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Thinking about tackling the SAT Essay? Here's what you need to know: you'll be asked to read a text (typically a speech or editorial of some sort) and discuss how the author effectively builds an argument. This might be a familiar task if you’ve done it in school, but if not, don’t worry. The format is straightforward, and with some practice, you can learn how to write a great SAT essay.

What is the SAT essay?

The SAT essay is optional and costs an additional fee of $17.00. Currently, only 25 colleges and universities require the SAT essay. You can find a searchable list of school requirements for the essay here . If there is any chance that you might apply to one of those schools, you should sign up for the essay. If you are not sure where you will apply, you should strongly consider signing up for the essay. Your essay score will appear on every score report you send to colleges, regardless of whether or not the school requires an essay. 

Here are 5 tips for writing a killer SAT essay, should you decide to add on that section:

1. Stay Objective

The thing to remember here is that ETS (the company that writes the test) is not asking you for your opinion on a topic or a text. So be sure to maintain formal style and an objective tone. Tip: Avoid “I” and “you.

2. Keep It Tidy

Handwriting is becoming a lost art. Unfortunately, this is one occasion where your skill with a pencil matters. Graders read tons of essays each day. If they cannot decipher your script, they will lower your score. Do yourself a favor and write legibly.

3. (Indented) Paragraphs Are Your Friend

Remember the basic essay structure you learned in school: introductory paragraph, body paragraphs and a conclusion? The SAT essay graders love it! Your introduction should describe the text and paraphrase the argument being made, as well as introduce the specific elements of the passage and argument that you will discuss in the essay. Your conclusion should restate the goal of the passage/argument and sum up the points you made.

Read More: SAT Tips and Strategies

4. For Example…

Use your body paragraphs to back up your thesis statement by citing specific examples. Use short, relevant quotes from the text to support your points.

5. Don't Worry About the Exact Terms for Things

Blanking on terminology? When describing how the author builds his or her argument, “appeal to the emotions” is fine instead of specifically referencing “pathos.” And “comparison of two things” can be used instead of referring to a metaphor. If you do know the official terms, though, feel free to use them!

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Absolutely Essential SAT Writing Strategies

tl;dr: The SAT essay is graded on three metrics — Reading, Analysis, and Writing — each on a scale from 1-4. To score an 8/8/8 on the SAT essay, you need to understand the rubric and keep in mind the three important parts of the essay: analyzing the prompt, outlining, and writing. Analyzing the prompt requires you to identify the author’s claim, purpose, tone, and persuasive elements that help build the argument. Outlining helps you answer the three questions for each device—why, how, and affect—to ensure you have strong analysis. Finally, when writing the essay, make sure to include an introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion. With these tips, you can write a great SAT essay and get the top score!

❓ What are the SAT Sections?

In the SAT, you will have 4-5 sections on the test (depending on whether you choose to take the essay section or not)! The sections are:

• Check out this video with an overview of the reading section of the SAT .
• Writing and Language (aka the Grammar section)
• Make sure to watch this video with tips and tricks for the grammar section of the SAT .
• Math (No-Calculator)
• Review the important aspects of the math section with this SAT math review part 1 and part 2 .
• Math (Calculator Allowed)
• Writing/Essay (⚠️OPTIONAL ⚠️)

If you signed up for the essay portion of the SAT, you have a relaxing 2-minute break after the math calculator section. You're going to need it, as you have 50 minutes to write a rhetorical analysis essay. ⏲️

If you are taking AP Lang or have already taken the exam, you should be pretty familiar with this format of essay. It is very similar to FRQ 2, or the rhetorical analysis essay. 📰

✍️ Mastering the Rubric

Your essay is graded on these three metrics on a scale from 1-4:

Two readers will score your essay , so the highest score you can receive is an 8 on each of the three sections. Unlike the other SAT sections, there is no percentile for the SAT essay nor a composite score (the three categories aren't "added"). 💯 Let's break down each of these three scoring categories and how you can score an 8 in all three.

This scoring category covers comprehension! Essentially, the scorers want to see if you understand the relationship between the main idea(s) and important details. To get an 8 in this scoring category, you cannot misstate facts from the passage, nor make an interpretation about facts not in the passage.

One of the main things that SAT Essay scorers will check is to ensure you have textual evidence (quotations and/or paraphrases) throughout the essay to ensure that you have a true understanding of the text. 📚

What separates an 8 from a lower score in this category is whether you have thorough (as opposed to effective) comprehension of the text and whether you are making skillful (as opposed to appropriate) use of textual evidence. The line between thorough and skillful is drawn at your consistency; if you make a misrepresentation of text in just one place, that may lower you to a 6.

To earn a 8 in the analysis category, you should be accomplishing the following:

• Offering an insightful analysis of source text.
• Evaluating the author's choice of evidence, reasoning, stylistic & persuasive elements, and/or other features that you noticed.
• Using relevant, sufficient, and strategically chosen support for your claims or points.
• Consistently focusing on features that are most relevant to addressing the task.

What separates an 8 in analysis from a lower score is whether you have strategically chosen support for claims and whether your essay is consistent in its analysis and its focus on "features most relevant to addressing the task."

The writing rubric category is exactly what it sounds like—checking your ability to write an essay! There are a number of guidelines that SAT essay scorers will be looking at, and here are a few of them that will help you earn an 8:

• A cohesive essay that effectively uses and commands language
• A precise central claim
• Skillful introduction and conclusion
• Progression of ideas that is highly effective both within paragraphs and throughout the essay
• Wide variety in sentence structures
• Consistent use of precise word choice
• Formal style and objective tone
• Strong command of English conventions, an essay free of errors

Consistency is also key to getting a high score in this category. Having a mostly cohesive essay or including a few errors could bump your score down to a 6 or below!

📖 Analyzing Prompt and Passage

On test day, you're not going to see the rubric or even the three scoring categories. All you will get is the prompt and passage. It's important you analyze and annotate the prompt and passage to ensure you can write an effective essay.

On test day, you'll see this at the beginning of the essay.

The most important thing to do before you even start reading the passage is to read the given context. In this example, we know that the article is from the Huffington Post and the author Peter Goodman is writing about crisis and foreign policy. 🔥

Then, you'll read a passage about an argument written for a broad audience. In that passage, the author will make a claim, and use different techniques to persuade the audience of that claim.

Since you will be writing about how the author uses different techniques in the passage to make their argument more persuasive, that is exactly what you should look out for while writing your essay. 🔍

When reading the passage, you'll want to look at the three bullet points given in the prompt: specific factual evidence or examples, reasoning that connects evidence and claims, and other stylistic or persuasive elements that helps the author build the argument. 🚧

Here's a short bullet list of stylistic or persuasive elements that you can look out for:

• Shifts of any kind (in diction 🗣️, tone 😤, imagery 🖼️, etc.)
• Appeals to emotion 💕, logic 🧠, or credibility 👩🏽‍🎓
• Syntax (organization of paragraphs 📑, length of sentences ↔️)
• Unique diction or imagery (make sure to describe diction/imagery with an adjective )

After you find the rhetorical devices you want to analyze, you'll need to answer three important questions:

• Why does the author use this device or strategy?
• How does this device or strategy help them achieve their purpose?
• How does the device or strategy affect or change the audience?

You can strengthen your analysis and answer these three questions for each of your devices by outlining.

🗒️ Outlining

There are a few components to an outline that will help you secure an 8/8/8 on the SAT essay:

• Identifying audience & author's purpose
• Writing a thesis
• Identifying rhetorical devices
• Answering the three important "analysis" questions for each rhetorical device

On test day, find some white space under the article (or on the next page) to write your outline. Knowing and writing down these elements will make the writing process go a lot smoother!

📝 Writing the Essay

Let's break down how to write each section of the SAT essay portion: the introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion.

Introduction

There are a few elements that you should explicitly include in your introduction:

• Author's claim in the passage
• Author's tone & purpose
• Audience of passage
• Specific rhetorical choices or persuasive elements in the passage that "enhance logic/persuasiveness" of the argument

One example template for an introduction is:

Here's an example:

Writer Marcus Stern in his article, "How to Prevent an Oil Train Disaster," asserts that new Obama-era regulations in 2015 were insufficient in protecting the public's safety and needed to be expanded. Stern adopts a critical tone to persuade his audience, the general public, of his purpose of supporting stricter, comprehensive regulations that reduce oil volatility. To achieve his purpose, Stern utilizes a variety of rhetorical techniques, including but not limited to specific credible evidence, appeals to the general public's fear of disaster, and emotional word choice that enhances the logic and persuasiveness of his argument.

Body Paragraphs

Your body paragraphs should create a line of reasoning , which is just a fancy of way of saying that it should follow the structure you outline in the essay. For instance, from the introduction paragraph above, I would make my first body paragraph about the "specific credible evidence," my second body paragraph about the appeals to the general public, and so on. 🤩

⚠️ Note: There is no minimum or maximum number of body paragraphs that you should include —focus on developing solid body paragraphs rather than including as many as possible!

You should include the following in a body paragraph to earn high scores on reading, analysis, and writing:

• A strong introduction sentence tied to the thesis
• Embedded quote or paraphrase with context
• Why the author uses this rhetorical strategy or persuasive element
• How it affects the audience and/or how it helps the author achieve their purpose
• Link back to thesis

Let's see these five elements in an example!

• Stern furthers his argument by appealing to the general public’s fear of disaster.
• He invokes specific visual imagery when asserting that an oil tanker rupture would send a “mushroom-shaped fireball” into the sky. In fact, Stern further builds his argument by citing the “nine other places in North America” in which oil tanker explosions materialized.
• Stern uses these appeals to logic and emotion primarily because they highlight a somber reality of the impacts of continued inaction.
• Because Stern includes multiple instances of oil explosions, the audience feels logically impacted. This sense of urgency communicated by the visual imagery makes the audience more convinced that action must be taken, specifically because it could harm them very soon.
• Ultimately, Stern successfully leaves the audience convinced that lax oil restriction could lead to devastating consequences that could harm the audience, which strengthens the persuasion of his argument that we should enact strict regulation that decreases volatility.

