Do colleges/admissions officers take into account age of student at time of SAT testing or general application?

[Anonymous]

Does the SAT test record a students age? Is the age of a college applicant a consideration to admissions officers? I have a HS student and am discovering now that some of their classmates are a full year older (or more). Not wishing to debate red-shirting, just wondering/clarifying if it is considered at all during the college application process. Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Not really. Esp if it’s only a year.

[Anonymous]

No

[Anonymous]

What matters is the classes the student has taken. You want to take the test after you have completed junior-year equivalent classes. For most kids, that means taking the test sometime between the end of junior year and early senior year. However, if your kid goes to TJ and your kid has completed typical junior-year classes by the end of sophomore year, then anytime after sophomore year is fine. Again, it’s the completed coursework, not the age of the student, though the two are frequently correlated.

[Anonymous]

No but they will take into consideration if very young (age 15 or below) or much older (30+) as part of the admissions application and another form of diversity.

[Anonymous]

If you're going to college young, you need to be ready young.

If your child will benefit from an additional year of schooling before college admissions, take a gap year and then apply.

For public school students, young highly capable students do better then old students, because they get challenged more at school. Being older only helps if the student is being substantially challenged beyond school, which is hard because ES and MS suck up so much time. You can do it in HS with AP and DE and magnet, but by then it's too late to make up for lost tike in ES and MS.

[Anonymous]

I'll admit that this seems a glaring component of evaluation that is omitted in the admissions process - and one that would be easy to include.

[Anonymous]

So birthdate is not included in college applications at all?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does the SAT test record a students age? Is the age of a college applicant a consideration to admissions officers? I have a HS student and am discovering now that some of their classmates are a full year older (or more). Not wishing to debate red-shirting, just wondering/clarifying if it is considered at all during the college application process. Thanks.

It won't matter. Many kids who are young for their grade, even a year younger than average, end up valedictorians with near perfect scores after sophomore year. Being young did not affect them negatively, as tests relate to math courses taken/prep/ intelligence, not age.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So birthdate is not included in college applications at all?

Birthdate is on the common app

[Anonymous]

No

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So birthdate is not included in college applications at all?

Birthdate is on the common app

Nobody is weighing age as a factor in admissions unless he’s a non-traditional student.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'll admit that this seems a glaring component of evaluation that is omitted in the admissions process - and one that would be easy to include.

At some point it doesn’t matter. Colleges want strong students with emotional and intellectual maturity. You don’t get extra points for being a 16 yo high school grad—in fact, that’s probably more of a liability than a plus.

[Anonymous]

I have read that the later in HS you take the SAT, the better you typically do.

[Anonymous]

No because there is no reason to believe a student who is in the same grade as your child, but a year older, is any smarter or more capable. Theoretically they've had access to the same material each school year as your DC. It might have made a different in the earlier years when the foundations of learning were being built, but not by high school.