Let’s say you’ve just clicked “submit” on your final Digital SAT section and….hoo boy. You’re pretty sure you tanked the whole exam.
How exactly do you go about canceling your score—as in, making sure your test never gets graded, let alone sent to the colleges on your list? The process has changed recently, so read on to find out the new details.
Article Contents
1. Watch this article as a video
2. Deciding if you should cancel your SAT score
3. Key things to know about canceling your Digital SAT score
4. How to cancel your SAT score: weekend test dates
a. Deadline
b. How soon can you delete your SAT score?
c. Instructions
5. How to cancel your SAT score: weekday test dates
b. Deadline
c. Instructions
6. What to do if you miss the SAT cancelation deadline
8. Conclusion
Video version of this article:
Should I cancel my SAT score?
Before we even get the ball rolling in terms of nixing your score, you need to first ask yourself a crucial question. Fortunately, I can help you answer that one, too, thanks to these guides that I dedicated to the topic:
Should I cancel my SAT score? (blog post version)
Should I cancel my SAT score? (video version)
It’s essential that you make certain that you really do need to cancel your score to begin with! When you cancel a score, your test doesn’t get graded at all, meaning that you (and the colleges you’re applying to) will never know what your score would have been.
But that also means you’ll need to take the SAT again to get the score(s) you need….which equates to spending more time, prep effort, and money. So take a few deep breaths and let me guide you through the process of double-checking you’re not scaring yourself into erasing a perfectly acceptable score.
If you give that other post a read and then determine your answer is “yes, Kristina, it is indeed the smartest move for me to cancel my SAT score,” then come on back to today’s post and we’ll talk about what happens next.
Canceling your Digital SAT score: basics
….OK, looks like you’re back! That being the case, you must have decided that you really DO need to keep your SAT from getting scored. I’m here to walk you through that process. First, here are a few key fundamentals:
It’s worth reiterating: if you successfully submit your request to cancel the score, your test will not be graded. So you will never know what score you would have gotten. And neither will your future colleges.
You MUST submit your cancellation request by the deadline. It’s a non-negotiable cut-off point, NOT an approximate suggestion!
Once you submit your request to cancel your score, you can’t have a change of heart and rescind your request. It’s a one-way street!
How to cancel your weekend SAT score
Now that you understand first that you do want to cancel your score, and what the repercussions of canceling your score are, let's talk about the first scenario: how to go about canceling a Digital SAT score from an SAT that you took on a National Test Day, i.e. during a weekend test setting.
Deadline for canceling your SAT score
If you took a national test sitting of an SAT, you must cancel no later than 11:59PM Eastern time one week after your test date.
For example, if you just took the June 7th Digital SAT, you would have until seven days later at 11:59PM Eastern time. So that would be Saturday, June 14 at 11:59PM Eastern Daylight Time. (So if you're in California, for instance, that would be 08:59PM Pacific Daylight Time on Saturday, June 14.)
How soon can you delete your SAT score?
What about the inverse of the deadline? What’s the earliest you can nix your score?
The cool thing is: you can do so as soon as you leave the testing center. So let's say you take the test, you finish all the the modules (or don’t! The test went badly, after all…), and you walk out of there. The moment you step outside of your testing room, you can log on to your College Board account and cancel it right then and there.
SAT score cancellation instructions
So then what do you do to make it official? I’ve got you covered:
1) Log in to your College Board account at mysat.collegeboard.org. (You’ll already have a College Board account...because otherwise, you couldn't have registered for the test in the first place.)
2) Go to “My Scores” and look for your specific SAT administration date—as in, the date of the test you want to cancel.
3) You’ll see a link next to that test date that says “unsure about scores.” You're going to click on that.
4) Next, you’ll see language asking you to “agree to the cancellation of SAT scores.” When you follow those instructions and agree, your cancellation will be complete.
Step-by-step guide to canceling your SAT School Day score
So let's say you did not take your SAT on a National Test Date, over the weekend. Instead, you took your SAT during a School-Day Administration of the SAT.
What is a school-day SAT?
In case you’re not familiar with this concept, a “school-day SAT” is when a school—or even a whole school district—pays for every junior in that school to take the SAT. The test is then administered during a school day, so, sometime Monday through Friday (usually in the spring).
What's awesome about this option is that students don't have to pay to take the test. Furthermore, you’ll be taking the test alongside the people that you go to school with every single day—your teachers, your friends, your classmates—and in a building that you're used to. For a lot of students, this can be a real blessing because you're already more at ease in an environment you visit every day.
