How Much Do Test Scores Matter? What 73 Colleges Wrote Down (2026)

The October SAT is three weeks out, and the question is not "should I retake" but "does the score matter where I am applying." Colleges have answered that in writing, and the answers are less uniform than either the test-optional camp or the test-required camp would have you believe.

What the schools say

Section C7 of the Common Data Set asks each college to rate standardized test scores as very important, important, considered, or not considered. Across the 73 filings we have read for the 2024–25 and 2025–26 cycles: 16 very important, 9 important, 40 considered, 8 not considered.

So the modal answer is "considered" — more than half of the schools. Not decisive, not ignored. The two tails are where your decision lives.

The 16 that rate scores very important

Princeton, Stanford, Brown, Dartmouth, Johns Hopkins, Rice, Georgetown, Washington University in St. Louis, Amherst, Caltech, Emory, Northeastern, Connecticut, Oklahoma, LSU, and Baylor.

Several of these reinstated a testing requirement in the last two cycles, and the C7 rating followed. If any of these is on your list, a score inside the admitted middle range is not optional in practice, whatever the policy page says. A retake that moves you from below the 25th percentile to inside the range is worth the Saturday. A retake that moves you from the 60th percentile to the 70th is not.

The 8 that do not consider scores

Six University of California campuses — UCLA, San Diego, Davis, Irvine, Santa Barbara, and Riverside — plus Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and the University of Washington. (Berkeley's filing marks scores considered rather than not considered, an oddity of the form; UC policy is test-blind across the system.) These are test-blind: they will not look at a score you send. If your list is heavily Californian, the October test is irrelevant to it, and the hours are better spent on the personal insight questions.

The 40 in the middle

Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, Penn, Chicago, Duke, Northwestern, Carnegie Mellon, USC, Georgia Tech, Virginia, UNC, Illinois, Wisconsin, Maryland, Penn State, Texas A&M, Tufts, Bowdoin, Williams, and most of the other liberal-arts colleges we read rate scores "considered."

Nine more sit one step up at "important": MIT, Michigan, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, Boston College, Indiana, Lehigh, Lafayette, and Iowa State. At these the score is a named input with weight, short of the top tier.

This is the group where the decision is about your number relative to the school's published range. A score at or above the 75th percentile helps at a school that considers it. A score below the 25th probably should not be sent, at schools that still allow the choice. A score in the middle is neutral — it neither rescues nor sinks the file, and the essay and recommendations are where those schools say the weight is.

A note on the word "considered"

It is tempting to read "considered" as "barely matters." That is not what the form means. It means the score is an input without a fixed weight — read in context, against the school's range and the rest of the file. At Yale, which rates scores considered but requires them, a strong score is expected; at Michigan, which rates them important, it is more than expected. At Harvard, which also rates them considered, the filing rates nothing very important at all, so "considered" there is the same rating the essay gets. The label tells you the shape of the read, not the size.

The retake arithmetic

A retake is worth taking when it can move you across a line that a school on your list reads — the 25th percentile at a school that rates scores very important, or the 75th at one that considers them and where you are already close. Forty points that stay inside the same band change nothing a reader can see. Forty points that cross a published boundary change the sentence the reader writes. Check each school's range before you register, and let the ranges, not a general anxiety about testing, decide.

What this changes about October

Three cases. If your list is anchored by a very-important school and your score sits below its range, take the test. If your list is California publics and Washington, do not. If your list is mostly in the considered group, decide by your position in each school's range, not by a general rule about whether scores are back.

For a student choosing one Early Decision school, the score question is sharper. The binding round is where you spend your strongest file. A school that rates scores very important and whose range you sit inside is a different bet from one where your score is the weakest line and the school reads it first.

Where the numbers come from

Every rating is from section C7 of the named school's Common Data Set, 2024–25 or 2025–26 cycle, read from the school's own published filing. Counts are over the 73 filings we have read on those cycles. Admitted score ranges are from each school's section C9. Each school page on PrepToDone shows its testing rating alongside its published SAT and ACT ranges, with the filing year.

Put your list in and see where your score sits at each school and what each published about its early round — free, without an account. Which school to spend the binding application on is $9.99 through Nov 15 (regular $49), once. Run your list.