School is back in session, and for some high school seniors, that means preparing to apply for college. Taking standardized tests like the ACT or SAT isn't as integral a part of the application process as it used to be, but the practice continues.
Students are still choosing to take the SAT, even as more universities make submitting test scores optional. And some of those students have found it difficult or impossible to reserve a seat at an SAT testing location near their home.
Maggie Odahl, a high school senior living in Los Feliz, is applying to a number of schools outside California, where the entire UC system voted not to require SAT or ACT scores. So she decided to take the SAT during one of the August test dates.
But when she started looking in early June for the closest authorized test center with open seats near her home, she hit a wall.
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The website where students register for the SAT shows students a menu of all test centers within a certain mile radius they input, and whether there are any open seats left. That distance can range from 10 miles from the zip code students type in, to 100 miles.
"The closest [test center] I could find in early June was in Newbury Park," Odahl said. "So it was about 40 miles away."
And since the SAT is typically administered early in the morning, with students advised to arrive by 7:45 a.m. on the day of the test, that meant an early start at 5:30 a.m. and a long drive before taking a three-hour test.
"It was a little stressful having to wake up a little earlier, and worry about having to travel a distance to take the test," Odahl said.
In the end, the test "went alright," but "it would have been nice to just take it in a 20 mile radius," she said.
Odahl isn't the only one. Meredith Weeden, another high school senior in Los Angeles, tried to sign up for an August test "about 2 weeks before the deadline."
That "could be considered a little bit late," Weeden said, but proximity to the deadline wasn't a problem when she signed up for the ACT.
Then, when she looked at the menu of test locations, there were no test centers with seats available within a 100-mile radius.
She checked for a few days, and even called the College Board to see if there were any test centers with seats, anywhere in California.
"Nothing," Weeden said.
So she started looking even further -- and found a seat in Lake Havasu, Arizona, a city around 300 miles away.
A four-and-a-half to five hour drive before the test meant driving out on Friday and booking a hotel to stay in overnight.
"I’m thankful I had the means to do that, but for a lot of other people that’s not possible," Weeden said.
Both Weeden and Odahl theorized that the lack of open seats is because there simply aren't as many testing centers offering the SAT as there used to be -- so the placed that still offer the test fill up seats quickly.
"When I actually went to go take the test, a lot of the people that were taking it were from Oregon and Washington," Odahl said. "So they had to travel even further."
Weeden decided to take the SAT because she has one school on her list that still requires a score submission. But she, and many of her friends, also took the test even for schools where it's optional, because the option is so new that they're unsure if it would reflect poorly on them as students if they skipped out.
"It’s just the safe thing to do," she said. "If you do well on the test, then you might as well submit it."
The College Board, the company in charge of administering the SAT and Advanced Placement tests, conducted a survey of high school juniors and seniors, and found that "66% of high school juniors plan to take the SAT," according to a College Board spokesperson.
"78% of seniors that didn’t take the SAT because they couldn’t find an available seat said that they definitely or probably would have taken the exam if there had been an open test center nearby."
The trouble isn't a lack of testing dates, at least according to the College Board, since the SAT calendar doesn't change much from year to year. It's the testing sites, which are comprised of schools and school districts that apply to become test centers.
"The College Board cannot directly control test center capacity and availability," the spokesperson said. "We are working to ensure as many students as possible are able to test."
Schools that want to become testing centers "need to fill out the form and then follow the administration instructions for each test day once approved," the College Board said. The approval process is fairly easy, and there is no cost to the school to administer the test, the spokesperson added.
But in the meantime, SoCal students are frustrated.
Odahl wants to take the SAT a second time, and has signed up for an October test. The only seat she could find when she looked in August was at a test center 60 miles away -- even further than Newbury Park was.
"I think it’s just a really frustrating situation, because I know that there’s people out there that wouldn’t have been able to make that happen," Weeden said of her long drive to Arizona.
"If they want to have that option to take the test, then they should be able to."
