does the real sat have an essay

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Hi! I've heard mixed information about the SAT essay. Does the current SAT still include an essay section or has it been removed? I'd appreciate any clarity on this!

Hello! The SAT has undergone a range of changes lately, and in June 2021, the College Board eliminated the optional Essay section from the SAT. This means that the current SAT no longer includes an essay portion, and you'll only be assessed on the Evidence-Based Reading and Writing and Math sections. With this change, it's essential to focus on maximizing your scores in these two sections to demonstrate your academic abilities to colleges and universities.

Additionally, many colleges now place greater emphasis on personal statements and supplemental essays in their evaluation of your writing abilities instead of turning to your SAT Essay score. To make sure your essays are as strong as possible, consider utilizing CollegeVine's Free Peer Essay Review Tool, or submitting your essay for a paid review by an expert college admissions advisor through CollegeVine's marketplace.

Best of luck with your SAT!

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CollegeVine’s Q&A seeks to offer informed perspectives on commonly asked admissions questions. Every answer is refined and validated by our team of admissions experts to ensure it resonates with trusted knowledge in the field.

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What is the SAT? Ultimate Guide for Top Students

The SAT used to stand for Scholastic Aptitude Test and later on Scholastic Aptitude Test. These days, however, there is no particular SAT test meaning — SAT exams are simply called as such because the College Board wanted to get rid of “aptitude,” for it gave the idea that some individuals were born to attend college while some weren’t.

A standardized test, the SAT, is used by many colleges and universities as a part of the admissions process. It is a multiple-choice, paper and pencil examination that will soon go digital. Administered by the College Board, the SAT is employed not only for assessing the college readiness of applicants but also for determining scholarship eligibility at times.

Below, we will talk about some of the most important things you need to know about the SAT.

Is the SAT Important for College Admissions?

The SAT is an important exam for students to take if they are planning on applying to test-required colleges as well as certain scholarship programs. However, it’s completely up to college-bound individuals to take any of the college admission tests such as the SAT if the colleges they plan on applying to are test-required.

Read Also: 13 College Entrance Exams

Do You Have to Take the SAT?

The SAT may or may not be taken by college-bound students who are planning on applying to test-optional postsecondary institutions. It was back in 1969 when the test-optional movement came into being, and Bowdoin College was the very first college to implement a test-optional admissions policy. Many small liberal arts schools followed suit.

Simply put, the test-optional movement argued that standardized tests do not increase the value of college applications. As of this writing, there are more than 1,840 test-optional and test-blind colleges in the US.

Can Colleges See How Many Times You Took the SAT?

According to the College Board itself, nothing automatically allows colleges and universities to see how many times applicants took the SAT. The only test scores they will see are the ones that students include in their applications. However, some institutions of higher education require applicants to submit all test scores from all test dates.

Some colleges require the submission of all SAT taken to have a much better idea of an applicant’s academic capabilities as well as to look for positive trends that can help increase admissions chances.

What is on the SAT?

In the past, the SAT consisted of Critical Reading, Writing & Essay and Math sections. The new SAT, however, combined the sections Critical Reading and Writing & Essay. According to the SAT website itself, the standardized test was redesigned to make it more straightforward as well as connected to classroom learning.

How Many Sections are on the SAT?

The SAT is made up of 2 main sections: Evidence-Based Reading and Writing (EBRW) section and Math section. The EBRW section has 2 parts: Reading and Writing & Language. On the other hand, the Math section has 2 sections: Calculator and No-Calculator sections. Each section of the SAT has a different number of questions.

There’s another section of the SAT, which is optional, and it’s the Essay section. It was in 2016 when the Essay section became optional. The Writing section of the ACT, meanwhile, has always been optional.

However, these days, the Essay section is no longer available.

How Many Questions is the SAT

The SAT has a total of 154 multiple-choice questions. The SAT section with the most number of questions is the Math section, given that the said section is made up of 2 sections. The SAT section with the least number of questions, on the other hand, is the Writing & Language, which is a part of the EBRW section.

Here’s a table that shows the number of questions each section of the SAT has:

What Kind of Math is on the SAT?

According to the College Board itself, there are 4 types of math in the Math section of the SAT. The non-profit organization refers to them as the following: Heart of Algebra, Problem Solving and Data Analysis, Passport to Advanced Math, and Additional Topics in Math. Each of them covers different math topics.

Let’s take a look at what each kind of math in the SAT’s Math section is all about:

• Heart of Algebra – mastery of linear equations and systems
• Problem Solving and Data Analysis – analyzing problems and drawing information
• Passport to Advanced Math – manipulation of complex mathematical questions
• Additional Topics in Math – geometry and trigonometry

Is There Science on the SAT?

Unlike the ACT, there is no Science section on the SAT. However, the Math section of the SAT is designed in a way that it demonstrates the critical and analytical thinking skills of test-takers, which are essential for attaining success in the STEM field. As a result of this, some students who excel in science prefer the ACT over the SAT.

Although the ACT has a Science section, it’s not technically designed to measure a student’s knowledge about science but assess his or her ability to read charts and graphs and draw conclusions from what they have read.

Is There Writing on the SAT?

The SAT has a Writing section, which is a part of the bigger EBWR section. However, despite its name, the Writing section is not similar to the optional Essay section of the SAT or the optional Writing section of the ACT. Instead, it’s all about evaluating the ability of test-takers to fix weaknesses and mistakes in the given passages.

Grammar, vocabulary in context and editing skills — these are what the Writing & Language section of the SAT is all about, and each of the questions to answer are multiple-choice questions.

What is the SAT Reasoning Test?

The SAT Reasoning Test was a former name of the SAT, which has undergone several name changes throughout its existence. Initially, the SAT was known as the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

After some time, it was referred to as the Scholastic Assessment Test. It then became known as SAT I: Reasoning Test, after which it was referred to as the SAT Reasoning Test.

Currently, the SAT does not stand for anything — it’s just the name of the standardized test.

How Does the SAT Work?

The SAT is a timed examination. The entire standardized test is comprised of 3 separately timed sections — 2 for EBRW section and 1 for Math section. The questions are multiple-choice kinds, and they are designed to evaluate the literacy, numeracy and writing skills of the test-taker, all of which are vital for college-level coursework.

What Does the SAT Measure?

The SAT is designed to measure the college readiness of students by means of their literacy, numeracy and writing skills, all of which are vital for attaining academic success in their postsecondary education careers. The SAT provides admissions officers with a common data point that they can use to measure applicants against one another.

However, it’s important to note that colleges and universities rarely make admissions decisions based solely on college readiness through SAT scores. Often, the SAT is just one of the various admissions factors taken into account.

Is the SAT Multiple Choice

The SAT consists of multiple-choice questions. As a matter of fact, the EBRW section, which is made up of Reading and Writing & Language sections, has questions that provide test-takers with multiple answer options. Because there is no penalty for wrong answers, students can make a guess each time they don’t know the answer.

In the past, every wrong answer had a 1.25 point deduction. However, since the new SAT came into being in 2016, no point deductions are made for each incorrect answer.

Is the SAT a Standardized Test?

The SAT is a standardized test in that it requires all test-takers to answer the very same questions. Similarly, all answers given by test-takers are graded in the same predetermined way set by the College Board.

Still, colleges and universities that consider the SAT in the admissions process may use SAT scores differently when making admissions decisions.

Both the SAT and ACT are standardized test scores. Similarly, college admissions officers see them equally — they have no preference between these exams during the review process.

When Do You Take the SAT Test?

The SAT is administered 7 times per year. In terms of at what grade level the SAT is taken, high school students may take the standardized test at any given time starting their freshman year. However, most students take the SAT for the very first time in the spring of their junior year and retake it, if necessary, in the fall of their senior year.

Here are the months when the SAT is given in the US for American high school students:

How to Guess on the SAT

To guess on the SAT, test-takers should first eliminate at least 1 answer choice, which gives them a 33% chance of getting the right answer. Meanwhile, eliminating 2 answer choices allows them to enjoy a 50% chance of giving the correct answer. It’s generally a good idea to guess the answer if the question is too confusing or time-consuming.

Just like what was mentioned earlier, there is no penalty for every wrong answer on the SAT, which means that guessing is welcome. As a matter of fact, students should answer all questions even if they need to guess.

How Long is the SAT?

It takes 3 hours to complete the SAT. Because there is a 10-minute break after the first section, which is the Reading section that’s 65 minutes long, and another 5-minute break after the Math – No-Calculator section, which is the third section and takes 25 minutes to complete, the entire SAT is 3 hours and 15 minutes long.

The following table shows the length of each of the sections of the SAT:

How Does SAT Scoring Work?

The SAT composite score can range anywhere from as low as 400 to as high as 1600. Each of the SAT’s main sections, EBRW section and Math section, is scored between 200 and 800, which is the scaled score. The scaled score, which is based on whether the SAT is slightly easier or slightly harder, is based on the raw score, which is the number of correct answers.

Each of the sections of the EBRW section contributes equally to the said section in the scoring process. On the other hand, the Math section is made up solely of the score for the Math exam.

What is a Good SAT Score?

Generally speaking, an SAT composite score that’s above the median or 50th percentile is considered decent because it means that the test-taker performed better than the majority of those who took the SAT. However, in a stricter sense, a good SAT score is something that can help the student get admitted to the college of his or her choosing.

Just about any score that’s higher than the average of all individuals who sat for the SAT on the same test date is considered above average and perfectly acceptable for many test-required or test-optional institutions of higher education.