You may hear sometimes from your teacher that the conclusion is not that important, or that it can simply be one sentence. This is not true for the SAT; in fact, you could get points taken off the writing section with an oversimplified or non-existent conclusion.

However, you can score highly with a slightly reworded introduction! Here's what you should include in your conclusion:

• Author's central claim (reworded from intro)
• Persuasive elements/rhetorical choices
• Audience & author's purpose

Here's an example conclusion paragraph that includes those elements (and you can see its parallel to the intro):

Author Olmer Stern communicates to the general public that there is a necessity for stricter safety regulations that decrease oil volatility. To convince the audience of his purpose, Stern effectively invokes fearful emotion of the general public, cites specific evidence from the oil industry, and communicates powerful diction about the imminent oil threat to strengthen the logic and persuasiveness of his argument.

📂 Resources and Example Essays

There are some fantastic ways to practice for the SAT essay! Here are some useful resources and example essays :

• Two sample SAT Essay prompts from College Board's website
• 50 CrackSAT Practice Essays and Prompts

Guide Outline

Related content, sat math: guide to quadratic equations & radicals, sat math: guide to linear equations, sat math: how to use your calculator, sat reading: guide to the social science passage, how to study for the sat/psat english sections, sat language: guide to word choice & passive flow.

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The Optional SAT Essay: What to Know

Tackling this section of the SAT requires preparation and can boost some students' college applications.

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Even though an increasing number of colleges are dropping standardized test requirements, students who must write the SAT essay can still stand to gain from doing so.

Although the essay portion of the SAT became optional in 2016, many students still chose to write it to demonstrate strong or improved writing skills to prospective colleges.

In June 2021, the College Board opted to discontinue the SAT essay. Now, only students in a few states and school districts still have access to — and must complete — the SAT essay. This requirement applies to some students in the SAT School Day program, for instance, among other groups.

How Colleges Use SAT, ACT Results

Tiffany Sorensen Sept. 14, 2020

Whether or not to write the SAT essay is not the biggest decision you will have to make in high school, but it is certainly one that requires thought on your part. Here are three things you should know about the 50-minute SAT essay as you decide whether to complete it:

• To excel on the SAT essay, you must be a trained reader.
• The SAT essay begs background knowledge of rhetoric and persuasive writing.
• A growing number of colleges are dropping standardized test requirements.

To Excel on the SAT Essay, You Must Be a Trained Reader

The SAT essay prompt never comes unaccompanied. On the contrary, it follows a text that is about 700 words long or approximately one page. Before test-takers can even plan their response, they must carefully read and – ideally – annotate the passage.

The multifaceted nature of the SAT essay prompt can be distressing to students who struggle with reading comprehension. But the good news is that this prompt is highly predictable: It always asks students to explain how the author builds his or her argument. In this case, "how” means which rhetorical devices are used, such as deductive reasoning, metaphors, etc.

Luckily, the author’s argument is usually spelled out in the prompt itself. For instance, consider this past SAT prompt : “Write an essay in which you explain how Paul Bogard builds an argument to persuade his audience that natural darkness should be preserved.”

Due to the essay prompt’s straightforward nature, students should read the passage with an eye toward specific devices used by the author rather than poring over “big ideas.” In tour SAT essay, aim to analyze at least two devices, with three being even better.

The SAT Essay Begs Background Knowledge of Rhetoric and Persuasive Writing

Since your SAT essay response must point to specific rhetorical devices that the author employs to convince the reader, you should make it a point to intimately know 10-15 common ones. The more familiar you are with rhetorical devices, the faster you will become at picking them out as you read texts.

Once you have read the passage and identified a handful of noteworthy rhetorical devices, you should apply many of the same essay-writing techniques you already use in your high school English classes.

For instance, you should start by brainstorming to see which devices you have the most to say about. After that, develop a concise thesis statement, incorporate quotes from the text, avoid wordiness and other infelicities of writing, close with an intriguing conclusion, and do everything else you could imagine your English teacher advising you to do.

Remember to always provide evidence from the text to support your claims. Finally, leave a few minutes at the end to review your essay for mistakes.

A Growing Number of Colleges Are Dropping Standardized Test Requirements

In recent years, some of America’s most prominent colleges and universities – including Ivy League institutions like Harvard University in Massachusetts, Princeton University in New Jersey and Yale University in Connecticut – have made submission of ACT and SAT scores optional.

While this trend began as early as 2018, the upheaval caused by COVID-19 has prompted many other schools to adopt a more lenient testing policy, as well.

Advocates for educational fairness have long expressed concerns that standardized admissions tests put underprivileged students at a disadvantage. In light of the coronavirus pandemic , which restricted exam access for almost all high school students, colleges have gotten on board with this idea by placing more emphasis on other factors in a student’s application.

To assess writing ability in alternative ways, colleges now place more emphasis on students’ grades in language-oriented subjects, as well as college application documents like the personal statement .

The fact that more colleges are lifting their ACT/SAT requirement does not imply that either test or any component of it is now obsolete. Students who must write the SAT essay can still stand to gain from doing so, especially those who wish to major in a writing-intensive field. The essay can also demonstrate a progression or upward trajectory in writing skills.

The SAT essay can give a boost to the college applications of the few students to whom it is still available. If the requirement applies to you, be sure to learn more about the SAT essay and practice it often as you prepare for your upcoming SAT.

13 Test Prep Tips for SAT and ACT Takers

Tags: SAT , standardized tests , students , education

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Stressed about getting into college? College Admissions Playbook, authored by Varsity Tutors , offers prospective college students advice on Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses, SAT and ACT exams and the college application process. Varsity Tutors, an advertiser with U.S. News & World Report, is a live learning platform that connects students with personalized instruction to accelerate academic achievement. The company's end-to-end offerings also include mobile learning apps, online learning environments and other tutoring and test prep-focused technologies. Got a question? Email [email protected] .

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The SAT Essay: Should You Take It?

Should you take the sat essay in 2021.

NOTE: The SAT Essay no longer exists as of 2024. The SAT has transitioned into a new digital format, which is radically different. For an updated guide to the new digital SAT, follow the link here.

The SAT Essay is optional. Students do not have to sit for it. In fact, they must elect to take the Essay when registering for the SAT. This costs an additional $15 .

Plenty of U.S. universities and colleges do not require the SAT Essay, including Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Dartmouth, and Brown. But in the context of college admissions, “optional” often takes on a whole new meaning. 

What’s more, the CollegeBoard will now be discontinuing the SAT Essay following the June 2021 SAT administration .

Should you take the SAT essay between now and 2021? Or should you pass on it and spend those 50 minutes elsewhere?

In this article, we answer these questions and more.

Here’s what we cover:

The SAT Essay: The Basics

• How We’ve Approached the Essay Until Now (2021)
• Should You Take the Essay Between Now and June 2021?

If they’ve registered for it, students take the SAT essay after they have completed the first 4 sections of the test. The Essay portion is 50 minutes long (as opposed to the old SAT’s 25-minute essay section) and is hand-written.

The Purpose of the SAT Essay

According to the College Board, the SAT essay is “about the real world.”

The SAT Essay is a lot like a typical college writing assignment in which you’re asked to analyze a text. Take the SAT with Essay and show colleges that you’re ready to come to campus and write.

Yes, students must write analytically after nearly three hours of testing, when their brains are significantly fatigued! Nonetheless, the SAT essay is designed to showcase a student’s writing capabilities in the context of college preparedness .

Source : College Board

Notice how students are not asked whether or not they agree with the author’s argument. Nor are they asked to assess its logical soundness.

They must simply identify the tools or “rhetorical devices” the author uses to make his/her argument persuasive.

Passages will be similar in length and style to those on the Evidence-Based Reading test of the SAT, although notably more argumentative in nature. Many essay passages are speeches or editorials. These can be from any century.

SAT Essay Scoring

Two separate readers will assess students’ essays and score these in three categories:

• and Writing

They will award 1-4 points for each category. The SAT test graders then add the two scores for each category. Here’s an example:

A student’s SAT essay scores do not impact their SAT composite score or Verbal section score. Essay scores appear separately on the score report itself. These do not include a composite score or percentiles.

Our Historic Approach to the SAT Essay (pre-2021)

Before the CollegeBoard announced that it would be discontinuing the SAT Essay in June 2021, these were our thoughts on this optional section of the test.

First things first, plenty of institutions have dropped their requirement of the SAT or ACT essays due to the financial obstacle it may pose to some students. As we’ve already mentioned, the SAT essay requires $15 on top of the exam’s registration fee of $49.50. ( Fee waivers do exist.)

Yet some colleges have sometimes filled the SAT essay gap with something else, such as supplemental writing materials .  Despite not requiring it, a dwindling number of institutions have “recommended” that students take the essay if they have the means to do so.

College Application Requirements 

In the past, the CollegeBoard has been quick to emphasize that taking the SAT Essay enables students to apply to schools that “recommend or require it.” 

Indeed, some of the colleges on students’ lists may have different policies and/or requirements when it comes to the SAT Essay. 

If you do use this tool, be sure to confirm essay policies with what colleges specify on their websites.  

Essay Alternatives

Some colleges have requested an alternative to the SAT essay in past admission cycles.

While Princeton University has not historically required the SAT or ACT essay, it does request a graded academic writing sample from all applicants. This is designed to “ assess the student’s written expression in an academic setting” and “further the holistic understanding of the student’s application.”

Other universities, such as Harvard , permit applicants to supplement their applications with academic papers, research projects, and other scholarly documents of which they are the sole author. 

In other words, colleges are keen to assess students’ writing capacities, SAT/ACT essay aside.

SAT Test Prep

The essay does incorporate much of what both SAT verbal sections already test: expression of ideas, logical organization, critical analysis of a text, and author’s intent.

Students who prepare for both SAT verbal sections will thus already be poised for success on the essay!  In this sense, studying for the SAT essay nicely complements any SAT test prep timeline and curriculum. 

AP English students may also be at an advantage for the SAT essay. The prompt’s focus on argument and rhetorical devices frequently aligns with AP English curriculum, making essay prep more straightforward. 

Taking the SAT Essay in 2021

The CollegeBoard will no longer offer the SAT Essay after the June administration of the SAT.

