 I have a confession to make. I lied. See, I said that we were going to talk about finances this week, but then College Board decided to completely throw away my recently made script for the SAT exam. And here we are. We have to talk about the changes to the SAT. These are just little tweaks to the test that make it a little bit harder, a little bit easier. Entire sections of the SAT are going away for good. The SAT itself has not really changed. Any additional components have been removed. So we're going to talk about what has changed and how that impacts your application process today on the SCORE channel. So first things first. The SAT itself, the actual test, is still the same. As always there are two different parts, the English and Math part, which each have two sections. The English part contains a reading test and a writing test where you don't actually write anything, but you answer questions related to writing like how to use different words in context or how to do punctuation. The math portion has one section that allows you to use a calculator and one that does not. These two parts combined give you the SAT. And so far that remains exactly the same. According to College Board, there is no major changes planned to the actual structure of the test, which is great because all the practice materials that you've been using and all the methods that you've been learning will still work. Just like always, the SAT is going to be a multiple choice exam, four possible answers for every question. The test hasn't changed. So what's different? College Board just announced that after June 2021 they will no longer be offering two components of the test that had become mainstays of the SAT. The first being the SAT essay. Now the essay was always an optional component of the SAT, but most people would do it because it was good for your application to have some proof that you know how to write things. So why has the essay gone? What happened? Why did they remove it? The problem with the essay is that it was a little bit outdated and becoming more and more redundant every year. You see, a lot of universities ask you to submit essays of your own when you apply and the Common App asks for a personal statement that everybody has to do. So you're already going to be writing hundreds, maybe thousands of words in essays to apply to universities. It seems like College Board became aware of this too and it's also worth pointing out that if there's one part of the test that could cost the company a lot of money, it's probably the part where a human being has to read your work. You can't just auto correct an essay. Nevertheless, if you signed up for the SAT with an essay for the March SAT or for the May SAT, that will still be good to go. This is only after June 2021. Now that's not the only thing that College Board got rid of in the SAT. We also have to talk about the subject tests. Those components were math, science, history, English literature, and foreign language. Within each of those categories, there are different subject tests. For example, if you were taking a history test, you could do US history or world history. So what was the point of these extra subject tests? Well, for students who maybe didn't have advanced placement courses, they could use these tests as a way to show that they knew stuff about things. You want to study things related to history, so you take the subject test to show your people that, look, I know about history, you should let me in. The thing is, not too many universities actually required the subject test for admissions. They were more like an extra way for you to show off your skills. And honestly, it's something that a lot of people don't really need anymore because advanced placement courses have become a lot more accessible. And with more and more students finding access to the International Baccalaureate, for instance, they have ways to get these skills without the SAT subject test. Now, the subject tests were really useful for international students who had no access to AP courses or who maybe couldn't get access to some of these high level courses in their school at all and they wanted to show their skills, especially for certain applicants applying to certain careers in certain universities. But you notice I use the word certain a lot there. The actual need for the subject test has never been very high. And so it seems pretty obvious that College Board realized that taking the time to make all these different tests, and by the way, there's 20 different tests that they offered, it probably wasn't worth the effort for them. Again, I'm looking at this from a cost cutting perspective. I think College Board is just looking to save some money and focus on their core business model, which is the SAT. So what does this mean for you if you're applying to study in the United States in 2021? Well, first of all, it's made your life a little bit easier. If you were thinking about taking the SAT essay or subject tests, you can still do so if you get registered before May or June 2021. But after that, it's over. College Board says that they're doing this because they're trying to streamline processes and make life a little bit easier for college applicants. So if you're applying to go to the United States to study abroad and you need to prepare for yourself for the SAT, your job just got a little bit easier. You don't have to worry about the essay. You don't have to worry about subject tests. You can focus strictly on the English and math portions of the test and try to get the best score possible. Something else that hasn't changed is how important the SAT is for your admissions. Now, the SAT doesn't necessarily guarantee that you're going to get in. Scoring a 1600 does not necessarily give you an automatic entry to every single university under the sun, but it definitely helps. I like to look at the SAT more as a way to open doors. It doesn't necessarily push you through the door, but it does open it. If you get a good score, universities will at least take a look at your application. But top universities, if you have a bad score or one that's below their threshold, they're not going to look at you unless you have some really extreme amazing origin story like you're a refugee or something like that, or you've overcome some incredible challenge and you're basically a national hero. Aside from those rare exceptions, you're going to need a good score to get into good universities, but a good score does not equal automatic admission. And I think that's really important for people to remember. You can get into good schools with a slightly lower score than what you hoped for. And likewise, you can get rejected from the best schools with one of the best scores possible. Now, I was debating making a video about whether you should take the SAT or not in 2021 because a lot of universities went test optional for 2020. This was a response to the problems created by the pandemic. A lot of testing centers were unable to open and here in Peru, for example, we saw the March SAT get delayed all the way to December. That problem happened around the world and obviously it would have made it college admissions to the United States near impossible if everyone had to have an SAT score. Now, some people have suggested that this means the end of the SAT. The SAT is not going anywhere. Make no mistake, even if your university says test optional, they're still going to be impressed by a good score. So those are the changes to the SAT in 2021. After June 2021's test, there won't be any more essays, no more subject tests. So if you want to get the best score possible, check out prepwithscore.com. We make groups of at most six people for every SAT test. We do not like to make big groups where we're just going to run you through like a factory. We try to personalize the education for you, figure out what you need and make sure that you get the best score possible. All right, we're going to get back to our regularly scheduled programming and next we talk a little bit about how you can spend less on university and even get free money for college. So make sure you subscribe to the channel so that you can see all the latest content. We're putting out new videos every week Thursday. I'm going to try my hardest to really keep that promise. Life's a little crazy right now. I'm like in the middle of a move. I'm remodeling an apartment, but we're going to get there. Everything is going to be so much better. It's going to be so much less janky. It's going to be amazing. I promise it's going to be the greatest, best ever everything. You're going to love it. Thank you guys for watching and I'll see you next time. Man, I hope that music isn't in my background the whole time because my neighbor is just blasting it. Dude, there's nothing I can do. Who's got their music blasting in 9.45 in the morning? I try to record in the morning so that I can avoid as much background noise as possible and then there's just people pounding music on a Sunday morning.