Registration
Online or mail registration for the SAT
Students will be prompted to provide an acceptable photo with their registration for all SAT exams administered in the 2012-13 academic year. If they are registering for a test date in March 2013 or later, a photo is required. The photo that students provide will become part of their Admission Ticket, and will be available to the students' high schools. In the event of an investigation involving the validity of a student's test scores, the photo may be made available to institutions to which the student has sent test scores. Any college that is granted access to a student's photo will first be required to certify that the student has been admitted. Note: Students are not required to provide a photo if they are in the 8th grade or below.
Photos must be properly focused with a full-face view, be clearly identifiable as the student, and match the student's appearance on test day. Students will have the opportunity to crop and reposition their photos after uploading them. If a photo is not easily recognizable as the student, we cannot admit the student to the test center. For more details about our photo requirements, please visit sat.org/photo-requirements.
Encourage your students to set up a free account in the student area of the site and register online for the SAT®. When they complete their personal profiles, they will be able to link to lists of customized majors, career choices, and college matches as part of their account.
What are the benefits of online registration?
By registering online, students can:
- Know immediately what center is available before they pay for their registration
- Easily and quickly upload the required photo
- Ensure complete and acceptable registration at the time of submission
- Receive immediate registration confirmation
- Print their SAT Admission Ticket
- Have 24-hour access to registration for printing or correcting Admission Tickets
- View their SAT scores
- Easily order score reports and use Score Choice™ to select scores to send from prior test dates
- Allow their information to be sent to colleges and scholarship programs that are looking for students like them
Remind students that they must use a credit card or valid fee waiver to register online.
Exceptions to online registration
Students cannot register online and must register by mail if they:
- Wish to pay by check or money order
- Are younger than 13 years old
- Are unable to upload a digital photo of themselves as part of the online registration process
- Are requesting Sunday testing for the first time
- Are requesting that the College Board open a test center nearer to their home
- Are testing in Benin, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, or Togo
Important information about registering
Students cannot change the name they registered under, their date of birth, their gender or their photo on a registration once it has been processed. Refer students to Customer Service if they detect errors in their registrations after submitting them.
Registration by mail
To register by mail, a student needs The Paper Registration Guide for the SAT and SAT Subject Tests and a Registration Form. Based on past paper registration volumes, schools receive shipments of return envelopes containing these booklets and the Registration Form in late summer. You can view the guide and request additional supplies of the registration packet from the SAT Downloads and Materials Ordering page. Remind students to mail their completed Registration Form together with proper payment in the envelope provided. Also note t hat the form is scanned, so photocopies cannot be used.
The registration guide contains:
- Test dates and registration deadlines
- Fees
- Registration instructions
- Test-taking guidelines
- Instructions for the SAT Questionnaire
- Important information and policies for test-takers
Test-center, college and scholarship, and country codes as well as a list of majors are provided in a separate copy of The SAT Code List provided to schools and authorized agencies.
Returned paper registrations
Check-in procedures for SAT test centers now require an exact match of student information across the Admission Ticket, ID (where applicable) and roster. Students cannot complete a registration without providing all information marked "REQ'D FIELD."
If mandatory information is missing, the Registration Form will be returned to the student to complete and resubmit. Here are some common reasons this might happen:
- Student failed to provide information in the fields designated as "REQ'D FIELD" on the form.
- Student omitted payment or submitted insufficient payment or a payment that could not be processed
- Student requested Sunday testing or opening a test center closer to home without enclosing the required letter