Facts About the SAT

In this part of the post, we will discuss a couple of important facts about the SAT, including how it came into being and who came up with the standardized test that the College Board administers.

History of the SAT

During World War I, recruits of the US Army were tested for their intelligence. The examination was referred to as the Army Alpha, which was the very first mass-administered IQ test.

After WWI, the Army Alpha was made harder and used as an admissions test for a few college-bound students in 1926. In 1933, it was used at Harvard for scholarship eligibility.

Before the war, the College Board, which was established in 1900, administered a number of exams. But because of WWI, all of them were abolished. The SAT then became the basic standardized college test.

Who Created the SAT?

Carl Brigham, who was a Princeton University professor of psychology and a pioneer in psychometrics, is considered the father of the SAT. He adapted the Army Alpha, which was an intelligence test that was administered to US Army recruits, mainly by making it more difficult so that it could be used for college admissions purposes.

It was in 1926 when the SAT was first administered by the College Board, which is also the official SAT website. Since its creation, the SAT has undergone many changes. The biggest ever change happened in 2016, which gave rise to the new SAT.

What is the College Board?

The College Board is an American non-profit organization that was created in 1900 as the College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB) to make higher education more accessible. It’s a membership institution that now consists of more than 6,000 colleges and universities.

The College Board also conducts research and advocacy to serve students, teachers and schools.

According to the College Board itself, each year, it helps over 7 million students successfully transition through higher education by means of college readiness and college success programs and services.

How Many People Take the SAT?

Around 1.7 million individuals take the SAT in 2022, with the vast majority of them being students in their junior and senior high school years. On the other hand, in the same year, the number of people who took the ACT was about 1.5 million.

At that time, 1050 was the average SAT score, which was the lowest since the standardized test changed its format in 2016.

Compared to the ACT, the SAT is more popular. Despite this, colleges and universities that are test-required as well as test-optional do not prefer one examination over the other.

What is the SAT Designed to Predict?

Being a standardized college entrance exam, the SAT is designed to predict college readiness, which is all about a student’s potential for success in pursuing an undergraduate degree. It does so by assessing the knowledge and skills of a college-bound individual in math and reading and writing, all of which are vital for college-level coursework.

Opinions about the effectiveness of the SAT in predicting college readiness are divided. For instance, research done on students without standardized test scores usually do well in college as their peers who submit standardized test scores.

Is the Fifth Section on the SAT Scored?

The fifth section of the SAT is also known as Section 5 or the SAT Experimental Section. Simply put, it’s a section of the SAT that is used for testing out questions for future SAT examinations. Other than not being scored and thus won’t affect a student’s actual SAT score, the fifth section of the SAT is also completely optional.

It takes 20 minutes for the fifth section of the SAT to be completed. The questions can be either math or English or both. The fifth section of the SAT allows the College Board to determine the relative difficulty of experimental questions.

Does the SAT Have an Essay?

The SAT used to have an Essay section. Since the standardized test came into being, the Essay section has always been required for test-takers to take. However, in 2016 when the SAT underwent a change in its format, the Essay section became optional.

Back in 2021, however, the College Board announced that it would stop offering the optional Essay section.

Registration fee for the SAT with the optional Essay section, when it was still being offered, amounted to $68. Meanwhile, without the optional Essay question, the SAT cost $52 only.

Does the SAT Provide Calculators?

The SAT does not provide calculators to test-takers. Instead, individuals must bring their calculators with them to their respective test centers on their respective test dates. It’s important to keep in mind that there are certain restrictions on what type of calculators can be used as well as when during the SAT that calculators can be used.

The Math section of the SAT is divided into Calculator section and No-Calculator section. It’s possible for test-takers to answer the Calculator section without using a calculator, although it will surely consume a lot of their time.

SAT is Changing – Paper Based vs. Digital

Eventually, the SAT will turn from the current paper and pencil format to the digital format.

Other than having an entirely new format, the digital SAT is shorter — it will take 2 hours and 24 minutes (with breaks) to complete, whereas the paper and pencil SAT takes 3 hours and 15 minutes (with breaks) to complete.

Instead of the usual 154 multiple-choice questions, the digital SAT will only have 98 multiple-choice questions. But just like its paper and pencil counterpart, the digital SAT will have a couple of sections: EBRW section and Math section. Test-takers will have 64 minutes to complete the EBRW section and 70 minutes to complete the Math section.

Despite being online, the digital SAT will still have to be taken by students at designated test centers.

They can, however, choose to bring their personal laptops with them to test centers, although some test centers or schools may require students to take the digital SAT on the computers they have on site.

When Does the SAT Go Digital?

The College Board will administer the digital SAT first to international students at international test centers in spring 2023. On the other hand, the digital SAT will be offered in the US for domestic students in spring 2024.

How to Study for the SAT

Experts recommend preparing for the SAT about 3 months before the test date. It’s a good idea for students who are planning to sit for the standardized examination to take practice tests as it can help them determine what they already know and, more importantly, their weak points, so that they can dedicate more of their time to getting familiar with them.

The College Board offers free test preps for students, which, of course, are some of the best.

Other than those from the administrator itself of the SAT, high school students may also choose to take advantage of test preps in the form of online courses and guidebooks available on the internet.

A way to gear up for the SAT, which, as mentioned earlier, is ideally taken for the very first time in the spring of junior year and retake it, if unhappy with one’s scores, in the fall of the senior year, is by taking the PSAT. Short for Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test, the PSAT serves as a preparation for the SAT.

While most high school teens take the PSAT in the 11th grade to also qualify for the National Merit Scholarship Program, the standardized test score may also be taken in the 9th and 10th grades.

SAT Practice Test

In this part of the post, I will give you a total of 10 sample SAT questions — 5 for English and 5 for math. I took the questions below from the SAT Practice Test #1 by the College Board itself.

The passage below will take you to the SAT sample questions for English:

The Consolations of Philosophy

Long viewed by many as the stereotypical useless major, philosophy is now being seen by many students and prospective employers as in fact a very useful and practical major, offering students a host of transferable skills with relevance to the modern workplace. (1) In broad terms, philosophy is the study of meaning and the values underlying thought and behavior. But (2) more pragmatically, the discipline encourages students to analyze complex material, question conventional beliefs and express thoughts in a concise manner.

Because philosophy (3) teaching students not what to think but how to think, the age-old discipline offers consistently useful tools for academic and professional achievement. (4) A 1994 survey concluded that only 18 percent of American colleges required at least one philosophy course. (5) Therefore, between 1992 and 1996, more than 400 independent philosophy departments were eliminated from institutions.

Q 4. Which choice most effectively sets up the information that follows?

Answer key:

And now, let’s take a look at 5 sample test questions for the Math section of the SAT.

1. Kathy is a repair technician for a phone company. Each week, she receives a batch of phones that need repairs. The number of phones that she has left to fix at the end of each day can be estimated with the equation P d = 108 − 23, where P is the number of phones left and d is the number of days she has worked that week. What is the meaning of the value 108 in this equation?

2. On Saturday afternoon, Armand sent m text messages each hour for 5 hours, and Tyrone sent p text messages each hour for 4 hours. Which of the following represents the total number of messages sent by Armand and Tyrone on Saturday afternoon?

3. A pediatrician uses the model h a = 3 + 28.6 to estimate the height h of a boy, in inches, in terms of the boy’s age a, in years, between the ages of 2 and 5. Based on the model, what is the estimated increase, in inches, of a boy’s height each year?

4. In the equations below, b and c represent the price per pound, in dollars, of beef and chicken, respectively, x weeks after July 1 during last summer. What was the price per pound of beef when it was equal to the price per pound of chicken?

b = 2.35 + 0.25x

c = 1.75 + 0.40x

5. A line in the xy-plane passes through the origin and has a slope of 1/7. Which of the following points lies on the line?

The sample questions above are from the following sites: www.serragotestprep.com quizlet.com

Should I Take the SAT or the ACT?

Both SAT and ACT scores are used by many colleges and universities in the admissions process as a part of their holistic admission policy. Similarly, a lot of institutions also use them to determine scholarship eligibility.

Admissions officers do not prefer the SAT over the ACT and vice versa.

So, in other words, it’s completely up to you whether it’s the SAT or ACT you will take — your choice of standardized test should be based on which one you can take with more self-confidence as well as ease. Needless to say, it’s highly recommended that you choose the exam that you are more likely to ace.

Because of this, you should familiarize yourself with the content of the SAT and ACT as well as the required testing strategies by taking some practice tests of both and then registering for one that you would feel more comfortable sitting for.

Read Next: ACT Tests Guide

Independent Education Consultant, Editor-in-chief. I have a graduate degree in Electrical Engineering and training in College Counseling. Member of American School Counselor Association (ASCA).

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The Optional SAT Essay: What to Know

Tackling this section of the SAT requires preparation and can boost some students' college applications.

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Even though an increasing number of colleges are dropping standardized test requirements, students who must write the SAT essay can still stand to gain from doing so.

Although the essay portion of the SAT became optional in 2016, many students still chose to write it to demonstrate strong or improved writing skills to prospective colleges.

In June 2021, the College Board opted to discontinue the SAT essay. Now, only students in a few states and school districts still have access to — and must complete — the SAT essay. This requirement applies to some students in the SAT School Day program, for instance, among other groups.

How Colleges Use SAT, ACT Results

Tiffany Sorensen Sept. 14, 2020

Whether or not to write the SAT essay is not the biggest decision you will have to make in high school, but it is certainly one that requires thought on your part. Here are three things you should know about the 50-minute SAT essay as you decide whether to complete it:

• To excel on the SAT essay, you must be a trained reader.
• The SAT essay begs background knowledge of rhetoric and persuasive writing.
• A growing number of colleges are dropping standardized test requirements.

