college of choice, so you may want to wait to see if your score is within the range the college is looking for and pay the $12 or $13 fee to send them. In most cases, it is better to know your score before sending it.

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many colleges are making the SAT/ACT optional or even waiving it for admission. Therefore, you will need to take a look at the colleges you want to apply to and decide whether you should send your scores, or even take the SAT or ACT exam again. If you think your score is high and will benefit your application, then we recommend sending it. Showing colleges that you went the extra mile to study for and take these exams will more likely help than hurt your application.

Finally, you should use your score reports for the SAT/ACT tests to guide your future studying and your decision in whether to take the exam again. The score report breaks down your performance in each section/topic, so you can identify which areas you did well in and where you need to improve. Then, you can focus your studying mostly on the areas that you can significantly improve, to increase your score by a larger margin.

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