As college application season is approaching for the Class of 2023, many colleges now have different requirements due to prolonged effects of the pandemic. When the pandemic hit, students couldn’t go in to take their SAT’s or ACT’s. Therefore, colleges stopped requiring students to submit their scores when applying for college.

However, now that the pandemic is over, students can go take their tests. But at many colleges submitting scores is optional. That’s good news for people like me who are bad at test taking. Fortunately I have participated in numerous extracurricular activites and I work hard to earn good grades. But when it comes to taking my SAT’s, I get test anxiety and don’t perform as well on that exam as colleges want me to. Though I wish I had an extremely high score to submit on college applications, I don’t. But the good news is that colleges are looking at more than your test scores. 

Eliminating the requirement of submitting test scores benefits students whose excellence is not measured by a single test. A simple test score shouldn’t be a deciding factor for colleges. It should be the years and years of hard work, leadership, extracurriculars, passions, and many other factors that colleges should make their decisions based off of. 

Clearly, colleges are thinking the same way because as of right now, two-thirds of all college applications have made the submission of scores optional for 2022 applications. Top tier, Ivy colleges such as Harvard and the University of California system have made it optional as well! So if you don’t have a high test score, but if you are working hard, and you are in the class of 2023, make sure to know all of your options before submitting college apps.