Two weeks ago, a parent told me her daughter was in Class 10 and had already decided to skip the SAT.
“All the good schools are test-optional now,” she said.
I asked which schools she had in mind. Columbia was high on the list.
That conversation stayed with me because I am seeing more families make long-term plans from short-term admissions policies. For a Class 9 or 10 student, that is a shaky base for planning.
Columbia has now said that Columbia College and Columbia Engineering will require SAT or ACT scores from applicants in the 2027-28 admissions cycle. It will remain test-optional for the 2026-27 cycle. In plain English, a current Class 12 student applying this year is still looking at a test-optional Columbia policy. A current Class 11 student, applying next year for Fall 2028 entry, is the first Indian school cohort that should treat Columbia as test-required.
You can read Columbia’s own testing policy page here. Higher Ed Dive also has a useful summary of the announcement here.
For Class 9 and 10 families, this is not an emergency. It is a reason to stop treating testing as something you can decide at the last minute.
Why families moved away from testing
I understand why many Indian families became comfortable ignoring the SAT during the test-optional years.
The logic was not foolish. Coaching is expensive. Class 11 and 12 are already crowded. Many students are balancing school marks, boards, JEE or NEET pressure, Olympiads, extracurriculars, essays, and family expectations. If a US university says scores are optional, it feels sensible to remove one more item from the list.
For some students, that was the right call.
A student with weak test access, serious board pressure, or a late decision to apply abroad may have been better served by focusing on grades, essays, and a realistic college list. Test-optional policies gave those students breathing room.
The problem starts when “optional this year” quietly becomes “irrelevant for my child.”
Those are different decisions.
What optional really means for international applicants
For an international student, I would be careful with the word optional.
Technically, yes, a test-optional college will read the application without an SAT or ACT score. Families should take that policy seriously.
For international students, though, optional is not always neutral.
An admissions officer reading an Indian applicant is often trying to understand a school system, a grading pattern, a curriculum, the student’s academic context, and how that student compares with applicants from very different systems. A strong standardized test score can give one more piece of external evidence. It cannot carry the application by itself. It also does not replace grades, rigor, teacher recommendations, essays, or actual intellectual work. Still, it can reduce ambiguity.
This is why I get uneasy when families treat test-optional as permission to avoid the question altogether.
Sometimes the right decision is still to apply without a score. If the score is weak, if the student has no realistic preparation window, or if the college list is built carefully around that choice, submitting nothing may be better than submitting a score that hurts the application.
For an international applicant aiming at selective US colleges, “optional” should usually trigger a decision process, not a shrug.
Columbia is one part of a wider testing return
Columbia is not the first selective university to move back toward testing. MIT reinstated testing earlier. Dartmouth, Yale, Brown, Harvard, Princeton, and others have also moved away from fully test-optional policies in different ways.
The details vary by college. Some require SAT or ACT. Some accept alternatives. Some are still test-optional. Some may stay that way.
I would not read this as a reason for every student to rush into SAT prep tomorrow. I would take it as a warning against building an application plan that depends on test-optional policies staying exactly where they are.
For Indian students, the calendar makes this more important.
In the US, a student may talk about “summer before senior year” as if it is a clean planning block. For CBSE and ISC students, Class 12 has usually already started by then. School expectations are active. Coaching schedules are active. Boards are slowly entering the background. Application essays and college lists are competing with everything else.
If testing is left unresolved until Class 12, it does not sit politely in a separate box. It collides with essays, schoolwork, recommendations, and family stress.
The underused window after Class 10
For many Indian students, the cleaner testing window comes after Class 10 board exams and before Class 11 becomes heavy.
March to June after Class 10 is one of the few stretches where a student may have some breathing room. Board pressure has lifted. Class 11 has not yet fully taken over. The student is old enough to handle a serious diagnostic and a first round of preparation, but not yet trapped by the full load of the next two years.
I am not saying every student must take the SAT immediately after Class 10. Some students need a slower build. Some are still deciding countries. Some may be better off waiting until Class 11 if the fundamentals are not ready.