To Excel on the SAT Essay, You Must Be a Trained Reader

The SAT essay prompt never comes unaccompanied. On the contrary, it follows a text that is about 700 words long or approximately one page. Before test-takers can even plan their response, they must carefully read and – ideally – annotate the passage.

The multifaceted nature of the SAT essay prompt can be distressing to students who struggle with reading comprehension. But the good news is that this prompt is highly predictable: It always asks students to explain how the author builds his or her argument. In this case, "how” means which rhetorical devices are used, such as deductive reasoning, metaphors, etc.

Luckily, the author’s argument is usually spelled out in the prompt itself. For instance, consider this past SAT prompt : “Write an essay in which you explain how Paul Bogard builds an argument to persuade his audience that natural darkness should be preserved.”

Due to the essay prompt’s straightforward nature, students should read the passage with an eye toward specific devices used by the author rather than poring over “big ideas.” In tour SAT essay, aim to analyze at least two devices, with three being even better.

The SAT Essay Begs Background Knowledge of Rhetoric and Persuasive Writing

Since your SAT essay response must point to specific rhetorical devices that the author employs to convince the reader, you should make it a point to intimately know 10-15 common ones. The more familiar you are with rhetorical devices, the faster you will become at picking them out as you read texts.

Once you have read the passage and identified a handful of noteworthy rhetorical devices, you should apply many of the same essay-writing techniques you already use in your high school English classes.

For instance, you should start by brainstorming to see which devices you have the most to say about. After that, develop a concise thesis statement, incorporate quotes from the text, avoid wordiness and other infelicities of writing, close with an intriguing conclusion, and do everything else you could imagine your English teacher advising you to do.

Remember to always provide evidence from the text to support your claims. Finally, leave a few minutes at the end to review your essay for mistakes.

A Growing Number of Colleges Are Dropping Standardized Test Requirements

In recent years, some of America’s most prominent colleges and universities – including Ivy League institutions like Harvard University in Massachusetts, Princeton University in New Jersey and Yale University in Connecticut – have made submission of ACT and SAT scores optional.

While this trend began as early as 2018, the upheaval caused by COVID-19 has prompted many other schools to adopt a more lenient testing policy, as well.

Advocates for educational fairness have long expressed concerns that standardized admissions tests put underprivileged students at a disadvantage. In light of the coronavirus pandemic , which restricted exam access for almost all high school students, colleges have gotten on board with this idea by placing more emphasis on other factors in a student’s application.

To assess writing ability in alternative ways, colleges now place more emphasis on students’ grades in language-oriented subjects, as well as college application documents like the personal statement .

The fact that more colleges are lifting their ACT/SAT requirement does not imply that either test or any component of it is now obsolete. Students who must write the SAT essay can still stand to gain from doing so, especially those who wish to major in a writing-intensive field. The essay can also demonstrate a progression or upward trajectory in writing skills.

The SAT essay can give a boost to the college applications of the few students to whom it is still available. If the requirement applies to you, be sure to learn more about the SAT essay and practice it often as you prepare for your upcoming SAT.

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Tags: SAT , standardized tests , students , education

About College Admissions Playbook

Stressed about getting into college? College Admissions Playbook, authored by Varsity Tutors , offers prospective college students advice on Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses, SAT and ACT exams and the college application process. Varsity Tutors, an advertiser with U.S. News & World Report, is a live learning platform that connects students with personalized instruction to accelerate academic achievement. The company's end-to-end offerings also include mobile learning apps, online learning environments and other tutoring and test prep-focused technologies. Got a question? Email [email protected] .

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What Colleges Require the SAT Essay?

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If you’re going to be applying to college soon, there’s a good chance that you’re already thinking about the SAT. Most colleges still require standardized test scores, and millions of students across the country tackle this exam each year. 

As you begin your college search, it’s important to understand the exact standardized test requirements of the colleges on your list. Some will be test-optional . Others require scores from the SAT or ACT. In addition, some will require that you submit scores from the optional essay portions of these tests. There may also be schools that require or recommend SAT Subject Tests. Knowing the exact testing policy at each school you’re considering will help you plan your test taking strategy, and begin test prep well in advance. 

If you’re planning to take the SAT, you won’t want to miss this complete overview of what colleges require the SAT essay. 

What is the SAT Essay? How is it Scored?

Before we dive into which schools require it, let’s take a closer look at what exactly the SAT essay is, and how it is scored. 

On the SAT Essay, students are provided with a written argument that they must read and analyze. Students have 50 minutes to read the passage, plan the essay, and write their response. Most successful responses stick to the standard five-paragraph essay format. To see an example prompt and scoring rubric, check out the Essay Sample Questions on the College Board website. 

It’s important to note here that the SAT Essay score is separate from your overall composite SAT score. It does not impact the score ranging from 400-1600 as reported on your score report. Instead of being included in your composite score, it is provided in addition to it. 

The Essay is scored on a scale from 2-8 in three areas of evaluation—Reading, Analysis, and Writing. Each essay is reviewed by two scorers, and scores between 1-4 are awarded in each dimension. These scores are then added together so that you’ll receive three scores for the SAT Essay—one for each dimension—ranging from 2–8 points. A perfect score on the essay would be 8/8/8, but the mean score on the essay is a 5 for Reading and Writing, and 3 for Analysis. This means if you can achieve any score over 5/3/5, you have scored above average on the essay. For a more complete look at how the test is scored, don’t miss our post What is a Good SAT Essay Score?

Should I Take the SAT Essay?

First of all, the SAT essay is technically an optional section, so no, you are not required to take it. That being said, some colleges do require applicants to take the SAT with Essay. If you choose not to take the essay portion of the test, you will not be an eligible applicant for any of these schools. 

The SAT Essay used to be required at many top colleges, but it has become optional at many schools. Now, among elite schools, only the University of California schools require the Essay. Other selective colleges like Duke University, Amherst College, and Colby College recommend the Essay, but it’s not required. 

Take a look at the colleges on these lists, and see if there are any you plan to apply to. Also be sure to double-check on your schools’ webpages, as these policies can change. 

If you think you might change your mind about which schools you want to apply to, you should take the SAT Essay to leave those doors open. This is why we generally recommend taking the essay, regardless of whether or not it’s required. After all, you can’t go back and just take the SAT Essay if you decide to change your mind and apply to a school that requires it—you’d have to retake the entire SAT.

Some colleges don’t require the essay, but do recommend it. In these cases, we always direct students to do what the college recommends. 

That being said, there is currently no option to withhold your essay score if you do terribly on it. Your essay scores will always be reported with your other test scores from that day, even to colleges that don’t require them. 

What Colleges Require the SAT with Essay?

There colleges request scores from the SAT with Essay in order to apply.

Schools that Require the SAT Essay:

• All of the University of California schools
• Benedictine University
• City University London
• Delaware State University
• DeSales University
• Dominican University of California
• Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University
• Howard University
• John Wesley University
• Kentucky State University
• Martin Luther College
• Molloy College
• Schreiner University
• Soka University of America
• Southern California Institute of Architecture
• Texas A&M University—Galveston
• United States Military Academy (West Point)
• University of North Texas
• West Virginia University Institute of Technology
• Western Carolina University

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These schools do not require the SAT Essay, but do recommend that students submit it. At CollegeVine, our best advice is to always follow a college’s recommendations. 

Schools that Recommend the SAT Essay:

• Abilene Christian University
• Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences
• Allegheny College
• Amherst College
• Art Institute of Houston
• Augsburg University
• Austin College
• Caldwell University
• California State University, Northridge
• Central Connecticut State University
• Central Michigan University
• Cheyney University of Pennsylvania
• Coastal Carolina University
• Colby College
• College of Wooster
• Colorado School of Mines
• Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
• Corban University
• Cornerstone University
• Dallas Christian College
• Duke University
• Eastern Illinois University
• Eastern Nazarene College
• Easternn University
• Endicott College
• Five Towns College
• Gallaudet University
• George Washington University
• Georgia Highlands College
• Greenville University
• Gwynedd Mercy University
• High Point University
• Hofstra University
• Holy Family University
• Husson University
• Indiana University South Bend
• Indiana University Southeast
• Indiana Wesleyan University
• Inter American University of Puerto Rico: Barranquitas Campus
• Juilliard School
• Keiser University (West Palm Beach)
• Lehigh University
• Madonna University
• Manhattan College
• Marymount California University
• Massachusetts Maritime Academy
• McMurry University
• Mercy College
• Modern College of Design
• Montana Tech of the University of Montana
• Morehouse College
• Mount Saint Mary College
• Mount St. Joseph University
• National-Louis University
• New Jersey City University
• Nichols College
• North Park University
• Occidental College
• Ohio University
• Oregon State University
• Purdue University Northwest
• Randall University
• Randolph-Macon College
• Reading Area Community College
• Rowan University
• Rutgers University—Camden Campus
• Rutgers University—Newark Campus
• Saint Michael’s College
• Sciences Po
• Seton Hill University
• Shiloh University
• Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania
• Silver Lake College of the Holy Family
• Southern Illinois University of Carbondale
• Southern Oregon University
• Spring Hill College
• Sul Ross State University
• SUNY Farmingdale State College
• SUNY University at Stony Brook
• Tarleton State University
• Texas A&M International University
• Texas A&M University
• Texas State University
• The King’s College
• United States Air Force Academy
• University of Evansville
• University of La Verne
• University of Mary Hardin—Baylor
• University of Massachusetts Amherst
• University of Minnesota: Twin Cities
• University of New England
• University of Northwestern—St. Paul
• University of the Virgin Islands
• University of Toledo
• University of Washington Bothell
• VanderCook College of Music
• Virginia Union University
• Wabash College
• Webb Institute
• Webber International University
• Wesleyan College
• William Jewell College

If any of the schools you are considering appear on either of the lists above, we recommend taking the SAT with Essay. In fact, we recommend that most, if not all, students take the SAT essay since it leaves more doors open in your college search. However, if you’re absolutely sure you won’t be applying to colleges that require or recommend the SAT with Essay, you can skip it.

