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Do Colleges Require All Your SAT/ACT Scores? Usually Not, With a Few Exceptions (2026–27)

September 26, 2026
Do colleges require all your SAT/ACT scores? Illustration of three SAT test dates, with two sent to colleges and one not sent under Score Choice.

Every fall a parent asks me some version of the same question: if my kid takes the SAT again and does worse, will colleges see it? For years the answer was “at most colleges, no, but there’s a list,” because a few well-known schools kept requiring every sitting after Score Choice arrived in 2009.

I went through the current testing pages of those schools and of the big names that brought testing back. The list is shorter now. Georgetown, the school everyone associates with the all-scores rule, dropped it this summer. But MIT still wants every sitting, Carnegie Mellon requires all SAT or ACT results from anyone who submits those tests, and Johns Hopkins says you should report all of your scores. So the question isn’t whether colleges see a bad score. It’s which ones do, and how to use two or three sittings to build the best score you can send.

What changed this year, and what didn’t

Score Choice launched with the March 2009 SAT, and Yale announced before it took effect that it would require every score anyway. Stanford, Cornell, and Penn did the same. Harvard, Chicago, and MIT said they’d let students choose, and MIT’s dean called the differences between sittings “pretty much noise” (Yale Daily News, 2009). Penn gave up its rule in 2016 after its dean admitted the school had no way to know whether applicants complied (The Daily Pennsylvanian, August 2016). The others followed over the next few years, and the pandemic shelved the question.

Now that many highly selective colleges have reinstated testing, most of those rules haven’t come back. Yale lets you self-report superscored results and asks for official reports only if you enroll (Yale). Stanford wants your highest scores, self-reported, with official reports only for the sittings you listed (Stanford, updated July 31, 2026). Cornell says flatly that it participates in Score Choice (Cornell).

MIT went the other way. It now tells applicants to self-report every sitting, including future ones, and says a major discrepancy between your highest score and another sitting may be considered in review, though it still superscores (MIT). That runs on the honor system until enrollment, when MIT verifies.

Georgetown made the biggest move. Its page said for years that it was “not a score choice school” and asked for every ACT administration. In June 2026, weeks after longtime dean Charles Deacon retired, Georgetown announced it would take one full SAT or ACT, or as many sittings as you like (Carnegie Prep, June 24, 2026). Guides published that July were still quoting the old language because the site hadn’t caught up (Oriel Admissions, July 3, 2026). The FAQ was revised July 28 to say one full test is enough (Georgetown FAQ), and the requirements page was revised August 6 to say at least one full test, no superscores (Georgetown). Georgetown still wants official reports, and it accepts new scores after the application deadline (Georgetown, After You’ve Applied).

Here’s the table, as of September 2026. Each school name links to the page I read.

School Every sitting required? Superscores Notes
MIT Yes, self-reported, including future sittings SAT and ACT A big gap between sittings may be considered. Verified at enrollment. Test by Nov. 30 (EA) or Dec. 31 (RA).
Georgetown No, as of June 2026 No superscore reports; its earlier page said it combined best SAT sections itself Official reports only. Accepts new scores after the deadline.
Yale No SAT and ACT Self-report; official reports at enrollment.
Stanford No for the SAT and ACT SAT and ACT Must report every AP score, including cancelled ones.
Cornell No SAT; ACT via the official Superscore Participates in Score Choice.
Penn No, but a full history is “encouraged” Yes Official reports due for every sitting that feeds a self-reported superscore.
Johns Hopkins Says you “should report all available scores” SAT and ACT Uses your most competitive profile. Encourages testing done by Oct. (ED) or Dec. (RD).
Carnegie Mellon Yes, if you submit the SAT or ACT (2026–27 catalog) SAT yes, ACT no Admissions site allows self-reporting at first and doesn’t restate the all-results rule; the catalog does.
Carleton Unclear SAT and ACT Test-optional; “requires the full results of the SAT or the ACT” if you submit. Ask.

Two rows need a footnote. Carnegie Mellon’s 2026–27 catalog says anyone whose program requires the SAT or ACT, or who chooses to submit them, must submit all official results, and that the ACT date with the highest composite gets the most weight (CMU catalog). Its admissions page allows self-reported scores at first and superscores the SAT, but it doesn’t restate the all-results rule (CMU admissions). Read together, CMU is an all-results school for anyone who submits these tests. If you’d rather not send a sitting to CMU, ask Undergraduate Admission in writing which rule applies. And Stanford’s flexibility stops at AP exams: if you received an AP score, you report it, even one you cancelled (Stanford).

Ignore the lists floating around online. PrepScholar’s “complete list” of all-scores colleges still includes MacMurray College, which closed in 2020 (Wikipedia), and Alderson Broaddus, which shut down in 2023 (The Chronicle of Higher Education). Premier College Prep’s Score Choice list still names Yale and Carnegie Mellon and doesn’t mention MIT. Both trace back to a College Board survey from the middle of the last decade.

Score Choice, superscoring, and full sittings

Score Choice controls what gets sent. You pick SAT test dates, and a date you don’t pick stays in your College Board account. You can’t send part of a sitting, though; College Board’s FAQ says you can’t send Math from one date and Reading and Writing from another (College Board). And the free score sends you choose at registration go out automatically when that test’s scores post, before you’ve seen them, so Score Choice doesn’t apply to those (College Board). If you want to see a score before a college does, skip the free sends and pay afterward. The ACT sends by test date too, $20 per date per college (ACT).

Superscoring controls how a college reads what arrives: it takes your best section scores across the dates you sent. ACT now calculates an official Superscore, and Cornell and Yale want that one rather than a composite you assembled yourself. Know what that report contains. ACT includes the full results from every date that contributed a top section, plus the full results from your highest-composite date, and says a college that doesn’t superscore can still read all of it (ACT Superscore FAQ). A superscore built from several dates shows several complete sittings.

