How to Change Your SAT Test Date

Life happens. Maybe your practice plans didn’t work out because too many urgent tasks popped up. Maybe the opportunity of a lifetime conflicts with your planned SAT date. Maybe you just don’t feel ready. Bottom line—you think you want to change the date you are scheduled to take the SAT.

Should You Change Your SAT Date?

First, decide whether you should change your SAT date. It is normal to feel nervous or stressed leading up to the SAT—it’s an important test that can have a big impact on where you go to college. The SAT includes content from many years of school (and some content you might not have covered in school at all). Even if you’ve mastered the content, you need test-taking strategies and a solid pacing plan to be successful on the SAT. All these factors make it perfectly reasonable that you’d feel uncertain about taking the SAT.

Even if you’re feeling the pressure of the SAT (and most people are!) you should go ahead and take the SAT. There are a number of reasons for this advice.

• 1. Nerves are normal when taking such an important test.
• 2. Taking the SAT is a skill, and, like any skill, improvement comes with practice. In fact, most students increase their scores when they retake the SAT.
• 3. Almost every school will consider your best score or your superscore when making admissions decisions, so there’s no real penalty to having a less than desirable SAT score on your record.
• 4. You may have a much better testing day than you expect. Especially given that there is little risk to taking the SAT, it probably makes sense for you to go ahead and take it.

Now, if you are far, far away from a “good score,” it may make sense to avoid spending a Saturday morning taking the SAT. If you’re more than 200 points away from your goal on recent practice tests, perhaps it does make sense to push off your SAT date and use that time for test prep.

Finally, perhaps something has come up that will make it impossible to take the SAT on the date you initially registered for. Maybe you qualified for a tournament or competition that you didn’t expect to make (congratulations!). Maybe something else has come up and taking the SAT just won’t work out. So, now it’s time to change your SAT date.

Changing Your SAT Test Date

To change your SAT test date (or location), you’ll need to:

• a. Once you’re logged in, if you’re changing your test date, you’ll need to cancel your initial registration and reregister for a different date.
• b. If you’re just changing your location, you don’t need to cancel your initial registration; you’ll be able to change the location by clicking on the registration link in your account.
• c. Either way, there are deadlines to changing your test registration and location, and these deadlines are different depending on whether you’re located inside or outside the United States.

Preparing for Your New SAT Test Date

If you’ve decided to change your SAT test date, you’ll want to make sure that you are ready for that new test date. If you’re changing your SAT date because something came up, you might simply need to continue practicing.

If, however, you’re changing your SAT test date because you’re not prepared (or, after taking our advice above and deciding to retake the SAT), consider what steps you need to take to be successful. The Princeton Review has over 40 years of experience helping students increase their scores, offering books, self-study programs, courses, and tutoring options for the SAT. If you’re looking for expert advice, contact The Princeton Review’s Enrollment Advisors, who can work with you to determine the best option for you in your SAT journey.