Regardless, as you consider which colleges to add to your list, you’ll want to be certain you know what colleges require the SAT essay so that you can plan ahead for this part of your test. 

For help figuring out which schools might be a great fit for you, don’t miss our customized and innovative Chancing Engine and School List Generator . Here, we use a proprietary algorithm backed by over 100,000 data points to develop a school list based on your real admissions chances and preferences.

Want to know how your SAT score impacts your chances of acceptance to your dream schools? Our free Chancing Engine will not only help you predict your odds, but also let you know how you stack up against other applicants, and which aspects of your profile to improve. Sign up for your free CollegeVine account today to gain access to our Chancing Engine and get a jumpstart on your college strategy!

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The Definitive Guide to the SAT 2024

Dec 12, 2023 | Articles , SAT , Standardized Tests

What is the SAT?

The Digital SAT is a standardized test created by the College Board and has been completely redesigned beginning with the March 2024 test. You’ll take the test on the SAT Bluebook™ app (unless you have paper-based accommodations) which you’ll want to download and practice with before test day. Typically, juniors and seniors take the test for college admissions, scholarship awards, and school assessments. The test takes about two and a half hours, including two short breaks. For some students in particular states, an optional Essay portion adds an extra fifty minutes at the end.

What are the sections of the SAT? 

The Digital SAT includes two sections with two modules each, Reading & Writing and Math . Each section counts for 50% of your composite score. This newly adaptive test contains a mix of easy to difficult questions in the first module for each section, then offers an easier or tougher second module depending on how well you answer the questions in the first section.  No Science section exists on the SAT as on the ACT, but knowledge of interpreting charts, tables, and graphs is assessed throughout all test sections. The SAT provides 68% more time per question than the ACT, and there’s no penalty for guessing.

Reading & Writing

The Reading & Writing section includes short (25-150 words) reading passages (or passage pairs) on subjects from literature, history/social studies, the humanities, and science.  Each multiple-choice question that follows a passage covers one of four domains:

• Information and Ideas.  Measures comprehension, analysis, and reasoning skills and knowledge and the ability to locate, interpret, evaluate, and integrate information and ideas from texts and informational graphics (tables, bar graphs, and line graphs).
• Craft and Structure.  Measures the comprehension, vocabulary, analysis, synthesis, and reasoning skills and knowledge needed to understand and use high-utility words and phrases in context, evaluate texts rhetorically, and make connections between topically related texts.
• Expression of Ideas.  Measures the ability to revise texts to improve the effectiveness of written expression and to meet specific rhetorical goals.
• Standard English Conventions.  Measures the ability to edit text to conform to core conventions of Standard English sentence structure, usage, and punctuation.

The Math section requires a deep understanding of algebra, but the test provides basic geometry formulas. The Bluebook app includes a built-in calculator, or you can still choose to bring your own from an approved list . Most (approximately 75%) questions are multiple-choice; but for some questions, you’ll need to provide a specific answer. These student-produced response (SPR) format questions may have multiple correct responses, but you’ll only provide one answer. Questions measure your ability to apply essential math concepts and about 30% of questions ask you to evaluate an in-context (worded) scenario and determine how to apply your math skills to find the answer. Each question covers one of four content areas:

• Algebra. Algebra measures the ability to analyze, fluently solve, and create linear equations and inequalities as well as analyze and fluently solve equations and systems of equations using multiple techniques. (13-15 questions)
• Advanced Math. The Advanced Math area measures skills and knowledge central for progression to more advanced math courses, including demonstrating an understanding of absolute value, quadratic, exponential, polynomial, rational, radical, and other nonlinear equations. (13-15 questions)
• Problem-Solving and Data Analysis. Problem-Solving and Data Analysis measures the ability to apply quantitative reasoning about ratios, rates, and proportional relationships; understand and apply unit rate; and analyze and interpret one- and two-variable data. (5-7 questions)
• Geometry and Trigonometry. Problems to solve include area and volume formulas; lines, angles, and triangles; right triangles and trigonometry, and circles. (5-7 questions)

How long is the SAT? 

How many questions are on the SAT? 

The SAT includes 154 questions. 

• Reading & Writing includes 54 questions in 64 minutes (average 71 seconds per question)
• Math  has 44 questions in 70 minutes (average 95 seconds per question)

What are the SAT dates? 

The SAT is offered seven times each year in March, May, June, August, October, November, and December. This provides multiple opportunities to take the test and increase your scores. Many schools, especially in states where the SAT is mandated for all high school juniors, also offer the test during the school day for students, generally in the spring. Check with your school to see if and when they offer the SAT. 

What is the average SAT score?

SAT scores range from 400 to 1600. The average SAT score for the class of 2023 was 1028 , down 22 points from 2022. ( Curious what that would be on the ACT? ) A ccording to the College Board’s latest score report , only 7% of all test-takers scored higher than 1400. No one scored below 590, and 12% of test-takers scored between 600 and 790. The Digital SAT (March 2024 onward) may be difficult to compare with the previous version of the SAT.

How do you register for the SAT?

Register for the SAT at www.collegeboard.org . Test centers can be found on the SAT website , where you can search by state and test date. B ring a photo ID with your admission ticket on test day. You can use a driver’s license, passport, or other government-issued photo ID. If you don’t have any of these IDs, the SAT offers alternative methods to prove your identity.   When you register, you can choose to include information to allow colleges and scholarship organizations to contact you. 

On test day, you are expected to bring your fully-charged device with the Bluebook testing app already loaded. You can also bring a pen/pencil and use the scratch paper provided at the test site.

How much does the SAT cost? 

For 2023, taking the SAT costs $60. Add $30 if you register late, after the regular deadline. You can send up to four free score reports up to nine days after the test date. Additional score reports or reports ordered after you take the test are $14 per report. The SAT offers fee waivers to eligible test-takers (free & reduced lunch, receiving public assistance, etc.). Students can use the waivers to take two free SATs (with or without the essay) and send unlimited score reports. If you think you may be eligible, work with your school counselor to submit your request. 

When should you take the SAT?

Taking the PSAT is a good introduction to the format and content of the SAT, during the sophomore or junior year of high school. You may only qualify for the National Merit Scholarship Program by testing during your junior year. Register for the PSAT through your school. After taking the PSAT, consider taking the SAT at least four times. No one gets their best score the first (or even second) time. Try taking the test twice in your junior year and twice in your senior fall. This increases the chances of scoring your best and boosting potential scholarships and financial aid! 

Should you take the SAT or ACT? 

All colleges accept both the ACT and SAT, so try both, then decide where to focus your effort. The SAT has two Math sections compared to only one for the ACT. The ACT, however, has a Science and Data Interpretation section.   In general, the content on the SAT is more challenging, but more time is given per question, compared to the ACT. Th e most important thing is to take either test multiple times. Improve your scores through practice.

How long does it take to get SAT scores? 

SAT multiple-choice scores are usually reported within 2-3 weeks of your test date. A schedule for individual test dates is available. The College Board sends a ll score reports to your selected colleges within ten days. 

How do you improve your SAT scores?

Practice and preparation are two of the biggest ways you can improve your SAT score. Find SAT prep that’s fun and engaging but also gives you strategies to help take the test. Not all test prep is created equal, so research, read reviews, and look past flashy guarantees.   OnToCollege offers an effective video course that not only gives you strategies but also practice tests and solution videos to help you learn from your mistakes. Use actual SAT practice tests as you study, (three are included in our course) to learn the format of the test. Then take the actual SAT multiple times, ideally twice your junior year and twice your senior year. 

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The SAT is coming back at some colleges. It’s stressing everyone out.

A patchwork of admissions test policies is wreaking havoc on students, parents and college admissions consultants.

A California mother drove 80 miles this month to find an SAT testing center with an open seat where her high school junior could take the exam. During college tours this spring, a teen recalled hearing some would-be applicants groan when admissions staffers announced they could not guarantee test-optional policies would continue.

And across the country, college counselors are fielding questions from teenagers alarmed, encouraged or simply confused by what seems like the return of the standardized test in admissions — maybe? Sort of? In some places, but not in others?

“You could be expecting and preparing for a certain way to apply to a college and present yourself — but then they change it mid-application process,” said Kai Talbert, a 17-year-old high school junior in Pennsylvania. “That’s really confusing. It can set back a lot of people.”

Colleges nationwide have been updating their coronavirus-era policies on standardized testing, which many dropped when the pandemic shut down in-person testing centers. Some of the most selective schools are declaring they will require tests again — including, across the last two months, Dartmouth College and Yale and Brown universities. Others, such as the University of Chicago and Columbia University, won’t. And still others have not yet picked a permanent policy: Princeton, Stanford, Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania have said they will remain test-optional for another year or two, and Harvard University plans to keep its test-optional policy at least through the 2025-26 application cycle.

