How fast are sat scores sent

Our resident Common App expert and jack-of-all-trades, Elyse Krantz recently placed a call to the College Board—administrator of the SAT and all its derivatives—to get answers to the most frequent questions from our students. College Coach CC : How long, on average, does it take for scores to arrive if a student indicated they wanted them sent on the actual test i. College Board CB : If a student utilized the free score report option, the scores will be sent to colleges electronically, for those that accept them that way one day before students see the scores.

This generally happens two and a half weeks after the exam date. CC: How long after a student makes a request to send scores online do they go out? So two and a half weeks after the test date plus an additional one to two weeks adds up to approximately four weeks after the exam date. If the college accepts paper scores, the College Board will process the request in one to two days and then send the scores by postal mail.

So there you have it. And colleges know this. But how do you send SAT scores to colleges in a way that maximizes your chances of getting in? You have three options to choose from when sending out test scores to colleges—each with its own pros and cons. As such, you have to carefully assess your situation in order to arrive at what would work best for you. You can assign recipients from registration day up until nine days after your test date. Some colleges require you to send in all of your SAT scores.

If saving money is a big deal to you because of financial constraints, we recommend that you apply for an SAT fee waiver, which lets you send as many free reports as you want, provided that you meet the eligibility requirements. You can send out score reports after the aforementioned nine-day window has passed. Opting to send score reports through this option will allow you to select the specific test dates you want to send out. This method sends reports to your colleges of choice within two to four business days, as opposed to the day period for Option 2.

Try to finalize your application list as early as you possibly can to avoid having to order rush reports in the future.

After all, late submissions are never a good thing, and you must use everything in your power to avoid missing deadlines. Use the steps listed below as a guide:. Go to the College Board website and sign in to your account.

Add your preferred colleges to the recipients list. They are sorted by state and by name. Do this until your list is complete. Double check to make sure that everything is correct.

Pay the corresponding fees. Regularly check your account to monitor if the scores have been sent. Knowing this will help you plan when you will take your SAT. You want to make sure that whenever you take the SAT, you have time to get that score sent to your target schools before the deadline.

I'll answer these questions and more in this short article. Once your SAT scores are available online about 13 days after the test , if you order your score reports, it will take approximately weeks for a college to receive your SAT scores. The reason the timing is slightly variable is that colleges do not instantaneously receive your score when the College Board sends the score report.

Each college chooses how they'd like to receive the score reports and how often they'd like to receive score reports from the College Board. Most colleges receive scores electronically through software that files your score with the rest of your application materials.

Colleges themselves select how often to download new score reports: somewhere between once per day and once per week for example, UVA gets them daily. When you signed up to take the SAT, you had the option to choose four colleges to send free score reports.

Also, you have until nine days after the test to add or change the colleges. Note: if you qualify for an SAT fee waiver , you can send an unlimited amount of free score reports. Will the colleges receive your SAT scores faster if you used the free score reports? When you choose this option, scores are typically sent to colleges within 10 days of you receiving your scores on the College Board website —approximately three weeks after you take your SAT test.

However, as I said above, colleges themselves select how often to download new score reports, so they may not receive your scores right away; it could take up to a week for them to receive the scores. You can also opt to rush your score reports. If you rush your score reports, I'd estimate that the colleges receive the scores in about The rushed reports don't really make that much of a difference if any as to when colleges receive your scores since normal score reports take about two weeks and rushed score reports take about 1.

It's a lot of money, and they're essentially never worth it. If you already have your scores, and you're happy with them aka you do not plan to retest , then you should send them now.

Sooner is always better than later. Even if you haven't completed the rest of your application yet, colleges will hang on to your scores until you do. However, if you want to wait, I'd recommend sending your scores at least three weeks before the college's application deadline. All schools have different application deadlines.

Check each college's admissions website to find their application deadline or search "[College Name] application deadline" in Google. What does the score report timeline look like?

I've created mock timelines to show you about how long it will take a college to receive your score report based on when you took the test. NOTE: these timelines that I created are overly cautious.