Fall 2020 SAT Update

College Board released more details yesterday regarding their plans for Fall 2020 SAT in the form of both an announcement posted on their site and emails sent out to parents & students. The most important takeaways from these releases are outlined below.

1. The additional fall test date that College Board has mentioned previously is officially scheduled for September 26.

Only the general SAT will be administered on this date; no subject tests will be offered. This means that as of the time of writing, the SAT will be administered once each month from August through December, with the specific dates as follows:

    • August 29 (subject tests offered)
    • September 26 (subject tests not offered)
    • October 3 (subject tests offered)
    • November 7 (US students only; subject tests offered)
    • December 5 (subject tests offered)

CB continues to take pains to emphasize, however, that future test dates will go forward as planned only “if it’s safe from a public health standpoint.”

2. College Board will be prioritizing fall test registrations for students who fall into certain categories.

According to CB’s website, “students can get early access to register for August, September, and October if they’re already registered for June [or] in the high school class of 2021 and don’t have SAT scores.”

Additional details were included in the email that CB sent out to parents and students:

“Registration for the 2020-21 SAT administrations will open in May. At that point, June registrants will be able to transfer their seat to a 2020-21 administration. All other students in the high school class of 2021 who don’t have SAT scores will also have early access to register for the August, September, and October administrations. This includes students who had registered for March or May and had their registrations canceled and refunded. We’ll email you… again during the week of May 26 with the exact date that registration opens.”

3. Efforts are being made to expand testing capacity for the fall.

Unsurprisingly, CB seems to expect a higher-than-usual level of demand for seats at SAT test centers. With 3 cancelled test dates already, only 1 make-up date scheduled to replace them, and over 2 million SAT testers in 2019 (per Fairtest.org), you don’t need an 800 on SAT Math to be able to connect the dots.

To address this, CB is working with its partner institutions to make more seats available:

“For each administration, we’re preparing to significantly expand our capacity for students to take the SAT once schools reopen. We’re calling on our member schools and colleges, as well as local communities, to provide additional test center capacity so every student who wants to take the SAT can do so.”

So what does this mean for you?

College Board has done a fairly good job thus far of being proactively communicative during the COVID crisis, and they appear primed to continue reaching out to parents & students directly with relevant information. Students who are eligible to register early for the fall test dates based on the criteria mentioned earlier should keep a close eye out for a message from CB with further instructions regarding the procedure there.

It’s clear from these messages that CB is trying to ensure that anyone who is registered for a test date that gets cancelled is then first in line to register for the next test. With that in mind, students who are worried about having enough opportunities to test should register for the August test date as soon they’re able; that way, even if the August test is unable to be administered, they’ll be much more likely to secure a spot in one of the later tests.

We also encourage all students to be proactive about monitoring the websites and social media feeds of College Board and the ACT. Yes, it’s incredibly lame to have College Board continually pop up in your Twitter feed; yes, they do tweet way too much. The sooner you learn about any announcements, though, the sooner you can act on them. If you have any specific questions, you can also call CB’s Customer Service department at 866-756-7346 (domestic) or +1-212-713-7789 (international).


And that’s what we’ve got for you today. We’ll continue to make every effort to provide timely updates regarding any future news. In the meantime, stay safe out there.

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