In the past, we’ve encouraged students to take the Essay to keep their options open, especially those applying to more selective colleges. We haven’t advised  spending too much time preparing for the Essay, however.

Now what? S hould you even consider signing up for the SAT Essay since it’s going away in six months?

In general, plan on taking the SAT Essay if:

• You have already significantly prepared for the essay at this point in your SAT test prep
• You’ve taken the SAT essay once and plan on taking the SAT at least one more time before or on June 2021
• You plan on taking the SAT at least twice by June 2021  (this allows for SuperScoring with Essay)
• You desperately wish to showcase your writing skills and/or
• You have substantial extra prep time (i.e., preparing for the Essay won’t compromise your prep for other more valuable sections)

We recommend that you skip the essay if:

• You are just starting your test prep journey now
• You plan on taking the SAT after the June administration, at least one time
• At least one college on your list requires an essay alternative (such as an academic paper)
• You’ve already taken the essay at least twice and/or
• Your time is better spent preparing for the required sections of the SAT (Math, Reading, Writing & Language)

At the end of the day, colleges are likely to still be interested in applicants’ ability to write well and think critically.

That’s why we encourage students to spend time honing their personal statements , in-class academic papers, and supplemental essay responses , regardless of their history with the SAT Essay.

Kate is a graduate of Princeton University. Over the last decade, Kate has successfully mentored hundreds of students in all aspects of the college admissions process, including the SAT, ACT, and college application essay.

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What Is the Difference Between the New SAT Essay and the New SAT Writing Section?

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When changes to the SAT were instituted in March of 2016, there were understandably a lot of questions. After all, the SAT is one of only two high-stakes standardized tests widely accepted as a gauge of college readiness and used by college admissions committees to assess applicants.

As news of the changes trickled back to students, teachers, SAT tutors, and high school counselors, some of the most commonly asked questions centered on the difference between the new Writing and Language section of the SAT and the new Essay section. Previously, the writing and essay tests had been combined and required. Now, they’re separate, and the essay itself is optional.

How does the content of each section now differ from that of its predecessor? What form does each exam take, and what skills does it assess? In this post, we will outline the basics of the new SAT Writing and Essay sections, describe what you are asked to do on each portion of the test, and give you an overview of the skills assessed.

Read on to learn more about the difference between the new Writing and Language SAT and the new SAT Essay section.

What is the format of the new SAT Writing and Language Test?

The new Writing and Language section of the SAT is part of the larger Evidence-Based Reading and Writing Test. This section of the test includes 44 questions and lasts 35 minutes. All questions are multiple-choice and all are based on passages.

As you take the Writing and Language test, you will read four passages, each between 400-450 words. There will be one nonfiction narrative, one to two informative or explanatory texts, and one to two arguments. Some passages will be accompanied by informational graphics such as tables, graphs, or charts.

Passages and questions are presented in side-by-side columns with passages on the left-hand side of the page and questions along the right-hand side. Question numbers are embedded in the text of the passage, along with underlining, to indicate which part of the passage is being tested. Some questions may also assess the passage as a whole.

What skills does the Writing and Language Test Assess?

The Writing and Language Test assesses your skills in five primary areas:

Command of Evidence

These questions will ask you to improve the way passages develop information and ideas. For example, you might sharpen an argumentative claim or add a relevant supporting detail.

Words in Context

These questions will ask you to improve word choice, choose the best words to use based on the text, make a passage more precise/concise, or improve syntax, style, or tone.

Analysis in History/Social Studies and in Science

These questions test your ability to critically read passages about topics in history, social studies, and science, and to make editorial decisions that clarify them or improve their focus.

Expression of Ideas

These questions will ask you to consider a passage’s organization and its effectiveness in expressing concepts, as well as which words or structural changes could improve how well the passage makes its point or how well its sentences and paragraphs work together. 

Standard English Conventions

These questions assess your knowledge of the building blocks of writing, including sentence structure, usage, and punctuation. You may be asked to change words, clauses, sentences, and punctuation, or edit for verb tense, parallel construction, subject-verb agreement, or comma use.

Basically, on the Writing and Language Test, you will be asked to make editorial decisions to improve the passages on both a minute and large scale.

What is the format of the Essay Section?

By contrast, the essay section (which is now optional and is administered after the required sections of the SAT) includes a passage between 650-700 words long that you will read and then critique. You will have 50 minutes to read the passage, plan your writing, and write your essay.

The passage you are asked to assess varies from test to test, but it is always written for a broad audience and taken from published works. Unlike on the Writing and Language test, the Essay passage is not crafted to intentionally include organizational and grammatical errors.

The passage will argue a point; use logical reasoning and evidence to support claims; and examine ideas, debates, or trends in the arts, science, civics, cultural studies, or politics.

Unlike on previous iterations of the SAT Essay, you won’t be asked to agree or disagree with a position on a topic or to write about your personal experience.

The prompt for the new SAT Essay is always the same or nearly the same:

As you read the passage below, consider how [the author] uses:

•Evidence, such as facts or examples, to support claims.

•Reasoning to develop ideas and to connect claims and evidence.

•Stylistic or persuasive elements, such as word choice or appeals to emotion, to add power to the ideas expressed.

Write an essay in which you explain how [the author] builds an argument to persuade [his/her] audience that [author’s claim]. In your essay, analyze how [the author] uses one or more of the features listed above (or features of your own choice) to strengthen the logic and persuasiveness of [his/her] argument. Be sure that your analysis focuses on the most relevant features of the passage. Your essay should not explain whether you agree with [the author’s] claims, but rather explain how the author builds an argument to persuade [his/her] audience.

It’s important to note that since the SAT Essay is based on a published work, you are not likely to identify major grammar mistakes or failures in structure. Instead, you will primarily discuss the specific ways in which the passage succeeds at supporting its claims and identifying methods it uses to build an argument.

Discover how your SAT score affects your chances

As part of our free guidance platform, our Admissions Assessment tells you what schools you need to improve your SAT score for and by how much. Sign up to get started today.

What skills are assessed on the new SAT Essay?

Your essay will be assessed based on how well you understood the passage and how well you used it as the basis for a well-written, thought-out discussion.

Specifically, you will be scored on:

A successful essay shows that you understood the passage, including the interplay of central ideas and important details. It also shows an effective use of textual evidence.

A successful essay shows your understanding of how the author builds an argument by examining the author’s use of evidence, reasoning, and other stylistic and persuasive techniques and by supporting and developing claims with well-chosen evidence from the passage.

A successful essay is focused, organized, and precise, with an appropriate style and tone that varies sentence structure and follows the conventions of standard written English.

You can see the formal SAT Essay scoring rubric to learn more about how your essay is scored.

Overview of Differences

While there is certainly some overlap between the content area and skills assessed through the Writing and Language test and the Essay test, these skills are assessed in different ways through these sections.

The Writing and Language test asks you to make editorial decisions to improve the content of a written passage and to choose the best answer from multiple answer choices. In this section, grammatical and structural errors are intentionally included in the passage for you to identify and correct.

Meanwhile, the Essay asks you to critique a passage in your own words, identifying areas of strength and weakness and applying your own knowledge of strong written work. The passage on this section is a previously published work and as such, it will not contain the same types of glaring mistakes contained in the passage of the Writing and Language test. 

Both tests assess your knowledge of organization and structure of written work, and the ways in which authors support and develop claims with textual evidence. On the Writing and Language Test you will choose the best ways to improve a passage, while on the Essay section you will have to identify successful sections and author choices and articulate these choices through your own written word.

Where can I find free study materials for the SAT?

If you are preparing to take the SAT, whether or not you are taking the optional Essay section, you should consider the following free study resources.

Start your studying by taking the CollegeVine free diagnostic SAT with customized score report and action plan to help get a better idea of where you’re starting from and the direction that your studying should take you.

Another good place to start is the College Board Student SAT Study Guide , which gives an overview of the test’s content and structure along with a breakdown of scoring and subscores to help guide your studying.

The College Board also maintains a Daily Practice SAT App that provides daily test questions, answer hints, and answer explanations.

Finally, Khan Academy is the official, free study partner of the SAT and provides a number of study materials including study tips and video tutorials .

Once you’ve spent some time learning the material, put it to use on some College Board sample questions or a full-length practice test .

Preparing for the SAT? Download our  free guide with our top 8 tips for mastering the SAT.

To learn more about the SAT, check out these CollegeVine posts:

• Ultimate Guide to the New SAT Essay
• Ultimate Guide to the New SAT Writing and Language Test
• ACT vs SAT/SAT Subject Tests
• Are PSAT Scores Related to SAT Scores?
• What Should I Bring to My SAT?
• A Guide to the New SAT
• The CollegeVine Guide to SAT Scores: All Your Questions Answered
• How to Register For Your SATs
• Five SAT Strategies You Should Know
• What Makes the New SAT Essay Section Different From the Old One?

Want to know how your SAT score impacts your chances of acceptance to your dream schools? Our free Chancing Engine will not only help you predict your odds, but also let you know how you stack up against other applicants, and which aspects of your profile to improve. Sign up for your free CollegeVine account today to gain access to our Chancing Engine and get a jumpstart on your college strategy!

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Digital SAT Reading and Writing

Course: digital sat reading and writing   >   unit 1.

• About the digital SAT
• Digital SAT overview
• About the digital SAT Reading and Writing test

Digital SAT FAQs

• About the digital PSAT/NMSQT

Frequently asked questions

What is the digital sat, which version of the sat will i take.

• Starting in 2023, students taking the test outside the United States and its territories (American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico or the U.S. Virgin Islands) will take the digital SAT.
• Starting in 2024, the digital SAT will be taken by all students.
• You’re taking it outside of the U.S., you should prepare for the digital SAT only by using Khan Academy’s Official Digital SAT Prep .
• You’re taking it in the U.S. (or its territories), you should prepare for the paper-and-pencil test using Khan Academy’s Official SAT Practice .

What is the difference between the digital SAT and the paper-and-pencil test?