Public universities have veered in different directions, too: The University of Tennessee system requires tests. The University of Michigan will be test-optional. The University of California system is test-blind, meaning schools refuse to consider SAT or ACT scores for admissions.

The patchwork of policies is wreaking havoc on applicants, parents and college admissions consultants nationwide, who are being forced to recalculate where and how they are willing to apply — or what to tell anxious teenagers about whether to test, retest or skip testing entirely — as decisions keep rolling out in real time.

Laurie Kopp Weingarten, founder of One-Stop College Counseling in New Jersey, said she has a new response whenever a student gives her a list of their school targets. She starts by going down the list, school by school, to review each institution’s testing rules and whether those seem likely to change.

Taking a breath, Weingarten rattled off a summary of the different testing requirements in place at every Ivy League school. It took her three minutes.

“Even just saying it, it sounds like insanity to me, and then we’re expecting kids to understand this?” Weingarten said. “Colleges should really analyze the data, come up with a decision and stop changing their mind.”

The shifting testing expectations are among many changes roiling college admissions this year. Colleges are still grappling with the fallout from the landmark Supreme Court ruling that ended the use of race-based affirmative action in admissions. Many are undertaking an array of experiments in response to the decision in a bid to maintain diverse admitted classes — ending legacy preferences in some cases, adding essay prompts on adversity or identity in others, or increasing outreach in low-income areas.

And the disastrous rollout of a federal financial aid form that was supposed to simplify the notoriously difficult process has left students, parents and schools scrambling .

This is the most hectic and distressing admissions cycle in recent memory, said Jennifer Nuechterlein, a college and career counselor at a New Jersey high school. She laid special blame on schools that reinstated testing mandates in the past two months, some of which affect the high school juniors who will begin applying in the fall. This class of teens will have to take the SAT or ACT, should they decide to do so, within the next six months.

“Students can’t just test overnight,” Nuechterlein said. “There are students who want to prep, there are students who are not math- or English-ready. ... Students are going to be unprepared.”

For the most ambitious, high-achieving students, the tests are another stressful hurdle to clear as they apply to the most selective colleges. And for many other students, the test scores — even if not required for admission — are mandatory if they want to qualify for some financial aid programs or, on some campuses, certain degree programs.

Critics of standardized tests have argued that they mirror, or exacerbate, societal inequities, in part because students from unstable homes or with limited resources cannot afford SAT or ACT tutors or testing preparation classes, or may not know of free resources such as Khan Academy . Even before the pandemic, some schools had moved to make the scores optional to avoid creating another barrier for students.

Then the pandemic hit, spurring a crisis response when students literally could not access spaces in which to take standardized tests, said Dominique J. Baker, a University of Delaware associate professor of education and public policy who studies admissions policies.

“There were a number of institutions that never would have chosen to have gone test-optional except the pandemic made them,” she said. “Those institutions, by and large, are going back to requiring test scores.”

MIT, Georgetown University and the University of Florida are among schools that quickly chose to reinstate the requirements, with MIT announcing the change in 2022. Many others have spent the years since the virus arrived studying what effect going test-optional had on their admitted classes.

At Brown, Yale and Dartmouth, officials said they had found something surprising: Considering test scores would help them identify more promising applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds, not fewer. After looking at their own data, leaders at the three Ivy League schools say they concluded that SAT and ACT scores are highly predictive of students’ academic performance in college, more so than high school grades. They also found that some less-advantaged students withheld their scores when sharing them would have boosted their chances.

Depriving admissions officers of SAT and ACT scores meant they were less able to evaluate an applicant’s chances of thriving at Brown, Provost Francis J. Doyle III said in an interview this month .

“Our analysis suggested our admissions could be more effective if we brought back testing as an instrument,” Doyle said.

The University of Texas at Austin is also choosing to require testing again, the school announced earlier this month. Jay Hartzell, the school’s president, said he and others worried the cost and preparation associated with the tests could keep students from applying. But about 90 percent of UT Austin applicants in the latest round took the SAT even though it was optional, Hartzell said. And the school found that students who declined to submit scores were less successful once enrolled.

John Friedman, a professor of economics and international and public affairs at Brown, said he wouldn’t be surprised if more of those highly selective schools reinstate a testing requirement. He was one of the authors of the study from Opportunity Insights, a nonprofit at Harvard University, on standardized test scores and student performance at a dozen “Ivy-plus” universities.

“It’s not just about the test scores being a good predictor,” he said. “We show in the paper that students who attend a school, having been admitted without a test score, perform at the bottom of the distribution.” He said schools should look at their own data to determine their policy.

Nonetheless, most schools nationwide will probably remain test-optional, predicted Angel Pérez, the chief executive of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. For many institutions, he said, the policy has been a huge success, bumping up the number of applicants and diversifying admitted classes.

He added that most American high-schoolers are applying to schools that admit nearly all applicants, to public schools or to colleges close to home, he said: “So the majority of students aren’t going to be impacted.”

Morehouse College is among those maintaining a test-optional policy, which the historically Black college adopted in 2020. Since going test-optional, Morehouse has seen an increased number of applicants and an increased acceptance rate from admitted students, said Michael Gumm, Morehouse’s director of admissions and recruitment.

The majority of Morehouse applicants choose not to submit scores, Gumm said, and more students are completing their applications than in the past. He said Morehouse is looking for leaders, so essays and letters of recommendation carry a lot of weight.

Gumm said he often preaches to students: “Your test scores do not make you who you are.”

But for some students, the tests remain a priority. Alina Bunch, a 16-year-old high school junior in Texas, said that even when she saw schools dropping test requirements, she never altered her plan to take the ACT. The exam, she says, is a way to demonstrate determination and academic rigor.

She thinks it’s generally a good thing that schools are bringing back testing requirements, because they can function as a mechanism of standardization in a sometimes subjective admissions process. She does fear the effects of reinstating test requirements for students who cannot afford tutoring.

But for herself — after taking a summer course to prepare for the ACT and scoring high on the exam — she has no real worries. “It was never a question for me, of whether I should do it or not,” Alina said.

Many students pursued similar strategies, continuing to take standardized tests throughout the test-optional trend. After a dramatic drop in 2020 spurred by the sudden closure of test sites, the number of students taking the SAT nationally has risen every year since, per the College Board, and reached 1.9 million for the class of 2023. That’s about 300,000 short of the last pre-pandemic total, when 2.2 million members of the class of 2019 sat for the exam — the largest-ever group to do so.

Joan Koven, who heads college consulting company Academic Access in Pennsylvania, said she never expected standardized testing to suffer a real drop in popularity.

“The ACTs and the SATs are Burger King and McDonald’s,” she said. “They’re not going away.”

But in some places, counselors wish they would. Priscilla Grijalva, a high school counselor in California’s San Jacinto Unified School District, said the elimination of test requirements in the UC system and California State University campuses was a godsend for the nearly 300 students she works with every year, a mix of White, Black and Latino teens, most of whom are socioeconomically disadvantaged.

In the past, many of her students applied only to community colleges. But now she has seen a sharp rise in those willing to aim for state universities.

“It has changed our students’ mindsets,” Grijalva said. “Now it’s like, ‘Hey, I can do this.’ They’re more confident in their leadership and their grades.”

But the flurry of recent announcements from schools altering their testing rules has proved alarming, she said. Her students “do feel the pressure coming back,” she said. “They’re starting to talk.”

Claire Elkin, 16, overheard some of this nervous chatter when she was touring colleges this spring with her family — making visits to places including the University of Virginia, Vanderbilt University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At every school, recalled Claire, who took the ACT and intends to submit her scores, admissions tour leaders said something like: “Yeah, we’re test-optional now, but we can’t guarantee anything for you.”

Every time, the crowds of hopefuls around Claire broke into murmurs that ranged from anguished to angry, she said. She remembered one family whose daughters seemed especially upset, spurring the mother to jump into emergency action trying to calm the girls as the admissions presentation continued.

“A lot of kids my age can’t set a path right now for what they should be prioritizing when they’re applying for schools,” Claire said. “So there is definitely more panic.”

An earlier version of this article included incorrect information about the rise in the number of students who have taken the SAT since a drop sparked by the pandemic. The number of students taking the test reached 1.9 million for the class of 2023, about 300,000 fewer than for the class of 2019. The article has been corrected.

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• The Case for Marrying an Older Man

A woman’s life is all work and little rest. An age gap relationship can help.

In the summer, in the south of France, my husband and I like to play, rather badly, the lottery. We take long, scorching walks to the village — gratuitous beauty, gratuitous heat — kicking up dust and languid debates over how we’d spend such an influx. I purchase scratch-offs, jackpot tickets, scraping the former with euro coins in restaurants too fine for that. I never cash them in, nor do I check the winning numbers. For I already won something like the lotto, with its gifts and its curses, when he married me.

He is ten years older than I am. I chose him on purpose, not by chance. As far as life decisions go, on balance, I recommend it.

When I was 20 and a junior at Harvard College, a series of great ironies began to mock me. I could study all I wanted, prove myself as exceptional as I liked, and still my fiercest advantage remained so universal it deflated my other plans. My youth. The newness of my face and body. Compellingly effortless; cruelly fleeting. I shared it with the average, idle young woman shrugging down the street. The thought, when it descended on me, jolted my perspective, the way a falling leaf can make you look up: I could diligently craft an ideal existence, over years and years of sleepless nights and industry. Or I could just marry it early.

