California students struggle to find SAT spots: Like ‘snagging tickets to a Taylor Swift concert'
Some elite universities have been trending away from test-optional policies for admissions
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}High school students in California are having difficulties finding open spots to take the SAT with only a few locations open to serve thousands of people, according to a recent report.
"It was my first and only chance to take it for the school year, and I was fairly pissed off because I had other plans that I canceled in order to keep the test," high school student Alice Onderwater told SFGate. "I had been ready for the test."
College and school counselors in California penned a letter to the College Board, the organization that administers the SAT, to complain about the lack of opportunities to take the test, the outlet reported.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}SAT DEFENDED FROM 'MISGUIDED' ATTACKS AS TEST INCREASINGLY BECOMES OPTIONAL FOR STUDENTS
High school students in California are having difficulties finding open spots to take the SAT with only a few locations open to serve thousands of people. (Getty Images)
The letter called finding an open spot for the SAT a "logistical nightmare."
"If colleges want to see these tests accessed equitably, it should fall on the colleges or the College Board to host or manage test center sites," the letter said.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}High school student Sebastian Gillmore wrote an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times explaining the lengths some students go just to secure a spot for the SAT.
"I went on the College Board site to register for the June SAT the first hour of the first day that students could sign up," Gillmore wrote in May. "But within minutes, all the seats in my county and across Northern California were gone. Registering for the SAT in the Bay Area is as difficult as snagging tickets to a Taylor Swift concert."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Dartmouth College was the first Ivy League school to reinstate standardized testing requirements in February. (Bing Guan/Bloomberg)
Some students are using the SAT to gain a competitive edge as colleges backtrack from test-optional policies, again requiring standardized test scores for admission.
"There’s not a specific school I’m looking to, but I’m really taking the SAT because there’s so many schools that are going back and making the SAT not optional," Onderwater told SFGATE.
Dartmouth College, Yale University, MIT, the University of Texas at Austin and other major universities have all announced that they would require test scores for students after adopting test-optional policies.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Dartmouth was the first Ivy League school to reinstate standardized testing requirements in February.
"Nearly four years later, having studied the role of testing in our admissions process … we believe a standardized testing requirement will improve — not detract from — our ability to bring the most promising and diverse students to our campus," the college announced.
Brown University also recently announced it would return to standardized testing requirements for first-year students. The policy will begin with the class of 2029.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The College Board told Fox News Digital in a statement that "student demand has exceeded capacity for SAT weekend administrations in California’s Bay Area because of a shortage of high schools and other institutions willing to serve as SAT Weekend test centers."
"We continue to work to add more test centers in California as well as encourage schools to participate in SAT School Day, the in-school testing program," the statement continued.
Fox News' Nikolas Lanum contributed to this report.
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