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Guide/02 Building Your Application

Honors & Testing

Where standardized testing stands at selective schools, how to prepare for the SAT and ACT, and which honors are worth listing.

Chapter 6 of 245 min readUpdated September 23, 2026 Preview

Let's start with the part many students would rather not hear: at the most selective colleges, testing matters again.

During the pandemic, "test-optional" became the norm. That period has largely ended at the top of the admissions world. Several highly selective colleges now require scores again, and at schools that remain test-optional, a strong score is still a real advantage for the students who send one...

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What’s in this chapter

  1. 1Where test-optional stands now
  2. 2What's a "good" score?
  3. 3Preparing for the SAT
  4. 4Preparing for the ACT
  5. 5Honors: quality over quantity