Picture this: You worked tirelessly all week, studying for the SAT every day and even on Saturday morning, the day of the exam. You wake up at the crack of dawn and wait in the pouring rain for nearly an hour to go to a school miles away, just for no bus to come and you miss the exam.
I, Elijah Ramos, was one of the thousands of high school students who were scheduled to take the SAT on November 8th at 8 a.m. On test day, I woke up at 5:30 in the morning and left the house at 6:30, as I wanted to be a little early to my testing site which was about an hour away by bus. For reference, I live in East New York, and my assigned school was Midwood High School. Unfortunately, my preparedness was no match for the Metropolitan Transit Authority, as no bus showed up and I eventually had to retreat back into my abode.
I, Jahmere Jackson, had to wake up at 4:30. a.m. and get out of the house by 6 In East New York. No buses were running for another hour, so I had to walk 40 minutes to the train station to get to Brownsville in time. The school was in a neighborhood that I’m not familiar with. I actually never been to Rockaway Ave station and I got lost when I got off of the C train.
This unfortunate turn of events is just one of the many experiences that students have faced in regards to the SAT and its early start times on the weekends.
Students like Jabari Textus, a senior at Academy for Young Writers, AFYW, woke up at 6 a.m. on November 8th. “I took an uber to the school so it wasn’t a hassle getting there [Brooklyn Collegiate Highschool]. Though, I was kind of drowsy while taking the test.” He later went on to state that although he was drowsy, It didn’t affect how he felt taking the test.
Shalimar Cazales, another senior at AFYW, took the SAT at Midwood High School. Which is over an hour’s travel from her house. “I had to wait 20 minutes for the bus in the rain,” she said. However, she was fortunate enough to still make it in time to take the test. “I can’t pay attention at that time so my brain could not process math and english as good when the sun’s not out.”
MTA data shows that weekend subway ridership rebounds to 80% of pre-pandemic levels. This means that the trains are just as, or even more crowded than during the weekdays. To make matters worse, the MTA has reported over 486,000 train delays in 2024. A quarter of these delays are due to planned maintenance that mostly happens on the weekends. These delays lead to significantly slower trains and long waits, as well as reroutes.
It isn’t just the trains that are the issue though, it’s the buses too. Once again, recent MTA data shows that more than a million riders use the local buses each weekend. Buses remain crowded and unpredictable, and it doesn’t help that the amount of buses en-route decreases on the weekends. Despite minor improvements, bus ride quality is still relatively low. Many routes struggle with slow speeds and unreliable schedules. There have been buses reported to run so inconsistently that walking has proven to be a better option.
This leaves us with the question: Should standardized testing be pushed back a little later into the day?
Anne Wheaton, Daniel Chapman and Janet Croft, taken from the National Museum of Medicine, state that from 38 different studies, it was concluded that later start times in school increase sleep duration, reduce tardiness, and have also been shown to raise some test scores.
Avery Rodgers from the European Medical Journal reports a case study where researchers tracked SAT scores. As it turns out, due to the delayed start times in the school, they found that there was a huge jump in average SAT scores among top test takers, from 1288 to around 1500.
However, Jennifer Heissel and Samuel Norris, who used large scaled ACT data and statewide testing data for Kansas and Virginia, came to a conclusion that makes the results seem quite mixed. They concluded that in those datasets, there was no significant effect of start times on test scores.
In the end, adjusting the SAT start times could help test takers show what they know. Performance can be affected in ways unrelated to skill when tests begin before teens are even fully awake. Even a small shift later into the morning could create a better testing environment that can better support focus and encourage accuracy.