So naturally I began to lug a heavy suitcase of books each Saturday to the Harvard Business School to work on my Nabokov paper. In one cavernous, well-appointed room sat approximately 50 of the planet’s most suitable bachelors. I had high breasts, most of my eggs, plausible deniability when it came to purity, a flush ponytail, a pep in my step that had yet to run out. Apologies to Progress, but older men still desired those things.

I could not understand why my female classmates did not join me, given their intelligence. Each time I reconsidered the project, it struck me as more reasonable. Why ignore our youth when it amounted to a superpower? Why assume the burdens of womanhood, its too-quick-to-vanish upper hand, but not its brief benefits at least? Perhaps it came easier to avoid the topic wholesale than to accept that women really do have a tragically short window of power, and reason enough to take advantage of that fact while they can. As for me, I liked history, Victorian novels, knew of imminent female pitfalls from all the books I’d read: vampiric boyfriends; labor, at the office and in the hospital, expected simultaneously; a decline in status as we aged, like a looming eclipse. I’d have disliked being called calculating, but I had, like all women, a calculator in my head. I thought it silly to ignore its answers when they pointed to an unfairness for which we really ought to have been preparing.

I was competitive by nature, an English-literature student with all the corresponding major ambitions and minor prospects (Great American novel; email job). A little Bovarist , frantic for new places and ideas; to travel here, to travel there, to be in the room where things happened. I resented the callow boys in my class, who lusted after a particular, socially sanctioned type on campus: thin and sexless, emotionally detached and socially connected, the opposite of me. Restless one Saturday night, I slipped on a red dress and snuck into a graduate-school event, coiling an HDMI cord around my wrist as proof of some technical duty. I danced. I drank for free, until one of the organizers asked me to leave. I called and climbed into an Uber. Then I promptly climbed out of it. For there he was, emerging from the revolving doors. Brown eyes, curved lips, immaculate jacket. I went to him, asked him for a cigarette. A date, days later. A second one, where I discovered he was a person, potentially my favorite kind: funny, clear-eyed, brilliant, on intimate terms with the universe.

I used to love men like men love women — that is, not very well, and with a hunger driven only by my own inadequacies. Not him. In those early days, I spoke fondly of my family, stocked the fridge with his favorite pasta, folded his clothes more neatly than I ever have since. I wrote his mother a thank-you note for hosting me in his native France, something befitting a daughter-in-law. It worked; I meant it. After graduation and my fellowship at Oxford, I stayed in Europe for his career and married him at 23.

Of course I just fell in love. Romances have a setting; I had only intervened to place myself well. Mainly, I spotted the precise trouble of being a woman ahead of time, tried to surf it instead of letting it drown me on principle. I had grown bored of discussions of fair and unfair, equal or unequal , and preferred instead to consider a thing called ease.

The reception of a particular age-gap relationship depends on its obviousness. The greater and more visible the difference in years and status between a man and a woman, the more it strikes others as transactional. Transactional thinking in relationships is both as American as it gets and the least kosher subject in the American romantic lexicon. When a 50-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman walk down the street, the questions form themselves inside of you; they make you feel cynical and obscene: How good of a deal is that? Which party is getting the better one? Would I take it? He is older. Income rises with age, so we assume he has money, at least relative to her; at minimum, more connections and experience. She has supple skin. Energy. Sex. Maybe she gets a Birkin. Maybe he gets a baby long after his prime. The sight of their entwined hands throws a lucid light on the calculations each of us makes, in love, to varying degrees of denial. You could get married in the most romantic place in the world, like I did, and you would still have to sign a contract.

Twenty and 30 is not like 30 and 40; some freshness to my features back then, some clumsiness in my bearing, warped our decade, in the eyes of others, to an uncrossable gulf. Perhaps this explains the anger we felt directed at us at the start of our relationship. People seemed to take us very, very personally. I recall a hellish car ride with a friend of his who began to castigate me in the backseat, in tones so low that only I could hear him. He told me, You wanted a rich boyfriend. You chased and snuck into parties . He spared me the insult of gold digger, but he drew, with other words, the outline for it. Most offended were the single older women, my husband’s classmates. They discussed me in the bathroom at parties when I was in the stall. What does he see in her? What do they talk about? They were concerned about me. They wielded their concern like a bludgeon. They paraphrased without meaning to my favorite line from Nabokov’s Lolita : “You took advantage of my disadvantage,” suspecting me of some weakness he in turn mined. It did not disturb them, so much, to consider that all relationships were trades. The trouble was the trade I’d made struck them as a bad one.

The truth is you can fall in love with someone for all sorts of reasons, tiny transactions, pluses and minuses, whose sum is your affection for each other, your loyalty, your commitment. The way someone picks up your favorite croissant. Their habit of listening hard. What they do for you on your anniversary and your reciprocal gesture, wrapped thoughtfully. The serenity they inspire; your happiness, enlivening it. When someone says they feel unappreciated, what they really mean is you’re in debt to them.

When I think of same-age, same-stage relationships, what I tend to picture is a woman who is doing too much for too little.

I’m 27 now, and most women my age have “partners.” These days, girls become partners quite young. A partner is supposed to be a modern answer to the oppression of marriage, the terrible feeling of someone looming over you, head of a household to which you can only ever be the neck. Necks are vulnerable. The problem with a partner, however, is if you’re equal in all things, you compromise in all things. And men are too skilled at taking .

There is a boy out there who knows how to floss because my friend taught him. Now he kisses college girls with fresh breath. A boy married to my friend who doesn’t know how to pack his own suitcase. She “likes to do it for him.” A million boys who know how to touch a woman, who go to therapy because they were pushed, who learned fidelity, boundaries, decency, manners, to use a top sheet and act humanely beneath it, to call their mothers, match colors, bring flowers to a funeral and inhale, exhale in the face of rage, because some girl, some girl we know, some girl they probably don’t speak to and will never, ever credit, took the time to teach him. All while she was working, raising herself, clawing up the cliff-face of adulthood. Hauling him at her own expense.

I find a post on Reddit where five thousand men try to define “ a woman’s touch .” They describe raised flower beds, blankets, photographs of their loved ones, not hers, sprouting on the mantel overnight. Candles, coasters, side tables. Someone remembering to take lint out of the dryer. To give compliments. I wonder what these women are getting back. I imagine them like Cinderella’s mice, scurrying around, their sole proof of life their contributions to a more central character. On occasion I meet a nice couple, who grew up together. They know each other with a fraternalism tender and alien to me.  But I think of all my friends who failed at this, were failed at this, and I think, No, absolutely not, too risky . Riskier, sometimes, than an age gap.

My younger brother is in his early 20s, handsome, successful, but in many ways: an endearing disaster. By his age, I had long since wisened up. He leaves his clothes in the dryer, takes out a single shirt, steams it for three minutes. His towel on the floor, for someone else to retrieve. His lovely, same-age girlfriend is aching to fix these tendencies, among others. She is capable beyond words. Statistically, they will not end up together. He moved into his first place recently, and she, the girlfriend, supplied him with a long, detailed list of things he needed for his apartment: sheets, towels, hangers, a colander, which made me laugh. She picked out his couch. I will bet you anything she will fix his laundry habits, and if so, they will impress the next girl. If they break up, she will never see that couch again, and he will forget its story. I tell her when I visit because I like her, though I get in trouble for it: You shouldn’t do so much for him, not for someone who is not stuck with you, not for any boy, not even for my wonderful brother.

Too much work had left my husband, by 30, jaded and uninspired. He’d burned out — but I could reenchant things. I danced at restaurants when they played a song I liked. I turned grocery shopping into an adventure, pleased by what I provided. Ambitious, hungry, he needed someone smart enough to sustain his interest, but flexible enough in her habits to build them around his hours. I could. I do: read myself occupied, make myself free, materialize beside him when he calls for me. In exchange, I left a lucrative but deadening spreadsheet job to write full-time, without having to live like a writer. I learned to cook, a little, and decorate, somewhat poorly. Mostly I get to read, to walk central London and Miami and think in delicious circles, to work hard, when necessary, for free, and write stories for far less than minimum wage when I tally all the hours I take to write them.

At 20, I had felt daunted by the project of becoming my ideal self, couldn’t imagine doing it in tandem with someone, two raw lumps of clay trying to mold one another and only sullying things worse. I’d go on dates with boys my age and leave with the impression they were telling me not about themselves but some person who didn’t exist yet and on whom I was meant to bet regardless. My husband struck me instead as so finished, formed. Analyzable for compatibility. He bore the traces of other women who’d improved him, small but crucial basics like use a coaster ; listen, don’t give advice. Young egos mellow into patience and generosity.

My husband isn’t my partner. He’s my mentor, my lover, and, only in certain contexts, my friend. I’ll never forget it, how he showed me around our first place like he was introducing me to myself: This is the wine you’ll drink, where you’ll keep your clothes, we vacation here, this is the other language we’ll speak, you’ll learn it, and I did. Adulthood seemed a series of exhausting obligations. But his logistics ran so smoothly that he simply tacked mine on. I moved into his flat, onto his level, drag and drop, cleaner thrice a week, bills automatic. By opting out of partnership in my 20s, I granted myself a kind of compartmentalized, liberating selfishness none of my friends have managed. I am the work in progress, the party we worry about, a surprising dominance. When I searched for my first job, at 21, we combined our efforts, for my sake. He had wisdom to impart, contacts with whom he arranged coffees; we spent an afternoon, laughing, drawing up earnest lists of my pros and cons (highly sociable; sloppy math). Meanwhile, I took calls from a dear friend who had a boyfriend her age. Both savagely ambitious, hyperclose and entwined in each other’s projects. If each was a start-up , the other was the first hire, an intense dedication I found riveting. Yet every time she called me, I hung up with the distinct feeling that too much was happening at the same time: both learning to please a boss; to forge more adult relationships with their families; to pay bills and taxes and hang prints on the wall. Neither had any advice to give and certainly no stability. I pictured a three-legged race, two people tied together and hobbling toward every milestone.