Need to cancel an SAT taken during the week?
But sometimes, even when you're in a comfortable environment with your favorite teacher proctoring the test and your really good friends sitting around you….things just don’t go well. You come out of the test thinking, “That was an abomination.”
If you’ve reviewed my blog post (or video) and determined that you really should “nope” out of getting your test scored, here’s your step-by-step guide for doing so. You see, the process works a little differently if it's a school-day administration.
How long do you have to cancel a school day SAT?
The deadline is different from a weekend SAT. Unlike a national test day administration, where you get a full week, a school day administration gives you only five days after taking the test to cancel your score.
Instructions for canceling a weekday SAT score
In this case, you are going to request a cancellation by asking your school’s SAT staff for a student-requested cancellation form. The proctor at your school might be your college counselor, or a teacher. Your proctor will have the form you need in their test day toolkit, and they will help you complete it.
Here’s an important thing to note: even if you successfully cancel your school-day SAT score, in some cases, your test might actually still be graded and shared with your high school, with your state, or with your district. The school and state have the option to do that if they sponsored/paid for the test administration.
But as far as institutions of higher learning are concerned, the score does NOT exist, and it will not be sent to the colleges you’re applying to.
Missed the SAT cancelation deadline?
What happens if you really want to cancel your score, but wait too long and blow by the deadlines spelled out above (seven days for weekend tests and five days for weekday tests)?
I’ve got you. Here’s what you should do to minimize the damage.
Remember how when you registered for the SAT, there was an option that let you add up to four colleges that would then automatically get your scores for free? This is a neat thing you can do because if you add a given university to that list when you register to take the SAT, they find out your score when you find out. PLUS, you don't have to pay the $14 per school to send that date’s score to those top four colleges you picked.
But let's say you think you seriously flubbed that test setting. And you waited too long to cancel, so you can’t erase your score the usual way. Well, what’s interesting is that IF you took the test on a weekend, you actually have two more days (in addition to those initial seven days) to change or delete the automatic recipients of your score. (Sadly, you have two fewer days—so, three days total from your test date—to change the college recipients if you took the test on an SAT School Day.)
So, you have nine days from the test date to change your college score recipients for a National Test Day. And you have just three days total to change or delete them for a School Day SAT.
If that deadline has not yet gone by, you’re going to log into your account and you're going to change the free college recipients. Maybe you’re going to remove all four of them, in fact.
I personally tell my students not to sign up before the test to automatically send their scores to colleges. Yes, that does mean it costs them more later—$14 per school per test date. But this way, you at least know what kind of score you're sending—you will get to see it first! And the number might be a pleasant surprise. It costs more to do it after the fact, but the peace of mind is, I think, worth it.
But maybe you really did bomb. In that case, the beauty of removing your four auto-alert colleges is: if you at least know what your score is first, then later on, you can always log in to your College Board account, and then you can choose to send your scores.
SAT score deletion FAQs
Now I’ll address some of the questions my students (and their parents) ask the most often about this whole process.
1: How many times can I cancel my score?
You can literally cancel your score every single time you take a test—so long as you do so within the five- or seven-day window.
Of course, the problem with abusing this option is that if you keep canceling your scores, you still have to keep studying for and paying for and taking the SAT to eventually get the score you need. So it’s not exactly in your interests to keep doing so forever.
But theoretically you could cancel every single SAT that you ever take so long as you do so before the deadline.
2: What if I miss the deadline?
Here's the thing. If you miss one of those cancellation deadlines I just told you about, then you cannot stop your scores from existing. Your test WILL be scored. Now, within a certain time period, you CAN take the measures I described above, log on to College Board, and stop any colleges from automatically receiving your score.
What if you miss that second deadline for deleting or changing the schools that are going to automatically get your scores? Sorry, but there’s nothing you can do, in that case—that score is going to those schools.
3: What if I take the test with extra time or accommodations?
You can still cancel your score if you get extra time or other accommodations during your test. You’ll go through the exact same process and the same deadlines as students who don’t receive accommodations.
Conclusion
So that, my friends, is everything you need to know about whether and how to cancel your digital SAT scores.
If you need more help with this whole test prep and college planning thing, I actually have a really cool free resource for you: my webinar called “Your Fail-Proof College Prep Plan.”
Or if you’d like a more specific-to-you approach to SAT prep, learn more about working one-on-one with me. I’ll develop a custom plan to send your score soaring.