• Calculator use: Calculators are now allowed throughout the entire Math section. A graphing calculator is integrated into the digital test experience so that all students have access.
• Question word count: The average length of Math word problems has been reduced. In-context questions are still a big part of the test, but they’re not quite so wordy.
• One test for Reading and Writing: While the pencil-and-paper SAT tested reading and writing in separate test sections, the digital SAT combines these topics.
• Shorter passages (and more of them): Instead of reading long passages and answering multiple questions on each passage, students taking the digital SAT will encounter shorter passages, each with just one follow-up question.
• New question types: With a greater number and variety of passages, the digital SAT includes new types of questions, with new prompts that require new strategies.

How should I start studying for the digital SAT?

• Starting with a practice test will help you diagnose the areas where you need the most practice.
• After taking each practice test, you can review your performance and read answer explanations for the questions you missed.
• You can take full-length practice tests using College Board’s Bluebook app .
• We recommend taking full-length practice tests at set intervals throughout your test prep journey. Doing this will help you gauge your progress, refine the focus of your skill practice, and build endurance and experience for test day.
• The best way to practice individual skills is to explore both the digital SAT Math course and the digital SAT Reading and Writing courses on Khan Academy.
• In these courses, you can read articles and watch videos that cover each skill, practice those skills, then test yourself in the related exercises. As you become proficient in more skills, you’ll become more prepared for test day.

How many practice tests should I take to be prepared?

What types of practice does khan academy’s official digital sat prep have.

• The Math course is organized into 37 math skills and features three levels of difficulty in each skill.
• The Reading and Writing course is organized into 11 skills and covers the full range of questions on the exam.

Will Official Digital SAT Prep show me where to focus when I study?

What is included in the math section of the digital sat.

• Algebra: Analyze, fluently solve, and create linear equations and inequalities, as well as analyze and fluently solve systems of equations.
• Advanced Math: Demonstrate attainment of skills and knowledge central for successful progression to more advanced math courses, including analyzing, fluently solving, interpreting, and creating a variety of equation types.
• Problem-Solving and Data Analysis: Apply quantitative reasoning about ratios, rates, and proportional relationships; understand and apply units and rates; and analyze and interpret one- and two-variable data.
• Geometry and Trigonometry: Solve problems that focus on perimeter, area, and volume; angles, triangles, and trigonometry; and circles.
• Multiple-choice: Questions offer four possible choices from which students must select the answer.
• Student-produced response: Questions require students to produce their own answer, which they then enter into the provided field.

How can I use Khan Academy’s digital SAT Math course to study for the digital SAT?

• Taking the course challenge: By attempting 40 questions from different lessons throughout the course, you can get credit for the skills you’ve already mastered and identify the skills where you could improve. You can also get credit within individual units by attempting unit tests.
• Working from top to bottom: The course takes all the math skills tested on the SAT and splits them into three difficulty levels: Foundations, Medium, and Advanced. By working through the course from top to bottom, you’ll encounter each skill at each level, keeping your practice balanced and ensuring no skills fall through the cracks.
• Taking quizzes and unit tests as you go: As you progress through different skills, you can take quizzes and unit tests to prove your mastery of the content. The more units you master in the course, the more prepared you’ll be for test day.

What is included in the Reading and Writing section of the digital SAT?

• Information and Ideas: Use, locate, interpret, and evaluate information from various texts and infographics.
• Craft and Structure: Determine the meaning of high-utility academic words and phrases in context, evaluate texts rhetorically, and make supportable connections between multiple related texts.
• Expression of Ideas: Use revision skills and knowledge to improve the effectiveness of written expression in order to accomplish specified rhetorical goals.
• Standard English Conventions: Use editing skills and knowledge to make texts conform to core conventions of Standard English sentence structure, usage, and punctuation.

How can I use Khan Academy’s digital SAT Reading and Writing course to study for the digital SAT?

• Work from top to bottom: The course takes all the reading and writing skills tested on the SAT and organizes them by focus. By working through the course from top to bottom, you’ll encounter each skill in turn, keeping your practice balanced and ensuring no skills fall through the cracks.
• Try exercises more than once: Because the digital SAT Reading and Writing test is new, there’s not as much content available for practice as there is for the SAT Math test. While we hope to expand this course in the future, we encourage you to squeeze every last bit of practice you can from the presently available materials. So, even if you’ve tried (and passed) an exercise before, you can get extra practice by attempting it again!

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College Board is scrapping SAT’s optional essay and subject tests

Two major stress points in the grueling rituals of college admissions testing are vanishing this year: the optional essay-writing section of the SAT and the supplementary exams in various fields known as SAT subject tests.

The College Board announced Tuesday that it will discontinue those assessments. Citing the coronavirus crisis, officials said the pandemic has “accelerated a process already underway at the College Board to reduce and simplify demands on students.”

The testing organization, based in New York, also revealed the launch of a process to revise the main SAT, aiming to make the admission test “more flexible” and “streamlined” and enable students to take the exam digitally instead of with pencil and paper.

There were few details available on how the main SAT might be changed. David Coleman, chief executive of the College Board, said the organization is not pursuing an at-home version of the exam. He said more information would be coming in April.

The pandemic, which shuttered schools in March and continues to disrupt all levels of education, has created unprecedented turmoil for the SAT and the rival ACT admission test. Many college-bound students have struggled since spring to find testing centers available at the right time and place.

With some exceptions, colleges and universities have ended or temporarily suspended testing requirements. Some college admissions leaders have concluded that SAT or ACT scores are not needed to choose a class and that testing requirements might deter otherwise worthy applicants. Others are making temporary concessions to the reality of the pandemic upheaval and uneven access to testing.

Colleges are ditching required admission tests over covid-19. Will they ever go back?

Spring term delays: New wave of coronavirus uncertainty slams higher education

In 2020, the College Board said, students filed 2.2 million registrations to take the SAT on a weekend. But only about 900,000 tests were taken during those sessions as numerous exam centers closed for public health reasons, sometimes with little notice. Hundreds of thousands more SATs were administered last year through publicly funded programs during school days.

Even before the pandemic, the subject tests and the optional essay were losing influence. Fewer schools were requiring applicants to take them, and many experts questioned their value.

The subject tests, lasting an hour apiece, used multiple-choice questions to cover discrete topics such as math, literature, history, biology, chemistry, physics and various foreign languages. The maximum score for each was 800.

These tests long served a niche role in admissions as a way for students to amass extra credentials showing their prowess for ultracompetitive schools. For many years, Ivy League schools and others, including Georgetown University, recommended, encouraged or accepted subject test scores in addition to the scores they required from the main SAT or ACT. In the high school Class of 2017, about 220,000 students chose to take at least one subject test.

Fewer students are taking them. Few colleges require them. So why are SAT subject tests still needed?

But use of the subject tests has dwindled. The tests also have seemed in some ways to overlap with the College Board’s Advanced Placement testing program. AP tests, which are longer and include free-response questions, have proliferated in recent years. So a student who scored well on an AP calculus test, for example, might wonder why it would be necessary to also take an SAT subject test in math.

“AP provides a much richer and more flexible way for students to distinguish themselves,” Coleman said. The wide availability of AP programs, he said, make subject tests less necessary. More than 1.2 million students in the high school Class of 2019 took at least one AP test.

The College Board said it will no longer offer subject tests to U.S. students, effective immediately, and it will phase them out for international students by next summer.

The main SAT, which takes three hours, not including breaks, has one section on mathematics and another on evidence-based reading and writing. Each is worth up to 800 points. The reading and writing section covers editing and other language skills through multiple-choice questions.

The optional essay adds 50 minutes to the main test. Its score is reported separately and does not factor into the main score. About 1.2 million students in the Class of 2020 took the SAT with the essay — more than half of all who took the exam.

The modern SAT first included an essay prompt in 2005, at the urging of some in higher education, including leaders of the University of California, who thought that an independent measure of free-response writing was essential for admissions.

The most recent version of the essay assessment, which debuted in 2016 , is an analytic writing exercise that asks students to respond to a text. The College Board has said it is meant to resemble a “typical college writing assignment.” The ACT also includes an optional essay.

But enthusiasm for these essays has waned. Many colleges have found the essay scores are not useful or necessary for admissions. In 2018, Harvard University and numerous other highly selective schools dropped their requirement for students to submit an essay score. Last year, University of California officials took the same step as part of a larger policy shift to phase out use of the SAT and ACT.

Pencils down: Major colleges stop requiring essay test for admission

Even though few schools still require the essay scores, many students fret over whether they should take the essay option, and whether their essay scores are good enough to achieve their goals. Now, the College Board is pulling the plug on the essay in all but a few places.

The SAT essay will continue to be offered through June to anyone who wants to take it. After that, the College Board said, it will be available only in certain states, including Delaware and Oklahoma, that use the SAT for school accountability measurement and offer the test during the school day.

Jeremiah Quinlan, dean of undergraduate admissions and financial aid at Yale University, applauded the College Board’s announcement. Yale recently stopped considering SAT subject test scores, he said. Quinlan said the SAT’s optional essay had limited value. “The essay score never really became a part of our review process,” Quinlan said.

Quinlan said he is inclined to favor revisions to the SAT that will make it more flexible and accessible and available in a digital format. “They’re going to have to plan, take time, do their due diligence,” he said of the College Board. “It will be a lift, but I think they are up for it.”

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Should the SAT still matter after all these years? Why some colleges are bringing it back

G enerations of American teens have taken the SAT, a blood-pressure-raising multi-hour exam they are told could make or break their academic futures.

The longest-enduring standardized college admissions test in the nation, the SAT has faced decades of controversy over bias and criticism for reducing aspiring college students to a test score. It has also been denounced as part of the high barrier to entry into the so-called American meritocracy.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, when dozens of the most prestigious universities in the nation suspended their standardized testing requirement, some were hopeful of a new era of more equitable college admissions.

But this year, many of these institutions have done an about-face on their test-optional policies. At the same time, at least 1,825 US colleges and universities, or more than 80% of four-year schools, will still not require testing for 2025 admissions, according to FairTest, the National Center for Fair & Open Testing.

The splintering of admissions policies post-pandemic has reinvigorated debate around the necessity of the SAT.

To test, or not to test?

Criticism has dogged the SAT for years. The exam, whose acronym originally stood for “Scholastic Aptitude Test,” was developed in the 1920s by Princeton-based eugenicist Carl Brigham, who believed immigration was diluting American intelligence and adapted US Army mental tests to determine whether similar exams could measure innate student intelligence. (Brigham retracted some of his views several years later.)