I don’t fool myself. My marriage has its cons. There are only so many times one can say “thank you” — for splendid scenes, fine dinners — before the phrase starts to grate. I live in an apartment whose rent he pays and that shapes the freedom with which I can ever be angry with him. He doesn’t have to hold it over my head. It just floats there, complicating usual shorthands to explain dissatisfaction like, You aren’t being supportive lately . It’s a Frenchism to say, “Take a decision,” and from time to time I joke: from whom? Occasionally I find myself in some fabulous country at some fabulous party and I think what a long way I have traveled, like a lucky cloud, and it is frightening to think of oneself as vapor.

Mostly I worry that if he ever betrayed me and I had to move on, I would survive, but would find in my humor, preferences, the way I make coffee or the bed nothing that he did not teach, change, mold, recompose, stamp with his initials, the way Renaissance painters hid in their paintings their faces among a crowd. I wonder if when they looked at their paintings, they saw their own faces first. But this is the wrong question, if our aim is happiness. Like the other question on which I’m expected to dwell: Who is in charge, the man who drives or the woman who put him there so she could enjoy herself? I sit in the car, in the painting it would have taken me a corporate job and 20 years to paint alone, and my concern over who has the upper hand becomes as distant as the horizon, the one he and I made so wide for me.

To be a woman is to race against the clock, in several ways, until there is nothing left to be but run ragged.

We try to put it off, but it will hit us at some point: that we live in a world in which our power has a different shape from that of men, a different distribution of advantage, ours a funnel and theirs an expanding cone. A woman at 20 rarely has to earn her welcome; a boy at 20 will be turned away at the door. A woman at 30 may find a younger woman has taken her seat; a man at 30 will have invited her. I think back to the women in the bathroom, my husband’s classmates. What was my relationship if not an inconvertible sign of this unfairness? What was I doing, in marrying older, if not endorsing it? I had taken advantage of their disadvantage. I had preempted my own. After all, principled women are meant to defy unfairness, to show some integrity or denial, not plan around it, like I had. These were driven women, successful, beautiful, capable. I merely possessed the one thing they had already lost. In getting ahead of the problem, had I pushed them down? If I hadn’t, would it really have made any difference?

When we decided we wanted to be equal to men, we got on men’s time. We worked when they worked, retired when they retired, had to squeeze pregnancy, children, menopause somewhere impossibly in the margins. I have a friend, in her late 20s, who wears a mood ring; these days it is often red, flickering in the air like a siren when she explains her predicament to me. She has raised her fair share of same-age boyfriends. She has put her head down, worked laboriously alongside them, too. At last she is beginning to reap the dividends, earning the income to finally enjoy herself. But it is now, exactly at this precipice of freedom and pleasure, that a time problem comes closing in. If she would like to have children before 35, she must begin her next profession, motherhood, rather soon, compromising inevitably her original one. The same-age partner, equally unsettled in his career, will take only the minimum time off, she guesses, or else pay some cost which will come back to bite her. Everything unfailingly does. If she freezes her eggs to buy time, the decision and its logistics will burden her singly — and perhaps it will not work. Overlay the years a woman is supposed to establish herself in her career and her fertility window and it’s a perfect, miserable circle. By midlife women report feeling invisible, undervalued; it is a telling cliché, that after all this, some husbands leave for a younger girl. So when is her time, exactly? For leisure, ease, liberty? There is no brand of feminism which achieved female rest. If women’s problem in the ’50s was a paralyzing malaise, now it is that they are too active, too capable, never permitted a vacation they didn’t plan. It’s not that our efforts to have it all were fated for failure. They simply weren’t imaginative enough.

For me, my relationship, with its age gap, has alleviated this rush , permitted me to massage the clock, shift its hands to my benefit. Very soon, we will decide to have children, and I don’t panic over last gasps of fun, because I took so many big breaths of it early: on the holidays of someone who had worked a decade longer than I had, in beautiful places when I was young and beautiful, a symmetry I recommend. If such a thing as maternal energy exists, mine was never depleted. I spent the last nearly seven years supported more than I support and I am still not as old as my husband was when he met me. When I have a child, I will expect more help from him than I would if he were younger, for what does professional tenure earn you if not the right to set more limits on work demands — or, if not, to secure some child care, at the very least? When I return to work after maternal upheaval, he will aid me, as he’s always had, with his ability to put himself aside, as younger men are rarely able.

Above all, the great gift of my marriage is flexibility. A chance to live my life before I become responsible for someone else’s — a lover’s, or a child’s. A chance to write. A chance at a destiny that doesn’t adhere rigidly to the routines and timelines of men, but lends itself instead to roomy accommodation, to the very fluidity Betty Friedan dreamed of in 1963 in The Feminine Mystique , but we’ve largely forgotten: some career or style of life that “permits year-to-year variation — a full-time paid job in one community, part-time in another, exercise of the professional skill in serious volunteer work or a period of study during pregnancy or early motherhood when a full-time job is not feasible.” Some things are just not feasible in our current structures. Somewhere along the way we stopped admitting that, and all we did was make women feel like personal failures. I dream of new structures, a world in which women have entry-level jobs in their 30s; alternate avenues for promotion; corporate ladders with balconies on which they can stand still, have a smoke, take a break, make a baby, enjoy themselves, before they keep climbing. Perhaps men long for this in their own way. Actually I am sure of that.

Once, when we first fell in love, I put my head in his lap on a long car ride; I remember his hands on my face, the sun, the twisting turns of a mountain road, surprising and not surprising us like our romance, and his voice, telling me that it was his biggest regret that I was so young, he feared he would lose me. Last week, we looked back at old photos and agreed we’d given each other our respective best years. Sometimes real equality is not so obvious, sometimes it takes turns, sometimes it takes almost a decade to reveal itself.

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The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW Washington, DC 20500

A Proclamation on Transgender Day of Visibility,   2024

On Transgender Day of Visibility, we honor the extraordinary courage and contributions of transgender Americans and reaffirm our Nation’s commitment to forming a more perfect Union — where all people are created equal and treated equally throughout their lives.  

I am proud that my Administration has stood for justice from the start, working to ensure that the LGBTQI+ community can live openly, in safety, with dignity and respect.  I am proud to have appointed transgender leaders to my Administration and to have ended the ban on transgender Americans serving openly in our military.  I am proud to have signed historic Executive Orders that strengthen civil rights protections in housing, employment, health care, education, the justice system, and more.  I am proud to have signed the Respect for Marriage Act into law, ensuring that every American can marry the person they love. 

Transgender Americans are part of the fabric of our Nation.  Whether serving their communities or in the military, raising families or running businesses, they help America thrive.  They deserve, and are entitled to, the same rights and freedoms as every other American, including the most fundamental freedom to be their true selves.  But extremists are proposing hundreds of hateful laws that target and terrify transgender kids and their families — silencing teachers; banning books; and even threatening parents, doctors, and nurses with prison for helping parents get care for their children.  These bills attack our most basic American values:  the freedom to be yourself, the freedom to make your own health care decisions, and even the right to raise your own child.  It is no surprise that the bullying and discrimination that transgender Americans face is worsening our Nation’s mental health crisis, leading half of transgender youth to consider suicide in the past year.  At the same time, an epidemic of violence against transgender women and girls, especially women and girls of color, continues to take too many lives.  Let me be clear:  All of these attacks are un-American and must end.  No one should have to be brave just to be themselves.  

At the same time, my Administration is working to stop the bullying and harassment of transgender children and their families.  The Department of Justice has taken action to push back against extreme and un-American State laws targeting transgender youth and their families and the Department of Justice is partnering with law enforcement and community groups to combat hate and violence.  My Administration is also providing dedicated emergency mental health support through our nationwide suicide and crisis lifeline — any LGBTQI+ young person in need can call “988” and press “3” to speak with a counselor trained to support them.  We are making public services more accessible for transgender Americans, including with more inclusive passports and easier access to Social Security benefits.  There is much more to do.  I continue to call on the Congress to pass the Equality Act, to codify civil rights protections for all LGBTQI+ Americans.

Today, we send a message to all transgender Americans:  You are loved.  You are heard.  You are understood.  You belong.  You are America, and my entire Administration and I have your back.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 31, 2024, as Transgender Day of Visibility.  I call upon all Americans to join us in lifting up the lives and voices of transgender people throughout our Nation and to work toward eliminating violence and discrimination based on gender identity.

     IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-ninth day of March, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-eighth.

                             JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.

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The Newest Tech Start-Up Billionaire? Donald Trump.

Trump media, which went public this week, attracted a frenzy of interest on its first day of trading..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

From “The New York Times,” I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.”

[THEME MUSIC]

Over the past few years, Donald Trump’s social media company Truth Social was dismissed as a money-losing boondoggle. Today, Matthew Goldstein on how over the past few days, it somehow became a publicly traded company worth billions of dollars.

It’s Thursday, March 28.

Matthew, thank you for coming on “The Daily”-

Thank you for having me.

— your debut.

Do you go by Matt?

I go by Matt. I go by Matt.

Matt. You’re a Matthew —

Because my mother likes me using — when I first started out, my mom says, I named you Matthew. You should use Matthew for your by-line. Because I initially did use Matt, and then she —

She caught it?

This is literally the tale of the —

Yeah, right.

