Allow me to outline a test-taking situation that I hope you’ll never experience yourself—but one that’s nonetheless worth knowing how to navigate:
The proctor/BlueBook app says “Time!” And with that, your ACT or Digital SAT sitting has come to a close. But you’re already sure you flubbed the thing, big-time. You normally finish the Reading section with time to spare, but today, you’d barely bubbled in your last answer before time was up. You didn’t even answer every Science question. And Math…yikes. It felt way harder than your practice tests. It was like one of those nightmares where you’ve forgotten to study for a big exam.
You’re certain you made a mess of the whole thing. Isn’t the best move simply to cancel your SAT or ACT score and not have to face a probably dismal score?
While permanently nixing your score IS an option, you need to make the decision to do so in a cool, calm, and collected state, rather than in the panicked mindset that can overtake you immediately after a rough test.
Fortunately, “cool, calm, and collected” is my middle name! (Yes, it’s a long and unusual middle name, ok?) After all, it’s my job to teach any standardized test-taker who walks through my Zoom room how to stay calm and focused during their ACT or Digital SAT.
So, this post is going to outline the situations where cancelling your SAT or ACT score is the choice that actually makes the most sense for your college admissions strategy—and the cases where you’re better off taking a deep breath and accepting the discomfort of a possibly lower-than-hoped-for score.
Article Contents
1. Watch this article as a video
2. When should you cancel your ACT or SAT score?
A. Good reasons to cancel your DSAT or ACT score
B. Bad reasons to cancel your DSAT or ACT score
3. A true story about why you shouldn’t be too quick to pull the plug
4. Conclusion
Watch this article as a video:
When should you cancel your DSAT or ACT score?
Here’s the rule of thumb, guys: it only makes sense to cancel a score in situations that border on emergencies—because they’re the ones that are likeliest to have significantly tanked your score. Let me give you some examples below. (And before you scoff: those are actual TRUE stories from past students of mine! Don’t worry, though—I helped them bounce back from and move forward, so that they could snag the higher scores they were capable of.)
Reasons to erase your SAT or ACT score
You got sick and excused yourself from the Math section to throw up in the bathroom—where you stayed for 20 minutes.
You arrived at the test LATE and missed huge chunks of a section—or even more than one section!
A medical or family emergency came up and you had to leave the exam early, without completing it.
You fell ASLEEP in the middle of the test and didn’t finish it.
You were passing a kidney stone, which put you in debilitating pain for the duration of the test, meaning you could barely remember your own name, let alone finish all of the sections.
Your calculator battery died at the beginning of the ACT Math section (because you forgot to test your batteries the day before, eep!) and there were MANY problems in the section that you couldn’t solve without it.
Your pencil broke, there was no sharpener, the proctor didn’t have an extra for you to use, or it wasn’t a No. 2 pencil anyway—whatever the exact situation, you had no way to fill in those answer bubbles in a way that the Scantron could read and accurately score.
Your laptop died in the middle of your Digital SAT, and neither you nor the proctor had an extra device or a charging cord for you to use.
After disasters like these, you know beyond a doubt that you can’t possibly have gotten anywhere near the score you normally earn because a near-catastrophic event prevented you from actually finishing entire sections of the test. THESE are the situations that call for cancelling a score. Especially if you have schools on your list that require you send every test score and that do NOT allow for Score Choice!
In such cases, you can simply tell the proctor during the test, right then and there, that you’d like to cancel your score, and your exam will not even be graded! That’s true of both the ACT and the Digital SAT.
But keep reading, because this next piece of advice is what many students don’t know.
Do NOT cancel your SAT or ACT score merely because:
Some questions drew on topics you’re positive you’ve never studied.
The Science/Math/Reading/English section seemed way harder than usual.
You didn’t answer a few questions in a section that you typically finish in plenty of time.
The Reading and Writing modules of your practice tests have always been a slam-dunk for you—but this time, you couldn’t make heads or tails what one of the passages was saying.
You felt more nervous than you ever have while taking an exam.
You were distracted by the guy next to you who was tapping out a drum solo with his feet throughout the whole test, and you’re convinced it threw you off your game big-time.
You left the testing center with a bad gut feeling about your performance.
…do you see the difference between the two lists? It’s a matter of emergency vs. discomfort, crisis vs. error.
Still convinced YOUR situation means you should nix your score? Maybe this story will help you make the right call:
Why you shouldn't always delete your standardized test score: an example
Not too long ago, a one-on-one tutoring student of mine—let’s call her Sammy—called me right after she got out of her SAT. She was freaking out.
“Kristina, the Math section was a MESS! It felt so much harder than normal. I had no idea know how to even approach two of the questions, and just guessed. Also, one of the Reading + Writing passages was super hard, and I don’t think I really understood it. Shouldn’t I just cancel my score?! My friend Michelle canceled one of her tests, and she ended up getting the scores she needed the next time she took it.”
After about 15 minutes on the phone with Sammy, I determined that the only concrete things that had happened during the test were that there were a few Math and Reading and Writing questions that Sammy more or less guessed on—and this had her in tears because she usually has adequate time to make it through everything. All of the other bad omens were subjective: like how “hard” sections, questions, passages were and how she “felt” about it.
I convinced Sammy NOT to cancel her scores. This was the most strategic choice for her for the following reasons:
If she thought the Math section was unbelievably “hard”...that probably meant that a LOT of other test-takers did that day, too! Which meant the curve would more than likely be “easier” than usual.
If she thought the Reading texts were harder than usual...that same curve logic applies here, too! Her practice tests had showed that reading/writing was typically one of Sammy’s strengths, so she’d likely STILL place in the top percentiles, even if she missed a few more questions than she usually did.
Many of the colleges on Sammy’s application list used Superscoring. Meaning, they would accept her highest individual Math and Reading + Writing scores across different test dates. She’d already locked in a 770 on the Verbal on a past test sitting, so who really cared if her Reading + Writing section didn’t go as swimmingly as usual? Our focus with this most recent test sitting was on raising her Math to 730 so she could Superscore to a 1500.
All but one of Sammy’s desired schools permitted Score Choice, meaning that if she truly DID get a very low score, only one admissions committees would ever see it, anyway. She could just elect not to send it to the others.
She needed to keep up her momentum! If Sammy canceled her scores when there’s even a chance to learn something useful from the questions she’d answered, she would slow down her timeline. I know from experience that students in this situation can be prone to “test prep limbo,” never again managing to muster up the energy and willpower to fully dive back into studying before the next test date.
There’s a finite number of test dates for the SAT and the ACT. Unless you were struck by a true personal apocalypse, you should at least learn what score you got before noping out of it altogether. You’ll never get to see your score if you cancel.
Do you know what ended up happening? Sammy followed my advice and did NOT cancel her score. She ended up receiving a 730 in Math—the highest she’d EVER gotten! Her Reading + Writing wasn’t quite as good as the 770 she already had, but that didn’t matter for her Superscore—she got exactly what she needed to Superscore to a 1500! (And just because, she took the NEXT sitting as well...and got a 1540, Superscoring to a 1550!)
Conclusion
I’d hate to see you miss out on a score that’s potentially not so bad just because you’re panicked or misunderstand how the test works. However, I don’t want to downplay that there ARE valid reasons to cancel your score.
So, if one of those serious misfortunes does befall you, you’ll want to consult my advice on how to cancel your SAT score or how to cancel your ACT score.
If you’ve finished reading today’s post and feel like you need help making this decision—quickly!—you can get my expert opinion in a private session with me.