Some schools won’t take a superscore report at all. Georgetown says it doesn’t accept superscores, and Carnegie Mellon can’t use ACT superscores because of the composite printed on the report (CMU). Georgetown’s earlier page said it combined the highest SAT section scores across administrations itself, and Carnegie Prep’s June report said that would continue (Carnegie Prep), but the current page doesn’t say so, so treat it as past practice. Either way, every sitting you send to those schools is read in full, and at CMU the ACT date with the best composite carries the weight (CMU catalog). You’ll want at least one strong all-around date.

What this means for how you test

Take the test more than once, and treat each sitting as a chance to raise a section score. At most colleges the testing agency sends only what you tell it to, and other dates stay out of the file unless you report them or they show up on something else you submit, like a transcript that prints scores. The exceptions are in the table: MIT wants every sitting, Carnegie Mellon requires all results if you submit the SAT or ACT, Johns Hopkins says you should report all of them, and Penn would like to see them.

Retaking works. Economists at Harvard, Missouri, and Georgia State used College Board data on nearly 14 million SAT takers from the classes of 2006 through 2014 with valid scores on all three sections. Retakers gained 44 points on average between the first and second sitting on the old 2400 scale, about 100 points in superscore terms after all attempts, and lower-scoring students gained the most. The first retake was worth about twice any later one, and only 54 percent of students retook at all (Goodman, Gurantz, and Smith, NBER Working Paper 24945). Those are old-SAT numbers, so don’t turn them into a prediction for the digital test. The lesson is that retaking helps, mostly once.

Superscoring also changes what a retake is for. Score 700 Reading and Writing and 650 Math in March, spend the spring on math, retake in June at 680 and 720, and a superscoring college sees 1420 even though neither day hit it. Once a section is where you want it, the rest of your prep goes to the other one.

The schedule I use with most students:

  1. Baseline with a full-length timed practice test or the PSAT, not a real date.
  2. First real sitting in spring of junior year, after actual preparation.
  3. Retake in late spring or summer, aimed at the weaker section.
  4. A third sitting in early fall of senior year if a section can still move, finished before your first deadline.

Two or three sittings is enough for most students I work with. I treat four as the ceiling unless there’s a specific reason, like a date wrecked by illness or a section that has clearly moved in practice. That’s my judgment, not a policy. Past four you’re measuring the same thing again, and the hours are worth more on grades and essays.

Testing early is a different mistake. Carnegie Mellon discourages 9th- and 10th-grade testing and says the longer the gap before college, the less it can rely on the score (CMU). A sophomore score rarely helps, and at a school that wants the whole record it’s one more sitting in the file.

Where retaking still costs you

None of this is an admissions penalty at a Score Choice college, but it’s real.

Returns diminish fast. In the NBER data the first retake did about twice the work of any later one (Goodman, Gurantz, and Smith), and roughly half of retakers improved on a given section, which means the other half held or dropped. Superscoring protects you from the drop. It doesn’t create the rise.

Every sitting costs a registration fee and a Saturday, and every ACT date you send is another $20 (ACT). ACT’s fee waiver covers two registrations (ACT), and the College Board has a comparable program, but a fourth sitting is still a fourth Saturday.

Deadlines vary more than people think. Stanford wants the ACT done by the end of September and the SAT by the end of October for Restrictive Early Action, and both by the end of December for Regular Decision (Stanford). MIT’s cutoffs are November 30 and December 31, with later scores addable through its portal (MIT). Johns Hopkins encourages October for Early Decision and December for Regular Decision (JHU), Carnegie Mellon prefers November 1 and January 3 (CMU), and Georgetown accepts new scores after either deadline (Georgetown). Plan from the strictest school on your list.

The ACT changed in 2025. The Composite and Superscore now come from English, Math, and Reading; Science is optional and feeds a separate STEM score (ACT). If you tested under both formats, don’t average them yourself. Yale says so explicitly (Yale). Send ACT’s official Superscore.

A rough first score, the thing parents fear, is the one cost that has mostly disappeared. In 2009 it went into the file at Yale or Stanford. Today, at a Score Choice college, it stays in your account unless you send it, with three exceptions: an ACT Superscore report carries every contributing sitting, some high schools print scores on the transcript (CMU’s page mentions accepting scores that way) (CMU), and the schools in the table that ask for everything.

What to do

Retake with a plan, and know which schools see everything.

  • For each college, note from its own testing page: Expects every sitting? Score Choice allowed? Superscores the SAT? The ACT? Latest test date it will consider?
  • Baseline with a practice test or the PSAT, not a real date.
  • Plan two or three real sittings, done by early fall of senior year.
  • Prepare between sittings, and aim each retake at the weaker section.
  • Skip the free score sends if you want to see a score before a college does.
  • Send the dates that build your best superscore, or your best complete date where superscore reports aren’t accepted. An ACT Superscore report shows every contributing sitting.
  • Stanford on the list? Expect to report every AP score.
  • Page unclear (Carleton), or a rule that appears in only one place (Carnegie Mellon)? Email admissions before withholding a sitting, and keep the reply.

Policies moved this year and will move again. Read the college’s own page, check its date, and treat any list, this one included, as a starting point.

Sources

All college policies below were read directly on the schools’ own sites on September 25, 2026. Page revision dates are given where the site publishes them.

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About the Author

Brian Stewart is the founder of BWS Education Consulting and a published author of Barron's SAT, ACT, and PSAT test prep books. With over 20 years of experience in standardized test preparation, he has helped hundreds of students achieve their target scores and gain admission to their college of choice. He created FreeTestPrep.com to make high-quality test prep accessible to everyone.