The College Board, the educational non-profit that designs and administers the exam, told CNN the SAT has been “completely overhauled” since the 1920s and now measures how well a student has learned specific content, not inherent aptitude.

But the test’s legacy — one steeped in racism and classism — has raised questions about the need for high-stakes testing at all. The National Education Association has noted that the SAT, and its counterpart the ACT, can factor too heavily in the college admissions process.

“It’s important that we don’t overly rely on them because they’re not holistic. They are one snapshot on one day and it can determine whether or not you get into college,” NEA’s Director of Policy Daaiyah Bilal-Threats told CNN.

Most colleges have no plans to reinstitute their pre-pandemic testing requirements.

“Test-optional policies continue to dominate at national universities, state flagships, and selective liberal arts colleges because they typically result in more applicants, academically stronger applicants and more diversity,” said FairTest Executive Director Harry Feder in a February statement, after some Ivy League schools announced they would reinstitute their testing requirements.

A strong emphasis on high SAT scores has also spurred the rise of a lucrative test prep industry in the United States, which is estimated to grow by about 7% to almost $50 billion by 2027, according to a report in October 2023 from market researcher Technavio.

Discrepancies with standardized testing appear to be symptomatic of the inequality endemic to the education system. Some experts point out that doing away with the SAT as an admissions component, like many universities did at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, does little to remedy systemic inequity. In fact, it can bring the disparity into starker focus.

Wealthier students may have access to prestigious internships, schools with better-funded clubs and sports, as well as music and arts programs — all elements of the quintessential college application.

“(Students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds) don’t have any of these fancy extracurriculars. They haven’t played in a fancy jazz band. They don’t do fancy internships. They don’t work as volunteers in Guatemala. And yet some of them will be very capable students,” said Daniel Koretz, a testing policy expert at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. He says the question is: How do schools find these students?

According to Koretz, the SAT’s longevity can be attributed to its efficacy in predicting how a student will perform in college.

A study published in January by  Harvard’s Opportunity Insights  center found that standardized tests are more effective predictors of performance than high school grades.

Critically, the study also found that students from different socioeconomic backgrounds who have similar test scores have “virtually identical” college GPAs.

Weeks after the study was released, several schools that had been test-optional for nearly four years officially reversed their stances. Yale and Dartmouth announced in February they were reinstating a testing requirement and were quickly joined by private and public institutions, including Brown, Georgetown, Harvard, the University of Florida and the University of Texas at Austin.

“SAT/ACTs can be especially helpful in identifying students from less-resourced backgrounds who would succeed at Dartmouth but might otherwise be missed in a test-optional environment,” Dartmouth wrote in a statement in February.

“With an abundance of high school GPAs surrounding 4.0 … an SAT or ACT score is a proven differentiator that is in each student’s and the University’s best interest,” UT Austin said in March.

Still a need for standardized tests

Education experts who spoke to CNN say the SAT is necessary because there is no “standard” American education.

Individual schools may have different grading criteria. Some schools weigh grade point averages differently. An A+ in an AP class in one district is equivalent to a 4.0 GPA. In another, it could be 5.0, 4.5 or 4.2.

Even within the same school and subject, some teachers might grade more or less leniently than others.

College admissions officers simply don’t have the ability to account for all of these minute discrepancies, experts told CNN, so standardized tests will likely stick around unless US education becomes standardized in other ways.

“Anytime you have a system as big as ours and in the absence of that kind of standardization in the K-12 system, schools are going to find value in finding ways to compare students. It doesn’t have to be the SAT necessarily, but something standardized like it,” said Ethan Hutt, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Education.

Democratizing education

This lack of standardization reaches back to the early days of US education. Throughout the 1800’s, there was little tracking of student achievement, and grades and written tests weren’t common.

“In the 19th century, schools … would gather parents and townspeople, and the teacher would basically put on an exhibition with the class,” said Hutt. “They would ask students questions and to recite things (they had learned).”

Oral examinations were the norm until 1845, when education reformer and then-Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education Horace Mann instituted a written test to gauge the level of student instruction across Boston-area public schools.

A college education was exceedingly rare, as the system was designed to favor wealthy White men funneled from elite private schools in the Northeast to prestigious private universities also in the Northeast.

“Often, it would consist of either colleges accrediting certain high schools and saying, ‘OK, any graduate of (Phillips Exeter Academy) is automatically given entrance to Harvard,’ or they would send out professors to do exams at individual schools,” said Hutt.

First administered in 1926, the SAT was an attempt to broaden the university candidate pool.

Three legislative milestones indirectly expanded the influence of the SAT. First, the 1944 Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, commonly known as the GI Bill, gave returning soldiers the funds to pursue higher education. Between 1944 and 1951, more than two million veterans enrolled in college.

Second, the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibited colleges and universities that received federal money from discriminating against applicants according to “race, color, or national origin.” Eight years later, Congress would pass another landmark legislation — Title IX — a law that prohibited institutions from discriminating on the basis of sex. These laws, at least in theory, sought to even out the playing field for college admissions.

Between 1945 and 1995, the percent of Americans older than 25 who had earned a bachelor’s degree had increased from about 5% to 23%, according to the Census Bureau. And as higher education grew more attainable, the SAT became the most important exam some Americans would ever take.

A standard in flux

The College Board continually revamps and redesigns both its SAT scoring metrics and exam content. For decades, the test consisted of two multiple-choice sections: math and verbal reasoning. Each section was worth a total of 800 points, making a perfect score 1600.

In 2005, the College Board added an 800-point writing section to the exam alongside its math and verbal reasoning sections. The test, scored out of 2400 instead of 1600, was also 45 minutes longer. About nine years later, the SAT reverted to a 1600-point essay-optional model before entirely scrapping the essay section in 2021.

On March 9, the College Board administered its first fully digital SAT exam. At around two hours, the test, which was taken by over 200,000 students on a test-taking app, is much shorter than its predecessors. It’s also adaptive, meaning the questions in the second half of the reading and math sections are adjusted based on the student’s performance on the first half.

Part of the push to redesign comes from competition with the Iowa-based ACT, which has been administered since 1959 but has since become the preferred exam in many parts of the country.

“When the ACT started getting so much more traction and because it was shorter, the SAT really wanted to maintain its market share, and so it made a number of changes for that reason,” said Rachel Rubin, a higher education policy expert and co-founder of Massachusetts-based educational consulting company Spark Admissions.

Although the SAT has seen a slight slump in the number of test takers, with 1.9 million students sitting for the exam in 2023 compared to 2.2 million pre-pandemic, the College Board’s exam still reins supreme. Only about 1.4 million students took the ACT in 2023, compared to 1.7 million in 2019.

Working through a history of bias

The SAT’s analogy section, a fixture of the exam until 2005, had long been criticized for presupposing that test-takers come from certain cultural backgrounds. An infamous example from the 1980s exam included “regatta,” which is a sporting event consisting of boat races that is almost exclusively common in wealthy Northeast communities.

“For many years the SAT … was crafted by people who were almost entirely White, were overwhelmingly male, and were largely educated in colleges and universities from the Northeast,” said Jack Schneider, the head of UMass Amherst’s Center for Education Policy. “The assumptions that they made about the things that any well-educated person should know were in many ways biased against communities of color, low-income communities, and communities where languages other than English were the predominant language.”

Schneider acknowledges that eliminating bias from the SAT is incredibly difficult because “we live in a biased society.”

The College Board told CNN it has also done away with its esoteric vocabulary in the past decade.

“Starting in 2014, we said let’s measure all the most common things that are most useful in college and that students are more likely to encounter in their high school classrooms,” said College Board CEO David Coleman, noting this applies both to the math curriculum and the mastery of vocabulary.

In recent years, the College Board has implemented cost-saving initiatives for eligible test-takers to promote equity, such as waiving the $60 registration fee and offering college application fee waivers, which can save applicants as much as $90 per school . It has partnered with education non-profit Khan Academy since 2015 to provide free test prep materials.

The SAT School Day program, which launched in 2014, allows students to take the test on a weekday rather than on a designated weekend at a potentially unfamiliar testing center. The College Board say a majority of students use the program, which “has been shown to lead to higher college-going rates for low-income and rural students.”

Coleman says administering the test in a familiar environment can reduce the stress inherent to the SAT experience. He added that the shorter digital exam is also aimed at accommodating different types of test-takers.

“(The older version of the SAT) can feel like it’s designed for young people who are very quick, and it’s a great error to confuse quick and smart,” Coleman said. “The digital exam gives kids 160% more time per question … to make sure they can finish the exam without feeling out of breath.”

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Hundreds of Jan. 6 Prosecutions—Including Donald Trump’s—Are Suddenly in Peril at the Supreme Court

Will the Supreme Court jeopardize the prosecution of more than 350 defendants involved with Jan. 6, including Donald Trump, by gutting the federal statute that prohibits their unlawful conduct? Maybe so. Tuesday’s oral arguments in Fischer v. United States were rough sledding for the government, as the conservative justices lined up to thwap Joe Biden’s Department of Justice for allegedly overreaching in its pursuit of Jan. 6 convictions. Six members of the court took turns wringing their hands over the application of a criminal obstruction law to the rioters, fretting that they faced overly harsh penalties for participating in the violent attack. Unmentioned but lurking in the background was Trump himself, who can wriggle out of two major charges against him with a favorable decision in this case.

There are, no doubt, too many criminal laws whose vague wording gives prosecutors near-limitless leeway to threaten citizens with decades in prison. But this isn’t one of them. Congress wrote a perfectly legible law and the overwhelming majority of judges have had no trouble applying it. It would be all too telling if the Supreme Court decides to pretend the statute is somehow too sweeping or jumbled to use as a tool of accountability for Jan. 6.

Start with the obstruction law itself, known as Section 1552(c), which Congress enacted to close loopholes that Enron exploited to impede probes into its misconduct . The provision is remarkably straightforward—a far cry from the ambiguous, sloppy, or muddled laws that typically flummox the judiciary. It’s a mainstay of the Department of Justice’s “Capitol siege” prosecutions, deployed in about a quarter of all cases. Overall, 350 people face charges under this statute, Trump among them , and the DOJ has used it to secure the convictions of about 150 rioters . It targets anyone who “corruptly … obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so.” And it clarifies that an official proceeding includes “a proceeding before the Congress.”

