The test-optional movement changed admissions at hundreds of colleges, but it did not remove test scores from scholarship decisions. In 2026, most merit scholarships, several state aid programs, and the entire National Merit Scholarship Program still run on SAT or ACT scores, even at schools where submitting a score is optional for admission. Several Ivy League schools have also reinstated testing requirements for this cycle. Families who skip the test because a college is test-optional often discover too late that they have missed out on thousands of dollars in merit aid.
Test-optional does not mean scholarship-optional
The phrase “test-optional” describes an admissions policy, not a financial aid policy, and the two are constantly confused. A college can accept an application with no SAT or ACT score and still use test scores to determine who receives merit aid.
This distinction matters because merit scholarships, unlike need-based aid, reward measurable academic strength, and a standardized test score remains one of the few metrics colleges can use to compare thousands of applicants from different high schools with different grading standards. A 3.9 GPA means something different at a school with widespread grade inflation than it does at a school known for tough grading. A 1400 SAT score means the same thing everywhere.
For 2026 admissions, a handful of the most selective universities have gone further, reinstating required testing altogether and reversing the pandemic-era test-optional shift for at least some applicants. Families targeting those schools no longer have a choice. For everyone else, the decision to submit a score really depends on how much scholarship money is available.
Where test scores still directly control money
Merit scholarships tied to automatic thresholds
Many public universities and a growing number of private colleges publish automatic merit scholarship tables: hit a certain SAT or ACT score alongside a GPA minimum, and the scholarship is awarded without a separate application, essay, or interview. These automatic awards are among the most predictable forms of financial aid because the student knows the exact bar before applying.
A student who scores below the published threshold, or who has no score at all, is not automatically disqualified everywhere but is competing for a smaller, discretionary pool of aid instead of an automatic award. That difference alone can be worth thousands of dollars per year over four years of enrollment.
The National Merit Scholarship Program
National Merit remains entirely test-dependent, and no test-optional trend has touched it. Eligibility starts with the PSAT/NMSQT taken in eleventh grade, which produces a Selection Index score using a formula that weights the Reading and Writing section twice as heavily as Math. That Selection Index, not the raw PSAT total, determines whether a student advances to Semifinalist and eventually Finalist status.
Selection index cutoffs vary by state and by year, since National Merit recognizes roughly the top one percent of test takers in each state rather than applying a single national cutoff. A student cannot opt out of the test and still enter the competition. The base National Merit Scholarship award itself is modest, but many universities layer their own institutional scholarships on top of Finalist status, sometimes covering a significant share of tuition for students who name that school as their first choice.
State-sponsored scholarship and grant programs
Several state scholarship and grant programs, separate from any individual college’s policies, set minimum SAT or ACT scores as part of eligibility requirements, alongside GPA and residency requirements. These programs run independently of whether a student’s target college is test-optional, so a strong score can unlock state-level aid even at a school that never required scores during admissions review.
Scholarships from outside organizations
Private scholarship providers, community foundations, and employer-sponsored scholarship funds frequently use test scores as one of several screening criteria, particularly for large applicant pools where committees need an efficient way to narrow the field before reading essays. A student applying to a dozen outside scholarships may find that half of them ask for a score regardless of what any college requires.
Why this catches families off guard
The confusion usually starts with a college’s own admissions marketing. A school proudly advertises its test-optional policy on the admissions page, and a family reasonably assumes that this policy applies to every part of the application, including money. The financial aid office, working from a separate set of criteria, may have never adopted the same standard.
The issue is compounded by timing. Merit scholarship deadlines frequently fall earlier than general admission deadlines, and by the time a family realizes a score was needed for scholarship consideration, the testing calendar may no longer allow enough time to take the SAT or ACT and receive results before that deadline.
What should families actually do?
Checking a school’s test-optional status is not enough. The financial aid section of a college’s website, not the admissions section, is where scholarship-specific testing requirements usually live, and it is worth reading directly rather than assuming the admissions policy covers both.
A short list of actions protects against the most common mistakes:
- Read the financial aid or scholarships page for every target school separately from the admissions page, since the two departments sometimes set different policies
- Note merit scholarship deadlines specifically, since they often arrive well before the general application deadline
- Ask directly, by phone or email, whether test scores affect scholarship consideration even when admission itself does not require them
- Take the PSAT in eleventh grade regardless of college testing policy, since it is the only entry point to National Merit
- Treat a strong SAT or ACT score as a financial decision, not only an admissions one, when deciding whether it is worth the time to prepare and test
The bottom line
Test-optional admissions changed how colleges evaluate applications, but it did not change how most colleges and outside organizations fund them. A strong score remains one of the most reliable ways to unlock automatic merit aid, and the students who benefit most are usually the ones who found this information out early enough to prepare properly, not the ones scrambling to test a month before a scholarship deadline. Structured preparation for the SAT or ACT, started with enough runway before those deadlines, is often the difference between qualifying for an automatic award and missing it by a handful of points.
