Testing Context and Next Steps

College Advising monitors closely changes to standardized testing including which colleges require testing and how to help each tester leverage their strengths. While there are some colleges which once again require testing, we will work with each student to assess best strategies for their testing profile. As we describe in our testing overview elsewhere on this page, not all college applicants will test or should test. If you are reading this as an ambivalent or soft tester, or if you know already that you would like to put your energies into features of your application other than standardized testing, please apply that perspective and thoughtfulness to the information below. Some students and families believe that having a test score of any kind is still required and yet that belief can distract from other, potentially more important, parts of the application. We will talk about the pros and cons of testing in our future work together.  

Post 11^th-grade PSAT email to families

IMPORTANT:  10TH GRADE PSAT REGISTRATION

10th graders and families, please read in full and then see below for link. Here are some basics to know about the PSAT 10 that Seattle Academy will offer on one date (March 7).

Students will take the test at Seattle Academy on their regular laptop. This requires important additional required steps, outlined here.

• The PSAT 10 is an official College Board exam.
• The PSAT 10 is not required. No colleges will see the scores. It is strictly for practice. 
• While you may hear that other 10th graders choose to take this optional PSAT 10 (practice SAT), the choice to take it is an individual one and each year less than half of any grade chooses to take a practice test.
• Schools tend to choose one date on which they will offer the PSAT 10 which in our case is March 7. There are no alternatives to this date and there will be no make-up testing.
• There are, however, other ways to practice testing which students sometimes prefer (more on those in a moment).
• If you choose to test, registration is required. Register here by January 31. This is a firm deadline which allows us to transmit tester information to College Board for processing in time for the exam. After 5:00 PM on January 31 the form should no longer work. After that time, please see below for other practice test opportunities. 
• No walk-ins are allowed. 
• Testers will arrive at the Madison Building (1001 BOYLSTON AVE, SEATTLE, WA 98104) at 8:15 AM, like a regular school day, unless you are testing with accommodations and receive different instructions. Standard-time testers should expect to be picked up around 11:30 AM. Find standard timing of the exam here. We will provide parking information to testers closer to the exam. 
• Testers are required to download the app Bluebook to their usual laptop before test day. Doing this should also allow the student to run a “readiness check” before test day and also practice using Bluebook. This necessary step reinforces preparedness ahead of test day necessary for future standardized tests. Testers should run a minimum of Windows 10. Other device readiness details are here. 
• It is important to bring a fully charged laptop and cord to the exam. It has been helpful for students to completely “power down” their computers and restart them before arriving. 
• We will not have extra power cords available.
• Consider bringing your own calculator, which is allowed (a digital calculator is also built into the exam). We will not have extra calculators available on test day.
• Students are responsible for what to bring on test day. 
• Prohibited devices/supplies are listed here.
• Reach out to usaccommodations@seattleacademy.org if you have questions about how your accommodations work with this exam. More information is available here. The deadline to request accommodations for this exam is January 12. If you make a request after this date, you are still able to test without accommodations as long as you register for the test at the link above by January 31. 

Students have other options to practice their testing. Each fall, students may take a free unofficial practice ACT or SAT remotely through Compass Testing. Compass Testing and other test prep providers also offer fee-based practice tests. We will offer the PSAT 11 again in the fall of 2025.

In particular, 11th graders curious about testing may want to sign up for and take an official SAT beginning in the winter (register here when available) or ACT (register here when available) exams. If you are considering taking an SAT or ACT with accommodations, please check here. While the winter certainly isn’t the only time to take a first exam, registration is sometimes easier in December, for example, and testing at this time may yield official results you can bring to your college advisor for advice and next steps. With either the PSAT or an official exam, you may be able to determine whether you should:

• Keep prepping and testing for additional/future tests
• Stop because you have a sufficient score
• Discontinue prepping and testing because your application will emphasize other strengths

Please see the calendar widget on the College Advising grade level pages for information about ACT 101 and SAT 101 virtual programs we are offering  in January (registration required).

If you have questions about AP testing or registration, please go here. 

All grades

Well before the pandemic, approximately 1000 colleges, many of them well known, had already adopted test optional policies. Working in College Advising at Seattle Academy has always meant advising strategically a wide range of student testing profiles relative to a variety of college testing policies. Our current test advising relies on that long experience and attention to college behaviors.

Changes to colleges’ use of standardized testing mean Seattle Academy testers (current or potential) fall into three strategic groups. Our experience has been that none of these groups is at a particular advantage over the other. Students should choose based on what is best for them:

• Some students who know testing is not for them now have sufficient test optional college options that they can opt out of testing entirely if they wish.
• Some students have always been exceptionally strong testers and know that they would like standardized testing to be part of their application profile.
• Some students have mixed feelings about testing, either they are unsure whether they should test and would like to explore it more, or would like to take an exam that they may or may not send to colleges pending College Advising’s advice. 

As with all things, we coach our 11th and 12th grade college advisees as individuals with many strengths. We bring to those meetings information about how high test scores need to be (near or above the middle 50% for each college at that link) to be additive (or even “submittable”) for particular college applications. The majority of our students have grades and stories so compelling that they may choose to emphasize these strengths and not send scores. In general, test scores alone did not seem variables that “moved the needle” for recent graduating classes. Scores certainly did not supersede strong grades, compelling classes, rich stories, and the use of strategies like carefully chosen Early Decision colleges. Students with perfect scores were not admitted at their favorite colleges while students without perfect scores who did not submit them were admitted at their first choice colleges. Just having a score, especially “at any cost,” was not key to a college of choice. 

Again this fall Seattle Academy has arranged testing programs to suit a range of students and families. Our dynamic guest speaker and test prep expert will present to all upper school grades in November (see calendar widgets at the bottom of the grade level pages at right). We will record this presentation. We are also making available optional virtual practice SAT and ACT exams to 10th and 11th graders and an optional on-campus PSAT for 11th graders. 

Testing with accommodations requires evaluations sometimes with significant advanced notice. For additional information about this please contact Seattle Academy Accommodations at usaccommodations@seattleacademy.org.