In Greater Latrobe, a high school senior who took the sat three times is now watching colleges reconsider what that number should mean. Autumn Blozowich’s decision not to submit her scores—leaning instead on an essay she felt proud of—lands in the middle of a shifting admissions landscape where some institutions are weighing a return to standardized requirements.
What happened in Western Pennsylvania admissions conversations?
Autumn Blozowich, a Greater Latrobe senior, sat for the exam three times before and during her junior year. Yet when she applied to the University of Pittsburgh, Kent State University, and Pennsylvania State University, she did not submit her scores. “I wasn’t really happy with my scores, ” she said, explaining that withholding them shifted attention to her personal essay—work she felt better represented her.
She was accepted to all three schools, a personal outcome that reflects how test-optional policies can change the emotional center of an application: away from a single metric and toward how a student narrates their goals, setbacks, and strengths.
Why are some colleges reconsidering Sat requirements now?
Dozens of Western Pennsylvania colleges and universities—including Duquesne University, Point Park University, Saint Vincent College, and PennWest—have maintained test-optional policies for the past six years, giving students the choice of whether their scores are considered in admissions.
Higher education policy researcher Andrew Gillen, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, said a reversal of the test-optional trend appears to be on the horizon as schools recognize that scores, combined with grades, are the strongest predictor of student success. He tied the earlier shift away from requirements to the pandemic, when logistical concerns made traditional test administration difficult.
“When covid hit, there was a real concern about ‘Can you even give these tests the way they’ve been given historically?’ which is gathering a whole bunch of people in a room, ” Gillen said. “You can’t do that if you’re trying to social distance. ”
One signal of change is Carnegie Mellon University, which will require scores for competitive programs such as computer science starting this fall—an example of institutions leaning back toward standardized metrics in at least some high-stakes pathways.
Who does the Sat serve—and who does it miss?
The exam’s long history and its place in admissions are part of why the debate remains so persistent. First administered experimentally in 1926, the SAT was modeled after World War I Army IQ tests, as described by the Education Writers Association. Today, the College Board exam costs $68, with fee waivers available for students who are unhoused, in foster care, or who qualify for federal nutrition programs.
Critics had questioned whether the test equally assesses students from underrepresented communities since at least 2010, but the pandemic-era disruption in 2020 created the conditions for widespread policy change. That year, the College Board paused testing and more than 1 million students had to cancel their registrations. Colleges across the country dropped requirements to accommodate them.
Gillen said researchers later found that the shift to test-optional policies did not produce a large change in who was admitted. “Largely, what they found was that it didn’t make much of a difference for most students, ” he said. He noted some campuses increased underrepresented minority enrollment, while others leaned more heavily on high school grades—but the overall shift was limited. He also said a return to requiring the exam would likely bring similarly limited effects, with changes “around the margin. ”
Gillen also argued that standardized scores can help identify students whose grades do not fully reflect their intelligence—suggesting a role for the sat as a counterweight to uneven grading systems. But the opposite scenario exists too: a strong academic record paired with a weaker test performance, or a performance that does not capture the student’s full potential.
How are universities responding to the pressure of choosing metrics?
Michele Wisnesck, vice president of marketing and enrollment management at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, pointed to the risk of misreading applicants when any single measure is over-weighted. She said the university has kept its test-optional approach in part because the “opposite scenario” can occur—where the test does not align with what a student can do in college.
That tension—between prediction and misclassification—sits at the heart of the current moment. Some schools are signaling a renewed confidence in standardized measures for certain programs, while others continue to emphasize flexibility. For students, the choice can feel personal rather than procedural: whether to let a score speak, or to let an essay, a transcript, and the rest of a life carry more weight.
What does this shift mean for students like Autumn Blozowich?
For Blozowich, the admissions process became a test of judgment as much as performance: deciding what to reveal and what to withhold. Her experience underscores a simple reality of test-optional systems—students may strategically shape the story colleges see, emphasizing what they believe represents them best. Her acceptances suggest that, at least for some applicants, withholding scores does not close doors.
Yet as more institutions weigh returning to requirements—at least in selective or competitive tracks—the calculation could change for future seniors. A student who leans on an essay today may face a different set of expectations tomorrow, where a score becomes less optional and more unavoidable.
Back in Greater Latrobe, the memory of three test sittings is not just an academic detail; it’s a record of effort and doubt, of measuring yourself again and again. The next wave of applicants may still write essays they’re proud of, but they may also find the sat waiting to be part of the story whether they want it there or not.