But I would at least want a plan by then.
That plan may be:
- take a diagnostic in Class 10 and decide whether the SAT or ACT is worth pursuing
- prepare lightly after boards and attempt once before Class 11 becomes intense
- keep a second attempt available in Class 11 if the first score is close but not enough
- deliberately skip testing only after checking the likely college list, country mix, academic record, and student bandwidth
The last option is worth keeping. Skipping the SAT can still be a strategy. It should come after a real look at the student’s likely list, academic record, and preparation window, not from last year’s headlines.
Testing now touches more than one plan
One part of the original parent conversation bothered me more than the Columbia example.
The family was treating the SAT as an isolated US admissions item. If it was optional, it could be deleted from the calendar.
I think that view is too narrow.
Students applying abroad often face more than one testing question. The US may involve SAT or ACT. The UK may involve the TMUA, LNAT, UCAT, ESAT, or other course-specific tests depending on the subject. English-language testing may appear for some students depending on curriculum, passport, and university rules. Some European programs have their own entrance tests or interviews.
These tests are not interchangeable. SAT preparation does not magically prepare a student for the LNAT or UCAT.
But the habit does transfer: taking a diagnostic early, understanding timed performance, planning retakes, and avoiding the Class 12 discovery that the student needs three different test dates while also writing essays.
There is another India-specific wrinkle now. The SAT is no longer only a US application test.
College Board’s SAT Acceptance in India page lists Indian universities that use SAT scores for admission, scholarships, or both. The list includes institutions such as Ahmedabad University, Ashoka University, FLAME University, Krea University, NMIMS, O.P. Jindal Global University, Plaksha University, Shiv Nadar University, and others. College Board also notes that policies can vary by school, department, and applicant category, so families should check the university’s own admissions page before assuming anything.
This is not a reason to take the SAT only because an Indian college somewhere accepts it. But if a family is keeping both foreign and Indian private-university options open, the same score may have more uses than they first assumed.
What I would tell Class 9, 10, 11, and 12 families
For current Class 12 students applying in the 2026-27 cycle, do not panic because of Columbia’s announcement. Columbia says it remains test-optional for this cycle. If you already have a strong score, you can use it. If you do not, make the decision from your actual college list, academic evidence, and remaining timeline, not one headline.
For current Class 11 students, take this seriously. If Columbia or similar highly selective US colleges are on the table, you should not assume test-optional will protect the calendar. You still have time, but the next few months matter.
For current Class 10 students, the post-board window should be used thoughtfully. I would not fill it with random profile-building. I would also not waste it because “applications are far away.” It is a good time to assess testing, explore subjects, and begin shaping the student’s direction.
For Class 9 families, I would not turn this into SAT anxiety. Use it as a reminder to build academic habits steadily. Reading, math fluency, writing stamina, and comfort with timed work are easier to build quietly over time than to manufacture in a crash course.
Where families lose time
The families who do best are not always the ones who start the earliest in the loudest way.
They are usually the ones who avoid preventable pile-ups.
They do not leave testing, essays, shortlist research, activity decisions, and recommendation planning for the same three-month window. They do not assume that a policy printed today will still hold three cycles from now. They do not add more work blindly, but they also do not postpone every hard decision.
Good counseling helps because the SAT itself is not mysterious. The hard part is seeing how one decision affects the rest of the application calendar. A score decision affects the college list. The college list affects essays. Essays affect how much time the student needs before school becomes too crowded. Board and entrance-exam pressure affect how much application work can realistically happen in Class 12.
For families on the fence about when to start, Columbia’s announcement is a useful prompt for one practical question: if a score becomes necessary, or simply useful, for one or more colleges on the list, where will it fit without damaging the rest of the application?
If you want help thinking this through for your child, book a discovery call with us. At AltView, we work with a small number of families, so the planning can be specific: the student’s school board, country mix, subject direction, testing profile, essays, and actual bandwidth.
That conversation is much easier before Class 12 gets loud.