Test-Optional and Scholarships — The Hidden Trade-Off

You got into the school without submitting a test score. The acceptance letter is real. The portal works. You're in. And then you open the financial aid package and realize you're staring at a number that's five figures higher than what your classmate with a similar GPA is paying — because they submitted a 1350 and unlocked an automatic merit scholarship you didn't even know existed. This is the trade-off nobody puts on the brochure. Test-optional, for a growing number of students, means you can get admitted without scores but you can't get paid without them.

The Reality

The test-optional movement expanded rapidly during COVID and, as of the 2025-26 cycle, remains the policy at more than 1,900 four-year institutions according to FairTest.org's running database. The message from admissions offices has been consistent: you won't be penalized for not submitting scores. And for the admissions decision itself, the data broadly supports that claim. The landmark Syverson, Franks, and Hiss (2018) study of 28 institutions found that non-submitters graduated at rates nearly identical to submitters. Getting in without scores is real.

But admissions and financial aid are two different offices with two different rubrics. A school can be genuinely test-optional for admission while still requiring or heavily weighting test scores for merit scholarships. The National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) has noted this gap in multiple reports — the test-optional conversation in admissions has outpaced the test-optional conversation in financial aid. The two aren't moving at the same speed, and the space between them is where students lose real money.

The scale of this gap is hard to overstate. Many state universities and mid-tier private institutions use automatic merit award grids — essentially lookup tables where your GPA and test score intersect to determine your scholarship tier. At the University of Alabama, for example, specific SAT/ACT score bands combined with GPA thresholds determine whether you receive a scholarship worth a few thousand dollars per year or one covering full tuition. [VERIFY current UA automatic merit grid tiers and exact dollar amounts for 2025-26] These aren't competitive scholarships where you write an extra essay. They're automatic. You either hit the number or you don't.

The Play

Before you decide whether to submit scores, you need to do two separate research tasks — one for admissions, one for money. Most students only do the first.

Start with your safety and match schools, not your reaches. This is counterintuitive, but it matters. At reach schools, test-optional might genuinely be test-optional for everything — some highly selective institutions have eliminated test score requirements for both admission and merit aid. But at the schools where you're most likely to enroll and where merit aid could make the biggest financial difference, scores often function as the gate to scholarship money. Schools like Arizona State, the University of South Carolina, the University of Kentucky, Tulane, and dozens of others publish explicit merit grids tied to test scores. [VERIFY that Tulane still uses test scores in merit scholarship consideration for 2025-26] You can find these on each school's financial aid or scholarship page — not the admissions page.

Here's your research protocol. For every school on your list, go to the financial aid section of the website (not admissions) and search for "merit scholarship," "automatic scholarship," or "academic scholarship." Look for a grid or table that shows GPA and test score requirements. If you can't find one on the website, call the financial aid office directly and ask: "Can a student receive your full range of merit scholarships without submitting test scores?" The answer will tell you more than anything on the admissions FAQ page.

You should also check each school's Common Data Set (CDS), specifically Section H — Financial Aid. The CDS is a standardized document that most colleges publish annually, and Section H breaks down the criteria used for awarding institutional merit aid. If "standardized test scores" is listed as a factor, that school is using your scores (or their absence) in the merit calculation whether or not the admissions office calls itself test-optional.

The strategic implication is this: even if your dream reach school is test-optional and you've decided not to submit there, you may still need strong test scores for your safety and match schools — not to get in, but to get funded. A student who gets admitted test-optional to their safety school but misses out on a $15,000-per-year automatic merit award has effectively made their safety school more expensive than it needed to be. Over four years, that's $60,000 left on the table because the admissions conversation and the financial aid conversation were treated as the same thing.

The Math

Let's walk through a scenario. You have a 3.7 unweighted GPA and no test score to submit. You apply test-optional to three types of schools.

At your reach school — say, a highly selective private university — test-optional genuinely means test-optional. They meet full demonstrated need, they don't offer merit scholarships in the traditional sense, and your application is evaluated holistically without a score penalty. No financial impact from going test-optional here.

At your match school — a competitive private university — they're test-optional for admission but offer merit scholarships ranging from $10,000 to $25,000 per year. Their scholarship rubric weights GPA and test scores. Without a score, you might get the $10,000 tier. With a 1350 SAT, you might qualify for $20,000. That's a $10,000 per year difference, or $40,000 over four years, at a school that cheerfully admitted you without scores.

At your safety school — a state university with published automatic merit tiers — the grid is explicit. A 3.7 GPA with a 1300+ SAT gets you $8,000 per year. A 3.7 GPA with no score submission gets you nothing from the automatic merit program, though you might qualify for smaller competitive scholarships you'd need to apply for separately. That's $32,000 over four years, gone — not because you couldn't get the score, but because you didn't know the money required it.

Add up the match and safety school gaps and you're looking at potentially $40,000 to $72,000 in lost merit aid across a single college career. The admissions decision said "optional." The financial aid math said something different entirely. NACAC survey data on institutional merit aid consistently shows that standardized test scores remain one of the most common criteria for non-need-based scholarship awards, even at institutions that have dropped score requirements for admissions decisions.

Now consider the time investment on the other side. Solid SAT prep — 20-30 focused hours — can move a score 100-150 points for most students. If that score bump pushes you into a higher merit tier at even one school, the return on those 20-30 hours is measured in tens of thousands of dollars. Very few things you can do in high school have that kind of dollar-per-hour payoff.

What Most People Get Wrong

The first mistake is treating "test-optional" as a single policy that covers everything. It doesn't. Admissions, merit aid, honors college admission, and specific program eligibility can all have different score requirements at the same institution. A school can be test-optional for general admission, score-required for the honors college, and score-dependent for its top merit scholarships — all at once. You have to check each layer separately.

The second mistake is only researching reach schools. The test-optional conversation online is dominated by elite institutions — the Ivies, the top 30, the schools that were already need-blind and meet full need. Those schools get the headlines. But most students are enrolling at schools where merit aid is the primary tool for reducing cost, and merit aid at those schools is where scores matter most. If you spend all your research energy figuring out whether Harvard or Yale is "truly" test-optional and none of it checking the scholarship grid at your state flagship, you've prioritized the wrong question.

The third mistake is assuming that if a school doesn't explicitly say "scores required for scholarships," then scores don't matter for scholarships. Many schools use scores as one factor among several in a holistic scholarship review. They won't tell you that your missing score cost you money — you'll just get a smaller award and never know why. The CDS is your friend here. If Section H lists test scores as a consideration for institutional grants, assume they're being used.

The bottom line: test-optional means you have a choice about whether to submit. It does not mean the choice has no consequences. For admissions at many schools, the consequences are genuinely minimal. For money, the consequences can be enormous. Do the research school by school, dollar by dollar, before you decide.

This article is part of the Test-Optional Strategy series at SurviveHighSchool.

Related reading: Test-Optional for Athletes, Artists, and Special Cases, What Replaces Your Score When You Don't Submit — Strengthening the Rest of Your Application, The Submit-or-Skip Decision — A School-by-School Framework