Education in a North American secondary school lasts 12 years, but the country's universities are ready to consider a certificate of graduation from a secondary school (where educational period lasts 11 grades) as a document that the applicant has a complete secondary education and, as a result, the qualification is sufficient to pursue higher education. The only thing is that until recently, such applicants had to provide the admissions committee with the results of the SAT, the Scholastic Aptitude Test, a nationwide test for school graduates.
The SAT is divided into two categories:
- General, aka reasoning test, in which knowledge of mathematics and English is assessed through testing and text analysis, respectively;
- Subject : allows you to assess the quality of preparation in a specific profile.
Until recently, these tests were equally mandatory for both US citizens and foreign students, and the cooler the university to which the applicant applied, the higher the probability that, along with the general test, a subject test (and more often several at once) would also be required.
For example, to study in the most popular and competitive, competitive areas at Ivy League universities (for example, business or economics at Harvard or Yale), it was necessary to provide the results of "subject" tests in mathematics and economics + another exact science to choose from.
This requirement has long caused discussions in the academic environment. Critics of the model argued that the format puts foreign applicants in discriminatory conditions:
- Tests are taken on strictly allotted days around the world, regardless of the specifics of the calendar of specific countries. There are eight such days in total, four in autumn and four in spring, which may not be very convenient for foreign applicants.
- American high school students learn to take the SAT for 2-3 years - these classes are a separate lesson for them, in fact, we are talking about "preparation" to successfully pass the exam. Foreigners, of course, are deprived of such lessons.
However, the decisive argument was not these discriminatory factors, but the corruption scandal that broke out in 2018 at Harvard University. There it turned out that you can increase your chances of successful admission not only by bringing good exam results to the admissions committee, but also by giving it to whomever is due. Therefore, soon after that (chronologically, the event coincided with the beginning of the pandemic), the most prestigious American universities began to abandon the SAT as a mandatory requirement for applicants one after another.
So the SAT became optional. However, most applicants from abroad continued to take this test, just in case, especially since it became another opportunity to confirm not only their perseverance and determination, but also the full compliance of their certificate with American standards.
In 2019-2021, the test was not taken at all, all American universities accepted students without the SAT: this exam was always held in person, and against the backdrop of the pandemic, the organizers decided that it was too much. When the pandemic was gone, the exam was back for everyone.
So do foreign students applying to the United States need an SAT?
Is the game worth the candle and is such a test needed at all? And if so, for what?
The answer is rather affirmative:
- The SAT allows you to "equalize" your education of a native school with 12 years of high school in the United States,
- These tests very often help to get a scholarship. At some universities, the amount of the scholarship and the opportunity of awarding it are directly related to the average GPA and SAT test scores.
