Pandemic Throws Monkey Wrench into SAT Administration

Test centers around the world are being shut down due to the pandemic, causing mass panic not just for students applying to college but guidance counselors and even the College Board itself. 

“We had to cancel quite a few test administrations,” Mrs. Amanda De Nardo, who chairs the Guidance Department and handles the SAT administration at East Longmeadow High School. 

After each cancellation, worried parents and students sought immediate answers on what their next step was. Email flooded guidance counselor inboxes with questions.

“We were collecting many parent phone calls and student emails like ‘Hey, what’s going on?’“ De Nardo said.

Students nervous about not being able to take the tests by their college admission deadlines look for test centers at any possible location. 

“At one point my date at East Longmeadow was cancelled,” Brooke Martin ‘21 said. “The only other option I could switch to was all the way in Suffield, Connecticut. It definitely was not ideal location-wise but I took what I could get.” 

Eventually, East Longmeadow High School managed to host two test dates, compared to it usual three. 

Along with the trouble of keeping a test date from getting cancelled, the numbers of students allowed were nowhere close to numbers of the past due to CDC restrictions. 

“It was on a very much smaller scale… where we would usually have two hundred students, we only had fifty” De Nardo said. 

“The College Board makes a ton of their money off of SATs,” DeNardo said. “They charge you to take the test and to send your scores to the schools so they’re definitely losing out on a lot this year.”

Many colleges and universities are now test optional. Westfield State University will remain test optional beyond 2020. De Nardo believes many will also follow their lead.