The government argues that some rioters attempted to “obstruct” an “official proceeding” by halting the count of electoral votes through “corrupt” means. That includes Joseph Fischer, the defendant in the current case. Fischer, who served as a police officer before Jan. 6, allegedly texted that the protest “might get violent”; that “they should storm the capital and drag all the democrates [sic] into the street and have a mob trial”; and that protesters should “take democratic congress to the gallows,” because they “can’t vote if they can’t breathe..lol.” Video evidence shows Fischer assaulting multiple police officers on the afternoon of Jan. 6 after breaching the Capitol.

Would anyone seriously argue that this person did not attempt to corruptly obstruct an official proceeding? For a time, it seemed not: 14 of the 15 federal judges—all but Judge Carl Nichols in this case—considering the charge in various Jan. 6 cases agreed that it applied to violent rioters bent on stopping the electoral count. So did every judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit except one, Judge Gregory Katsas. Both Nichols and Katsas were appointed by Trump. Their crusade to kneecap the law caught SCOTUS’ attention, and the court decided to intervene despite overwhelming consensus among lower court judges. The Supreme Court’s decision will have major implications for Trump: Two of the four charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith in the former president’s Jan. 6 prosecution revolve around this offense. A ruling that eviscerates the obstruction law would arguably cut out the heart of the indictment.

At least three justices seem ready to do just that. Justice Clarence Thomas—back on the bench after yesterday’s unexplained absence —grilled Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar over the law’s application to Jan. 6. “There have been many violent protests that have interfered with proceedings. Has the government applied this provision to other protests in the past?” Thomas asked, as if to nail the Justice Department for inconsistency and reveal some improper motive for wielding the law against violent insurrectionists. Justice Neil Gorsuch trolled Prelogar by alluding to Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s infamous fire alarm incident . “Would pulling a fire alarm before a vote qualify for 20 years in federal prison?” he asked. Justice Samuel Alito joined in to ask about “protests in the courtroom” when an audience member interrupts the justices and “delays the proceeding for five minutes.”

“For all the protests that have occurred in this court,” Alito noted pointedly, “the Justice Department has not charged any serious offenses, and I don’t think any one of those protestors has been sentenced to even one day in prison.” Why, he wondered, weren’t they charged under the obstruction statute?

Alito, audibly angry, continued: “Yesterday protestors blocked the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and disrupted traffic in San Francisco,” he told Prelogar. “What if something similar to that happened all around the Capitol so … all the bridges from Virginia were blocked, and members from Virginia who needed to appear at a hearing couldn’t get there or were delayed in getting there? Would that be a violation of this provision?”

To be clear, this is trolling: There is simply no comparison between a violent attack on the Capitol and protests that take the form of civil disobedience. And these justices expressed no similar concern about an ongoing red-state effort to persecute peaceful protesters who participate in Black Lives Matter demonstrations. Gorsuch and Alito’s hypotheticals ignore the reality that there are two layers of protection between minor protests and this rather major law. First, the Constitution affords prosecutorial discretion to the executive branch, allowing the Department of Justice to decide when an illegal “protest” is dangerous enough to warrant the use of a criminal law like the obstruction statute. Second, prosecutors must always prove the alleged offense to a jury, beyond a reasonable doubt, creating a democratic check on the abusive use of a stringent law to punish a silly crime.

Prelogar highlighted this latter point, explaining that juries have indeed acquitted Jan. 6 defendants of obstruction. If prosecutors ever apply this (or any other) criminal statute to a questionable set of facts, they may always be thwarted by a jury. That is how the system is meant to work.

This kind of behavior from Thomas, Gorsuch, and Alito is no surprise at this point. And the liberal justices countered them as best they could. What’s troubling is that the other conservative justices jumped in to join the pile-on. Chief Justice John Roberts insistently pressed Prelogar to prove that the Justice Department has interpreted and enforced the obstruction law consistently in the past. This question ignored the fact that, as Prelogar reminded the court, there has never been any crime like the assault on the Capitol , so the agency had no prior opportunity to apply the law in any similar way.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested that the Justice Department didn’t really need this statute because it has other laws at its disposal. “There are six other counts in the indictment here,” he told Prelogar. Why “aren’t those six counts good enough just from the Justice Department’s perspective given that they don’t have any of the hurdles?” Of course, the DOJ brought the obstruction charge specifically because it was more serious than the others; prosecutors felt an obligation to enforce Congress’ strong protections against intrusions on official proceedings, including those in the Capitol. Kavanaugh appears to think the DOJ should have settled for a smattering of lesser charges. Justice Amy Coney Barrett was not so obtuse; she earnestly worried that the statute was too broad and fished around for narrowing constructions. Yet she seemed unsatisfied with the many options Prelogar provided to keep the law limited to the most egregious interruptions of government business.

What all six justices seemed tempted to do was rip up Section 1552(c) because it happens to include another sentence that applies to the destruction of evidence and other official documents. Jan. 6 rioters didn’t destroy evidence, this argument goes, so they can’t be culpable under a law. That reading is untenable , something Prelogar impressively reinforced at every turn on Tuesday, but it may be attractive if a majority wants to defuse this statute before it’s used against Trump in a court of law.

Smith’s indictment of the former president for his participation in Jan. 6 doesn’t entirely hinge on obstruction. It does, however, weave obstruction into both the facts and the legal theory of the case, placing it at the center of a broader criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election. If SCOTUS defuses the law now, Smith would have to scrap two of four charges and restructure the entire indictment, making it that much easier for Trump to demand further delay and, eventually, evade a conviction.

The justices know this. They should have been on their best behavior on Tuesday to avoid any glimmer of impropriety. It was already profoundly disturbing that Thomas sat on the case given his wife’s involvement with the attempt to overturn the election. The other justices’ faux concern about overcriminalization of protesters only added to the foul smell emanating from arguments. There’s no telling how Fischer will turn out; maybe the liberal justices will help their colleagues rediscover their better angels behind the scenes. From Tuesday’s vantage point, though, the argument was a bleak reminder of how easy it is for cloistered jurists to wish away the massive stakes of a case like this.

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A Remote Island Draws Thousands of Turtles Each Year. Could It Attract Tourists?

Green sea turtles swim hundreds of miles to nest on a spectacular West African archipelago. Getting there is quite a journey for humans, too.

By Ricci Shryock

Ricci Shryock is a writer and photographer based in Dakar, Senegal.

Each year, thousands of baby green sea turtles clamber across a beautiful, white-sand paradise that is one of the largest hatching sites of this species in the Atlantic, adorably making their way to the sea. There’s one noticeable absence: people.

The spectacular hatching events take place between August and December on Poilão Island, a tiny, uninhabited speck off the coast of Guinea-Bissau in West Africa. It is the southernmost island of the 88 that make up the Bijagós archipelago, a UNESCO biosphere reserve . Last year, turtles laid more than 44,000 nests on its 1.4 mile-long beach.

While the masses of turtles seem to have little trouble finding the spot to lay their eggs — some swim more than 600 miles across the North Atlantic — it’s hard to imagine somewhere more challenging for human turtle-lovers to reach.

The country’s tourism minister, Alberto Demba Touré, said that access is a main challenge. “We want to increase the tourists who go to the Bijagós,” he said. Last year, UNESCO declared its support for the Bijagós Islands to seek World Heritage List status , which, if successful, would increase its visibility and strengthen its environmental protections.

Turtle conservation programs have become a staple of resorts in many popular destinations, including in Hawaii, Mexico and throughout the Caribbean. Guinea-Bissau may like to capture a meager sliver of that pie, but it would be with steep challenges.

Politically fragile Guinea-Bissau has very little infrastructure and is one of the world’s poorest and least touristed nations. Most flights to Bissau, the country’s sleepy capital on the mainland, require a connection in Lisbon or Dakar, Senegal. Then, from Bissau, it’s a bumpy one-hour drive to the coast, and five to seven hours in a speedboat (depending on the route) to Poilão Island.

A limited number of tourists, usually no more than a dozen at a time, are allowed to visit the Poilão Island, which is part of the João Vieira and Poilão Marine National Park. The island is considered sacred by the archipelago’s residents and no construction is allowed on it.

A plane, to a truck, to a speedboat

Last fall I traveled to Poilão at the height of hatching season to witness the baby turtles make their way from nest to sea, and to see how the local workers monitor and ensure the survival of the tens of thousands of hatchlings each year.

I started in Bissau, a riverside city of half a million, after flying there from my home in Dakar. A few blocks from the presidential palace, people sat at plastic tables under mango trees, listening to music and eating grilled oysters plucked from the roots of the nearby mangroves. Women walked by selling cashew fruit, which has a sour, fermented aroma.

Visitors to Bissau might visit the war museum, in an 18th-century fort and an active military base, to see the mainly Soviet-sponsored weapons used by Bissau-Guinean fighters during the independence war against their Portuguese rulers that ended in 1974.

The next morning, another visitor and I climbed into a truck that took us to the coast. I had booked my Poilão trip with a hotel on one of the islands, Orango Parque Hotel, which arranged boat transport, park fees, meals, a guide and simple accommodations for three nights. The whole arrangement cost about $1,470.

We left the capital’s main paved avenue for potholed small lanes. An hour later, we reached the dock, near an abandoned hotel among the mangroves, where I climbed into a white speedboat.

For three hours, we sped through the open ocean, passing small, mostly uninhabited islands of the Bijagós. We occasionally passed fishermen — half a dozen men in brightly painted, long wooden boats — who waved as we buzzed by.

A stop to meet the priestesses

Eventually, we landed on a beach at the hotel on Orango Island, the largest in the archipelago, where we would spend two nights before continuing the journey. We were shown to our small round houses that contained a single comfortable room, and given a lunch of fresh fish and rice.

Eduardo da Silva, a boat captain and guide at the hotel who grew up on the island, said tourists can learn a lot from the way Bijagós residents interact with nature.

“On Orango, we have always been conservationists,” he said.

