The March SAT Is Almost Here — And Today Is Your Last Day to Register

Happy Friday, MJTP families. I'll keep this short because the clock is ticking.

The March 14 SAT is less than two weeks away, and today — Friday, February 27 — is the regular registration deadline. Head to collegeboard.org and get it done before 11:59 PM Eastern tonight. Miss tonight and you'll have until March 3 via late registration, but that tacks on an extra $34 fee.

If You're On the Fence, Don't Wait

I talk to a lot of families who are "waiting until May." Here's why that can be a mistake.

The spring testing season is packed: March 14, then the SAT School Day window (March 2–April 30 — check with your school counselor), then May 2. That's potentially three shots in two months, and superscoring loves multiple attempts.

Take March as a real-conditions baseline. Even if your student isn't fully "ready," the data you get back on March 27 gives you a full month to target weaknesses before April or May. Students who test in March carry momentum and confidence forward. Students who wait until May walk in cold. I've seen this play out over and over. Register today — the $68 is worth the data alone.

Quick Reference: Spring 2026 SAT Dates

Register at satsuite.collegeboard.org. If you need help with a study plan or score interpretation, reach out anytime.

The SAT Is Bigger Than College Admissions

I want to zoom out for a second, because I'm seeing more and more references to the SAT going far beyond just a "college admissions thing."

First, the college side. As I've written about before, the test-optional wave is over. Harvard, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Stanford, Caltech, Georgetown, MIT, Johns Hopkins, and UPenn have all brought back testing requirements for 2025–2026. Princeton announced it will follow for 2027–2028. And here in Florida, our public university system never stopped requiring scores in the first place. The pendulum has swung back hard.

But here's the part that surprises people: your student's SAT score can follow them into the job market.

I'm not making this up.

Within the last year, an engineer with a master's degree and two years of launch vehicle experience posted online that a SpaceX recruiter asked for his SAT score during the interview process. He was baffled. But the practice is widespread — similar reports note that Goldman Sachs, Bain & Co., and D.E. Shaw Group have all asked job applicants for standardized test scores as part of their hiring process, and not just entry-level applicants.

And this trend is about to accelerate.

There has been a big splash recently in the news regarding the April 2025 Executive Order — "Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy" — and the pending court decisions around "disparate impact." For decades, federal disparate impact liability discouraged employers from using cognitive or standardized tests in hiring, because they could be sued if a neutral test produced uneven demographic outcomes.

With the federal government aggressively rolling back those protections to focus purely on merit-based criteria, the doors are opening for standardized test scores to be used as criteria. Employer use of the SAT and ACT in hiring decisions has the potential to become more common than it already is.

Think about that. What you thought was over once you got into college just followed you into the interview for your first job....

— Mr. John