 You care way too much about the SAT and it's killing your chances of admission, but that's why I'm here. I'm Meacham, I'm your college counselor, and today I'm going to prove to you that the SAT is not as important as you think and tell you what you should be doing instead to make your application better. What you're looking at here is data from 25 top 100 universities in the United States. These numbers show the percentage of enrolled first year students that presented a test score. For example, in 2020, 77% of those who enrolled at Franklin and Marshall brought test scores. By contrast, at UNC Chapel Hill, that number was 135%. How is that even possible? These numbers can go over 100% because they take the SAT percentage and ACT percentage and combine them together. If you took both the SAT and ACT, then you could be counted twice and that was exactly what was happening before the pandemic. Most schools had a test requirement and most people would bring one test and some people would bring two. A good example is Binghamton where 99% of those enrolled took the SAT and another 31% brought an ACT score. So that suggests that about a third of their class actually did two exams. But those are 2020 numbers. Those are people who applied in 2019 and that was before the pandemic. The pandemic has left a permanent mark on standardized testing and admissions. As you probably know, in 2020, almost every university was test optional because of the pandemic. And so that class that enrolled in 2021 reveals a lot of interesting things. Out of the 25 colleges I surveyed, every single one, except for Notre Dame, saw a drop in the number of test scores that they received. Somehow, Notre Dame just stays at 100% every year. I don't know what they're doing over there. But some of these drops were massive. The University of Washington in Seattle went from 109% before the pandemic to just 27% during the pandemic. Even schools that were test optional before the pandemic, like Northwestern, which had 85% of its students submit test scores in 2020, went all the way down to 42% in 2021. On average, all the schools I surveyed had a 40 percentage point drop going from 2020 to 2021 admissions. So that brings us to the big question. What about after the pandemic? I mean, is that drop permanent or have things bounced back to the way they were before the pandemic? Is the SAT as relevant as it used to be? Or is it slowly dying? Well, now that most colleges have published their 2022 data, we're able to get the answer. These common data sets report on students who enrolled in 2022. And that means they applied in 2021 when there were basically no restrictions on test centers because we were kind of post pandemic, or at least in the United States, we thought we were. But that's a whole other discussion. You would expect, right, for there to be sort of a bounce back up. But the data shows us the exact opposite. There were a few schools that saw a bounce back in terms of the number of test scores that were submitted. The University of Maryland, for example, went from 43% in 2021 to 55% in 2022. But that's still less than half of their original pre-pandemic number of 112%. Many more universities continued the decline in test scores submissions. Davidson College went from 78% during the pandemic to 63% the year after. Many of the universities I surveyed did not change that much, just a couple percentage points in either direction. But overall, the trend was a decrease in the number of SAT or ACT scores received by universities for those students that enrolled. That tells us something really important. Clearly, admissions offices don't care that much about the SAT. So neither should you. If admissions offices were really so concerned about the SAT, then wouldn't we see a bounce back in 2022 data? That would make sense. They would say, okay, well, you know, for 2021, we had to be test optional because of the pandemic, but we don't like what we saw. We want to get back to SAT and ACT. So we're going to admit more people that submit more tests. But the exact opposite has happened. And that is clearly a signal that a lot of universities have been looking for an opportunity to get rid of standardized testing or at least minimize it in the review process. And finally, they got that opportunity with the pandemic. About one third of the students were test optional. And that's a huge change from what we saw a couple years ago where people were bringing multiple tests. The SAT and ACT are almost half as important as they were two years ago. Now, granted, there are exceptions. I mean, look at Georgetown. Somehow they've managed to keep it over 100% every freaking year. So yeah, if you want to go study in Georgetown, like, you're going to want to take a test. Clearly the data suggests that. And same goes for Notre Dame. But like, look at things like Cornell where 60% of the class presented test scores, meaning 40% were optional. You don't need to have a great SAT score to get into a great university anymore. And that brings me to you, the viewer. You were specifically Ruth, because this whole video started because of one comment that I got. And I read this comment and it was easily the saddest comment I've ever seen on my channel. And I was sitting awake at night, like I literally could not sleep thinking about what I wanted to say in response to this comment, because it speaks to a much greater problem. And it's one that we got to fix together. I want you to read this with me, okay? Can I join a university in the US with 1200 in SAT as an international student? Please answer me. I can smell the desperation in that message. And I can genuinely feel the fear, the anxiety that somebody else has. And that's why it's so sad to me. Like, of course you can get into great universities with a 1200 SAT. You can get into great universities without any SAT at all. But I don't blame you, Ruth. It's not your fault that you don't have access to better information. It's not your fault that people in your life and in your schools are not counseling you better. But that's why I'm here. I'm here to give the truth to people like Ruth. Hey there, Ryan. I've really noticed this alarming trend and that's that you all really care about the SAT way too much. And again, it like, look, over half the people that have subscribed to this channel came in this year because of videos I made about the digital SAT. And that's awesome. But there are so many other things that you need to consider in your application. If you keep dedicating hours and hours and hours to getting a high score on a test that doesn't matter that much, you've wasted a ton of effort that could have gone into other things like better extracurricular activities or your essays or letters of recommendation buttering up your teachers so that they write you the best letter possible. These are things that matter so much more. Nobody's asking me about how to write their essays with the exception of Khaled. Shout out to Khaled. Nobody's talking to me about letters of recommendation or how to demonstrate interest or just any of the other things that matter in your application. Like a perfect SAT score does not guarantee you admission to anywhere. I'm going to cover all those other things in the following weeks, things like your essays and your letters of recommendation and building a college list and what extracurriculars you should be trying to do with your time. It's put me in an interesting position where all these new people come to this channel for SAT help. And I am super grateful that I have the opportunity to engage with so many people. And I love the fact that you're tuning into the live streams and I love all the questions I'm getting on WhatsApp and in the comments as well. And so I'm like extremely grateful. But at the same time as a college counselor, I know that like the SAT is not the most important thing. And so I'm forced to make a choice. Like I can either follow the data, follow the algorithm, right, and give you more of what you want. Or I can be true to the purpose of this channel and give you what you need. So am I going to get less clicks if I publish a video that's not about the SAT? Probably. Yeah. But it's better for you. And that's all that matters. Like I'm not here to chase, you know, big sub numbers. I'm not here to get rich off of YouTube. I have a whole business that makes money and pays me a salary. Like I don't need this channel to be a giant profit machine. But what I do need is for you to get admitted to the universities of your dreams. And like, that's what makes me happy when I hear good results for you. And that's only going to happen if you do it the right way. So this is all a long way of me saying that I am going to continue to publish SAT related content here. But I'm also going to publish a lot of other stuff that you need to know about the whole admission process. And so I really hope that you check that out. Because if you make your whole journey about the perfect SAT score or like getting over 1450 or, you know, worrying if you're 1200 will let you get into university. Like you're literally ignoring so many other things that will help you get into college. Also wanted to say that there's a chance I may not be doing weekly uploads anymore just due to the amount of time it takes and the amount of quality that I want to put into my content. I've been rethinking some things lately and I might be changing up my upload schedule. So if you don't see a video on a Thursday, don't panic. I'm not dead. I'm just reworking things a little bit here for my own mental health, my own sanity. So please consider everything else that goes into your application and please come back to get the advice that you need to succeed. All right? So thank you for watching my people and I will see you next week. Probably.