One day during my stay, Mr. Da Silva took me to meet the local priestesses . Orango is a matriarchal society; today the priestesses still make decisions about when certain harvests take place and what is allowed to happen on sacred grounds. I offered the women two unlabeled, neon-green bottles of cana, alcohol made from sugar cane, which I had bought for this purpose from a roadside stand when leaving Bissau. After a short ceremony with the cana, the priestesses spoke about how they base their community decisions on what will ensure a continued balance with the environment.

“Conservation can protect what is ours, so that we don’t lose it and so that our children who are born tomorrow can know it,” said Nene Ecane, one of the priestesses, in the Bijagós language via a translator.

Landing on Poilão

When it was time to leave Orango, another speedboat — smaller than the one the day before — drove us through clear waters for two hours. We spotted dolphins and Mr. Da Silva banged his hand on the side of the boat. The dolphins came closer and jumped alongside us.

While most of the speedboat journey from Bissau had been smooth, near Poilão the boat hit rougher waves. It was just before sunset when we landed. Occasional patches of volcanic black rocks, vital for green sea turtles, dotted the small beach.

As we unloaded the boat, a half-dozen workers from the João Vieira and Poilão Marine National Park greeted us, including Tumbulo Garcia Bamba, the park’s adjunct director.

“It’s good for tourists to come and learn and see how we work here for the turtles,” he said. He said he hopes that more attention to the turtles of Poilão will lead people outside of the region to respect the environment.

Mr. Bamba said he had noticed more trash washing up on the island’s shores; the Orango hotel scheduled a clean-up crew for the following week, which is not normally needed. Workers on the islands said many of the products seen among the trash — including bottled water and cosmetics — were not available in Guinea-Bissau and may have come from other parts of West Africa.

“The ocean knows no borders,” said Mr. Bamba.

A mad dash to the sea

Other than our individual tents, which were set up a few dozen feet from the beach, there were few other signs of human life. There is no cell reception.

But we were not alone. All along the beach lay thousands of buried turtle eggs. Every few steps there was another underground sea turtle hatchling family, the park workers told us. Many nests had markers, but not all. We walked gingerly.

The workers, many of whom are from the Bijagós Islands, not only count and monitor the hatchlings, but also help them make their way safely to the sea.

Even though the nests are just 20 or so feet from the ocean, the two-inch-long hatchlings are susceptible to many threats during their brief journey to the water — specifically birds, which wait in the nearby trees ready to snatch them.

We followed the workers throughout the early evening as they dug up nests — sometimes they were chest-deep in sand. They gathered dozens of just-hatched turtles into buckets and held them at the campsite until nightfall and high tide, when it was safer to release them.

A few hours later, in the darkness, the workers took the buckets of turtles back to the beach and let them go. All at once, a few hundred small hatchlings made their mad dash for the safety of the sea. Under the starlight, they used their small front flippers to quickly — and adorably — push their way through the sand to the water.

After the sea turtle release, we sat down for a fresh fish dinner, grilled over an open fire by the hotel staff. The park workers ate next to us, all of us using headlamps and flashlights in the dark.

A laptop, powered by solar panels, blasted a playlist of ’90s and early 2000s love ballads as our dinner soundtrack, giving the evening a surreal feel. It was just us, Usher, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and, beneath a few feet of sand, thousands of baby turtles waiting for their first swim through the waves.

Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2024 .

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Considering a trip, or just some armchair traveling here are some ideas..

52 Places:  Why do we travel? For food, culture, adventure, natural beauty? Our 2024 list has all those elements, and more .

Mumbai:  Spend 36 hours in this fast-changing Indian city  by exploring ancient caves, catching a concert in a former textile mill and feasting on mangoes.

Kyoto:  The Japanese city’s dry gardens offer spots for quiet contemplation  in an increasingly overtouristed destination.

Iceland:  The country markets itself as a destination to see the northern lights. But they can be elusive, as one writer recently found .

Texas:  Canoeing the Rio Grande near Big Bend National Park can be magical. But as the river dries, it’s getting harder to find where a boat will actually float .

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Should the sat still matter after all these years why some colleges are bringing it back.

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Generations of American teens have taken the SAT, a blood-pressure-raising multi-hour exam they are told could make or break their academic futures.

The longest-enduring standardized college admissions test in the nation, the SAT has faced decades of controversy over bias and criticism for reducing aspiring college students to a test score. It has also been denounced as part of the high barrier to entry into the so-called American meritocracy.

Related video above: Almost 2,000 universities in the U.S. are scrapping or have scrapped standardized testing requirements. That's not the case at all universities.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, when dozens of the most prestigious universities in the nation suspended their standardized testing requirement, some were hopeful of a new era of more equitable college admissions.

But this year, many of these institutions have done an about-face on their test-optional policies. At the same time, at least 1,825 US colleges and universities, or more than 80% of four-year schools, will still not require testing for 2025 admissions, according to FairTest, the National Center for Fair & Open Testing.

The splintering of admissions policies post-pandemic has reinvigorated debate around the necessity of the SAT.

To test, or not to test?

Criticism has dogged the SAT for years. The exam, whose acronym originally stood for "Scholastic Aptitude Test," was developed in the 1920s by Princeton-based eugenicist Carl Brigham, who believed immigration was diluting American intelligence and adapted US Army mental tests to determine whether similar exams could measure innate student intelligence. (Brigham retracted some of his views several years later.)

The College Board, the educational non-profit that designs and administers the exam, told CNN the SAT has been "completely overhauled" since the 1920s and now measures how well a student has learned specific content, not inherent aptitude.

But the test's legacy — one steeped in racism and classism — has raised questions about the need for high-stakes testing at all. The National Education Association has noted that the SAT, and its counterpart the ACT, can factor too heavily in the college admissions process.

"It's important that we don't overly rely on them because they're not holistic. They are one snapshot on one day and it can determine whether or not you get into college," NEA's Director of Policy Daaiyah Bilal-Threats told CNN.

Most colleges have no plans to reinstitute their pre-pandemic testing requirements.

"Test-optional policies continue to dominate at national universities, state flagships, and selective liberal arts colleges because they typically result in more applicants, academically stronger applicants and more diversity," said FairTest Executive Director Harry Feder in a February statement, after some Ivy League schools announced they would reinstitute their testing requirements.

A strong emphasis on high SAT scores has also spurred the rise of a lucrative test prep industry in the United States, which is estimated to grow by about 7% to almost $50 billion by 2027, according to a report in October 2023 from market researcher Technavio.

Discrepancies with standardized testing appear to be symptomatic of the inequality endemic to the education system. Some experts point out that doing away with the SAT as an admissions component, like many universities did at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, does little to remedy systemic inequity. In fact, it can bring the disparity into starker focus.

Wealthier students may have access to prestigious internships, schools with better-funded clubs and sports, as well as music and arts programs — all elements of the quintessential college application.

Video below: Last year, a study found that very high-performing students from middle-income families are the least likely to be accepted to Ivy-league schools

"(Students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds) don't have any of these fancy extracurriculars. They haven't played in a fancy jazz band. They don't do fancy internships. They don't work as volunteers in Guatemala. And yet some of them will be very capable students," said Daniel Koretz, a testing policy expert at Harvard's Graduate School of Education. He says the question is: How do schools find these students?

According to Koretz, the SAT's longevity can be attributed to its efficacy in predicting how a student will perform in college.

A study published in January by Harvard's Opportunity Insights center found that standardized tests are more effective predictors of performance than high school grades.

Critically, the study also found that students from different socioeconomic backgrounds who have similar test scores have "virtually identical" college GPAs.

Weeks after the study was released, several schools that had been test-optional for nearly four years officially reversed their stances. Yale and Dartmouth announced in February they were reinstating a testing requirement and were quickly joined by private and public institutions, including Brown, Georgetown, Harvard, the University of Florida and the University of Texas at Austin.

"SAT/ACTs can be especially helpful in identifying students from less-resourced backgrounds who would succeed at Dartmouth but might otherwise be missed in a test-optional environment," Dartmouth wrote in a statement in February.

"With an abundance of high school GPAs surrounding 4.0 … an SAT or ACT score is a proven differentiator that is in each student's and the University's best interest," UT Austin said in March.

Still a need for standardized tests

Education experts who spoke to CNN say the SAT is necessary because there is no "standard" American education.

Individual schools may have different grading criteria. Some schools weigh grade point averages differently. An A+ in an AP class in one district is equivalent to a 4.0 GPA. In another, it could be 5.0, 4.5 or 4.2.

Even within the same school and subject, some teachers might grade more or less leniently than others.

College admissions officers simply don't have the ability to account for all of these minute discrepancies, experts told CNN, so standardized tests will likely stick around unless US education becomes standardized in other ways.

"Anytime you have a system as big as ours and in the absence of that kind of standardization in the K-12 system, schools are going to find value in finding ways to compare students. It doesn't have to be the SAT necessarily, but something standardized like it," said Ethan Hutt, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Education.

Democratizing education

This lack of standardization reaches back to the early days of U.S. education. Throughout the 1800s, there was little tracking of student achievement, and grades and written tests weren't common.

"In the 19th century, schools … would gather parents and townspeople, and the teacher would basically put on an exhibition with the class," said Hutt. "They would ask students questions and to recite things (they had learned)."

Oral examinations were the norm until 1845, when education reformer and then-Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education Horace Mann instituted a written test to gauge the level of student instruction across Boston-area public schools.

A college education was exceedingly rare, as the system was designed to favor wealthy White men funneled from elite private schools in the Northeast to prestigious private universities also in the Northeast.

"Often, it would consist of either colleges accrediting certain high schools and saying, 'OK, any graduate of (Phillips Exeter Academy) is automatically given entrance to Harvard,' or they would send out professors to do exams at individual schools," said Hutt.

First administered in 1926, the SAT was an attempt to broaden the university candidate pool.

Three legislative milestones indirectly expanded the influence of the SAT. First, the 1944 Servicemen's Readjustment Act, commonly known as the GI Bill, gave returning soldiers the funds to pursue higher education. Between 1944 and 1951, more than two million veterans enrolled in college.

