When you registered for the SAT, you could pick four colleges to send your scores to for free. A lot of people filled those in without thinking much about it.

Here is the part that catches people. Those reports go out on their own once scores come out, whatever your score turns out to be. And the deadline to change them lands before you get to see it.

If you are sitting the August 22 test, you have until August 31 to change your mind. Your score arrives September 4. You are deciding four days before you know anything.

Go and look at what you put down

Open your College Board account and find your score sends. Do it now rather than at the deadline. Almost nobody remembers what they typed in months ago, and that is the actual problem here.

You will see one of two things. Either colleges are listed, and this score is already on its way to them. Or the slots are empty, and nothing leaves until you say so.

Either is a fine place to be. Not knowing which one you are in is not.

Your dates, whichever test you take

You get nine days after the test to use or change the free sends. Scores follow about four days after that.

After the lock date you can still send scores. You just pay for each report instead of getting four free. Unless you have a fee waiver, which covers score reports beyond the free four, so the deadline costs you nothing. What SAT and ACT fee waivers cover lists what each includes.

Cancelling is the other way out, and it is also blind

There is one way to stop a score reaching anyone, and it goes further than clearing a college out of a slot. You can cancel your scores for that test date.

The deadline is 11:59pm Eastern one week after test day. For August 22 that is August 29, which is two days before your free sends lock and six days before your score would have arrived.

It is final, and it cuts both ways. College Board says a cancelled score cannot be reinstated and is not reported to you either. You never find out what you got. For most people that is a worse trade than sending a middling score, but it is there, and it is the first door to close.

Leaving them on is often the right answer

This is not a post telling you to clear the slots. Most of the time you should not.

If you are going to send this score anyway, the free sends save you four report fees. That is real money for nothing. Use them.

The same goes if your colleges want every score you have ever taken, and some of them do. Holding one back was never on the table for you, so you may as well not pay for the privilege.

Clear them if this one was a trial

Take the colleges off if you are sitting this one to see where you stand, or if you already plan to test again in the autumn.

You can still send that score later. It costs a fee per report unless you have a waiver, and what the fee buys you is the right to look first. For a trial run, that is usually worth it.

Score Choice does not cover these

Score Choice is the rule that lets you choose which test dates a college sees. It sounds like it solves this. It does not.

College Board says the option is not available for the free sends you picked when you registered. Those sit outside it. Score Choice covers reports you order later, not the ones attached to your registration.

Worth knowing either way: Score Choice works by whole test date. You cannot send Math from one sitting and Reading and Writing from another.

What we cannot tell you

Whether this score helps you is not something we can answer, and neither can anyone who has not seen your application. A number that is disappointing to you may be perfectly fine for the colleges on your list.

What you can do is stop the decision being made for you by a form you filled in months ago. Open the account, look, and choose on purpose.

If you have a fee waiver the arithmetic is different, and what SAT and ACT fee waivers cover sets out what each includes. If you want a sense of your score before the deadline, whether a practice score predicts anything is the honest version of that answer.

Where this comes from

The nine-day window and the Score Choice exclusion are both stated on College Board's own score-sending pages, checked August 17, 2026. The score release dates come from its published release schedule, and the cancellation rule from its SAT terms and conditions, both checked August 18, 2026. In the table, the lock dates are nine days after each test date and the cancel dates are one week after. Deadlines move sometimes, so open your own account rather than trusting a table on someone else's site.