Second, the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibited colleges and universities that received federal money from discriminating against applicants according to "race, color, or national origin." Eight years later, Congress would pass another landmark legislation — Title IX — a law that prohibited institutions from discriminating on the basis of sex. These laws, at least in theory, sought to even out the playing field for college admissions.

Between 1945 and 1995, the percent of Americans older than 25 who had earned a bachelor's degree had increased from about 5% to 23%, according to the Census Bureau. And as higher education grew more attainable, the SAT became the most important exam some Americans would ever take.

A standard in flux

The College Board continually revamps and redesigns both its SAT scoring metrics and exam content. For decades, the test consisted of two multiple-choice sections: math and verbal reasoning. Each section was worth a total of 800 points, making a perfect score 1600.

In 2005, the College Board added an 800-point writing section to the exam alongside its math and verbal reasoning sections. The test, scored out of 2400 instead of 1600, was also 45 minutes longer. About nine years later, the SAT reverted to a 1600-point essay-optional model before entirely scrapping the essay section in 2021.

On March 9, the College Board administered its first fully digital SAT exam. At around two hours, the test, which was taken by over 200,000 students on a test-taking app, is much shorter than its predecessors. It's also adaptive, meaning the questions in the second half of the reading and math sections are adjusted based on the student's performance on the first half.

Video below: Pencils down: SAT makes all-digital change for college prep test

Part of the push to redesign comes from competition with the Iowa-based ACT, which has been administered since 1959 but has since become the preferred exam in many parts of the country.

"When the ACT started getting so much more traction and because it was shorter, the SAT really wanted to maintain its market share, and so it made a number of changes for that reason," said Rachel Rubin, a higher education policy expert and co-founder of Massachusetts-based educational consulting company Spark Admissions.

Although the SAT has seen a slight slump in the number of test takers, with 1.9 million students sitting for the exam in 2023 compared to 2.2 million pre-pandemic, the College Board's exam still reins supreme. Only about 1.4 million students took the ACT in 2023, compared to 1.7 million in 2019.

Working through a history of bias

The SAT's analogy section, a fixture of the exam until 2005, had long been criticized for presupposing that test-takers come from certain cultural backgrounds. An infamous example from the 1980s exam included "regatta," which is a sporting event consisting of boat races that is almost exclusively common in wealthy Northeast communities.

"For many years the SAT … was crafted by people who were almost entirely White, were overwhelmingly male, and were largely educated in colleges and universities from the Northeast," said Jack Schneider, the head of UMass Amherst's Center for Education Policy. "The assumptions that they made about the things that any well-educated person should know were in many ways biased against communities of color, low-income communities, and communities where languages other than English were the predominant language."

Schneider acknowledges that eliminating bias from the SAT is incredibly difficult because "we live in a biased society."

The College Board told CNN it has also done away with its esoteric vocabulary in the past decade.

"Starting in 2014, we said let's measure all the most common things that are most useful in college and that students are more likely to encounter in their high school classrooms," said College Board CEO David Coleman, noting this applies both to the math curriculum and the mastery of vocabulary.

In recent years, the College Board has implemented cost-saving initiatives for eligible test-takers to promote equity, such as waiving the $60 registration fee and offering college application fee waivers, which can save applicants as much as $90 per school . It has partnered with education non-profit Khan Academy since 2015 to provide free test prep materials.

The SAT School Day program, which launched in 2014, allows students to take the test on a weekday rather than on a designated weekend at a potentially unfamiliar testing center. The College Board say a majority of students use the program, which "has been shown to lead to higher college-going rates for low-income and rural students."

Coleman says administering the test in a familiar environment can reduce the stress inherent to the SAT experience. He added that the shorter digital exam is also aimed at accommodating different types of test-takers.

"(The older version of the SAT) can feel like it's designed for young people who are very quick, and it's a great error to confuse quick and smart," Coleman said. "The digital exam gives kids 160% more time per question … to make sure they can finish the exam without feeling out of breath."

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, which colleges require the sat essay complete list.

SAT Logistics , SAT Essay

Planning to take the SAT? Before you sign up, you need to decide whether you're going to take the test with or without the optional Essay . How should you pick? Well, some colleges require that you apply with the SAT with Essay; others don't care whether you submit an SAT score with or without the Essay.

In this article, I'll provide you with a complete list of colleges that require or recommend taking the SAT with the Essay .

UPDATE: SAT Essay No Longer Offered

In January 2021, the College Board announced that after June 2021, it would no longer offer the Essay portion of the SAT (except at schools who opt in during School Day Testing). It is now no longer possible to take the SAT Essay, unless your school is one of the small number who choose to offer it during SAT School Day Testing.

While most colleges had already made SAT Essay scores optional, this move by the College Board means no colleges now require the SAT Essay. It will also likely lead to additional college application changes such not looking at essay scores at all for the SAT or ACT, as well as potentially requiring additional writing samples for placement.

What does the end of the SAT Essay mean for your college applications? Check out our article on the College Board's SAT Essay decision for everything you need to know.

What Is the Optional SAT Essay?

The redesigned SAT debuted in March 2016 with a now-optional Essay section. For the Essay, you have 50 minutes to read a passage (similar to those you see on the Reading section ) and write an essay dissecting how the author made the argument . Did the author use evidence to support the main claim? Appeals to emotion? Specific word choice?

If you take the SAT without Essay, the test length is three hours . However, if you take the SAT with Essay, the optional Essay adds 50 minutes . It also costs more to take the SAT with Essay : $64.50 vs $49.50 without the Essay.

Don't automatically assume you must take the Essay. Whether it's important for you depends on which schools (and scholarships) you're applying to and what the rest of your application looks like. I'll go into more depth later about how to decide which version of the SAT to take.

List of Schools That Require the SAT With Essay

Below, I've compiled a list of colleges that require or recommend taking the SAT with Essay. All data comes from the College Board and some individual schools we consulted separately.

Note: This list is subject to change, so make sure to double-check with each school you're applying to.

Surprisingly (and in contrast to how it's been in the past), top schools mostly do not require the SAT essay . Currently, no Ivy League School requires students to take the SAT with Essay; the same is true for Stanford, Caltech, Duke, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Northwestern, NYU, and UChicago. Many of these schools no longer even recommend students to take the SAT with Essay, which is a huge turnaround from just a couple of years ago.

Similarly, most liberal arts colleges do not require or recommend the SAT with Essay ; however, there are some exceptions, such as Soka University, which does require it.

In general, most state schools also do not require the SAT with Essay, though there's still a significant portion that do. There tends to be some weird variance even within states. For example, all University of California schools require the SAT with Essay, but most of the California State University schools do not.

Regardless of the types of schools you're applying to, don't assume that they all ask for the SAT with Essay . Check with every school to make sure you understand their testing requirements.

How to Decide Whether to Take the SAT Essay: 4 Questions

When making your decision about whether to take the SAT with Essay or the SAT without Essay, you'll need to consider the following four questions.

#1: Do Any Schools I Want to Apply to Require the SAT Essay?

If you're applying to any school that requires the Essay, then you must take the SAT with Essay . If you take the SAT without Essay, your application will be incomplete and you won't get admitted. By contrast, if you apply to any schools that don't require the SAT Essay, you can still take the SAT with Essay since these schools will accept both types of SAT scores (with or without Essay).

To reiterate, colleges that require the SAT Essay won't consider your score if you took the SAT without the Essay . The last thing you want to do is take the SAT without the Essay and get a good score—but then find out that one of your target schools requires you to take the SAT with Essay.

Remember that some colleges change their application policies from year to year, so make sure to double-check the testing policies of the schools you're applying to .

#2: Do Any Schools I Want to Apply to Recommend the SAT Essay?

If you're not applying to any schools that require the SAT Essay section but are applying to some that recommend it, then I'd still suggest taking it . This gives you another dimension schools can use to evaluate your application; however, there are some cases in which you shouldn't take the SAT with Essay.

If, for some reason, you do not qualify for SAT fee waivers and paying the extra cost to take the SAT with Essay would be a financial burden to you , then please don't feel as if you have to take it. In this case, it's fine to take the SAT without Essay instead.

In addition, if you really struggle to write essays under time constraints (due to anxiety), you might want to opt out of the Essay . That said, I only recommend this for students who normally have strong English and writing skills but struggle to write coherent essays when there's the added pressure of a time constraint.

For example, do you get As on essays you can work on at home but Cs on in-class essays because you get easily nervous? If that's the case, taking the SAT with Essay might not be a good idea.

#3: Am I Applying to Any Scholarships That Require an SAT With Essay Score?

Many scholarships (such as National Merit ) require you to submit SAT scores , and some specifically want SAT with Essay scores.

Therefore, be sure to check the requirements of each scholarship you're planning on applying for . While scholarships that don't require or recommend the SAT Essay should still accept your SAT with Essay score, scholarships that require the Essay section will not consider your SAT score if you took the no-essay version .

#4: Will the SAT Essay Enhance My Application in Other Ways?

Generally speaking, taking the SAT Essay if it's not required won't add a lot to your application. In truth, colleges that don't recommend or require the Essay really don't pay much attention to it.

Nevertheless, the Essay might be helpful for international students who want to prove they have strong English skills and who think they'll do especially well on it. If you fall into this category and feel confident you'll get a high score on it ( after doing practice essays , for example), definitely consider taking the SAT with Essay.

On the other hand, if you don't think you'll do well on the Essay, I recommend against taking it.

What's Next?

Need help preparing for the SAT? Read our ultimate study guide to get expert tips on prep and access to the best free online resources. If you're taking the test soon, learn how to cram for the SAT .

Want to learn more about the SAT Essay? Check out our step-by-step guide to writing a great essay .

Not sure where you want to go to college? Learn how to do college research right and figure out your SAT target score .

Ready to go beyond just reading about the SAT? Then you'll love the free five-day trial for our SAT Complete Prep program . Designed and written by PrepScholar SAT experts , our SAT program customizes to your skill level in over 40 subskills so that you can focus your studying on what will get you the biggest score gains.

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As an SAT/ACT tutor, Dora has guided many students to test prep success. She loves watching students succeed and is committed to helping you get there. Dora received a full-tuition merit based scholarship to University of Southern California. She graduated magna cum laude and scored in the 99th percentile on the ACT. She is also passionate about acting, writing, and photography.

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