The Jewish mother.

Yes, yes, the way all journalism sort of starts. Why did you go into journalism to begin with, though?

Right, you could have been a doctor. Here we are. At least use my name. OK, so, Matt, I wonder if we could start by having you tell us the current market value of this new publicly traded company, Donald Trump’s social media business.

OK, so as we sit here —

11:26 AM on Wednesday.

— on Wednesday, it’s trading right now for around $65 a share. If you work that out, it’s worth about $8 billion.

That’s huge.

That is huge. I think it’s bigger than “The New York Times,” actually.

I think “The New York Times” is like around $7 billion.

It’s bigger than a lot of companies, which is crazy when you think about it.

Yeah. And what is Donald Trump’s personal stake in that, and what is that now worth?

OK, so he owns 79 million shares. So roughly doing the math, and this changes, it somewheres around $5.6 billion. It’s been going up sometimes as high as even $6 billion.

That’s extraordinary.

That is extraordinary. Because if you believe what Forbes had said last fall, he was worth about $2.6 billion. So he’s more than doubled his net worth in basically the last few days with Trump Media.

Wow. And not a moment too soon, right? Because as we’ve talked about on the show, Trump owes about every last cent of cash he has — I think it’s an estimated $500 million or so — to various courts, and this would be very auspicious timing to suddenly have an extra $5 billion in his life.

It’s a critical lifeline for him right now. There of course, are limitations to how he can tap that money, but I think also it should not be understated, it’s a huge bragging point for him, which he likes to go out and talk about being the most successful businessman on the planet.

He can say, look, I built a company that’s worth $7 billion overnight. Where have you done that, Joe Biden?

Or where have you done that pretty much almost anyone other than a very select, rarefied group of tech startups?

Absolutely.

So tell us the story of how this company, which I think a lot of people candidly dismissed from the beginning as Trump’s little kind of renegade corner of the internet somehow became this, a real financial behemoth in a way. What is that story?

So you have to go back to January 2021. Trump is kicked off of what was then Twitter after the January 6 riots at the Capitol.

And not just Twitter, right? Facebook, Instagram.

Yeah, he was kicked off everything, but Twitter was really where he had lived, as we all knew.

Right. Tens of millions of followers.

Tens of millions. So Trump is at this low point. He’s out of the White House. He’s sort of down there at Mar-a-Lago. And all of a sudden, a blast from the past.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

He gets approached by these two guys who had been contestants on his old reality show, “The Apprentice.”

and their names are Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss.

I’m no dummy.

No, I know.

They’re not particularly notable or famous people. I don’t know if the word is “star” is on the show.

To be perfectly honest, I want to see Mr. Trump as much as possible.

Litinsky was a really young guy.

I toast to the men dominating the women.

Wes Moss came out as almost like a frat boy type of character.

Andy, you’re fired. Wes, you’re fired also.

And they weren’t particularly successful, but they go to Trump.

And what exactly is their pitch to him?

Their pitch is basically, forget about Twitter. Forget about all these other platforms. Create your own platform. Create your own social media company. It will be great. You won’t be censored. You can say whatever you want. All your followers will come here. We’ll make a lot of money. We’ll be huge.

What was Trump’s response?

Well, he’s intrigued, but he never really totally commits to anything. At that point, Trump is sort of taking a back seat on it. He’s basically agreeing to lend his name if nothing else.

They sign an agreement that they’re going to go out and pitch the deal. And “The Apprentice” guys know that they’re going to need a lot of money to get this company off the ground. But they’re not going to be able to turn to traditional Wall Street sources because Trump at this point —

Is kind of toxic.

Yeah, he’s a toxic guy. So the solution for “The Apprentice” guys to raise this money was to do something called a SPAC, which is these companies that have come into vogue during the pandemic. They’re basically shell companies that go public, raise hundreds of million from investors. And essentially their sole purpose is to go out and look for another company to buy.

It’s basically money in a bank account that’s just sitting there to be transferred over to the private company that you buy. So for the private company that ends up merging, it’s a great deal because they get tons of cash where they had nothing the day before. And the other advantage of a deal with a SPAC is that beyond the cash, the private company becomes a public company, and that gives it the ability to sell stock to investors and go out and raise more money that way.

And then through that merger, eventually the two companies coming together, the company that Trump is going to be ostensibly heading, that social media company would get everything the SPAC had raised from investors. So all that cash is going to come flooding into the company “The Apprentice” guys envision.

So if I’m understanding this plan correctly, “The Apprentice” guys envision a plan where they go off, they find a SPAC that has raised a bunch of money, and eventually it will merge with the Trump social media company they envision building. And when that marriage is consummated, their work will be over and they will hopefully have a lot of money.

Basically, that’s exactly what their goal was. Yeah. So “The Apprentice” guys are out there in the market looking for a SPAC. But given the lack of really any kind of business plan, they don’t go to the top flight guys out there. They end up at the bottom of the barrel.

And so they end up with essentially a very no name sounding SPAC called Digital World Acquisition Corporation. Digital World has its IPO in September of 2021, raises $300 million. Lo and behold, like a month after, a press release comes out late at night. Donald Trump and Trump Media are merging with Digital World Acquisition Corp

I remember people pinging me, is this a joke? Because most people I’m sure had never heard of Digital World. And even more people had no idea that Trump was even doing a social media company. Because while all this is going on and they’re trying to put a deal together, the social media platform that will become Truth Social hasn’t even launched, and it won’t do so for months later.

But there’s trouble right away. The Securities Exchange Commission comes in and announces it’s opened an investigation into how this deal came together, looking into whether Digital World violated securities laws by engaging in merger talks ahead of time, which technically isn’t kosher in the way SPACs are supposed to work. But this investigation just drags on and on and on, and it’s going to delay everything.

So this is turning out to be a pretty big mess.

Very big mess. It looks like this deal’s never going to happen. And finally, when they launch Truth Social in early 2022, it’s a little bit of a joke. It’s like this sort of very early version of Twitter when it’s sort of clunky.

How clunky? You were on it?

Yeah, I actually think I was one of the first people to get in, which I thought was sort of funny because I said I was from “The New York Times.” They actually verified me.

There was very little traffic. It was almost like you’d post something and you could literally hear the crickets.

Trump never posted for three months.

Trump never posted on Truth Social the site that exists for his —

And I remember writing a story and you couldn’t get an answer from them, why is he not posting?

Perhaps because he has his own doubts.

And also wasn’t a place — no one was there. I mean, they had a few million users. There’s a few million dollars in advertising on Truth Social, a lot of them the equivalent of almost late night TV advertising that you would see. It’s losing tons of money, which is in fairness, it’s not unusual for a startup company to lose money, but it was not clear where it was ever going to make money and where the money was going to come in.

And we’re looking at this thing, is it even going to happen? Your deal is in trouble because of regulators. And also the company is in trouble because there’s just nothing there. So everyone, I think for the most part, sort of counts this thing out. For them it was a desperate situation.

And then last summer, a bunch of things started to go right all of a sudden for Trump Media. And it really started to raise the prospects that this deal actually could happen.

We’ll be right back.

So Matt, how is it that things start to turn around for this real mess of a social media company that Donald Trump has founded?

OK, so the single biggest thing was last summer, the SEC settles its investigation with Digital World, with the SPAC that it was merging with. And that basically at that point clears the gates for them to start to really move forward with the merger.

What kind of settlement was it?

They had to pay $18 million, and they had to rewrite all their disclosures to make it consistent to reveal all the early talks they had had with Trump Media.

The other thing is Elon Musk buys Twitter, now X. And one of the first things he does is he says, Trump, you can come back. Start posting again. We want you. We love you. Everyone thinks Trump’s going to do that. But then he stays.

He continues the post on Truth Social, and it’s clear he’s sticking with his own platform. And if anything, he starts ramping up his postings on Truth Social, and they become increasingly, as we with the way Trump is, bombastic, inflammatory, attacking all the judges and all the cases going on, the prosecutors, political opponents. And he’s been doing it with increasing frequency.

And this is a key ingredient of last summer’s turnaround, because it’s clear at this point Trump is sticking with Truth Social. He’s not going anywhere. He’s leaning into it, and it’s become his platform.

But we shouldn’t lose sight that may be the most important thing is the loyalty of shareholders. And I’m not talking about big hedge funds, big institutions, wealthy people. I’m talking about ordinary Trump supporters, many of them who are posters on Truth Social and happen to be stockholders of this cash-rich SPAC that’s eventually going to merge with Trump Media. And they’re the ones who have kept this thing going to some degree.

As investors.

As investors. Because there were many points where the SPAC deal itself could have just failed. But they really want to make sure this company succeeds. It’s almost like a religious kind of thing for some of them. And I can tell you, one guy has been very vocal is actually sort of a Christian minister.

Good evening, DWAC stock.

He has his own streaming video show on Rumble, which he called DWAC Live, named after the shares.

Lord we ask in the name of Jesus, that you help the executives finish this strong and that you protect them from all the forces that would try to stop the merger and —

They talk about the stock and the merger, and it’s got his own following.

Just all show up at Mar-a-Lago, knock on the door and be like, hey, President Trump, we’d like to come party with you because we all own little bits of your company and we love you. Let’s just check on the price one more time before we head out for the night.

So in some way, Trump really owes a lot to his small shareholders who made this possible. Because if it wasn’t for them, there would be no merger.

And when they talk to you about why they have bought shares in this business, in this SPAC, even when it’s at its least successful and most imperiled, how do they talk about why it’s worth their hard earned money?

First of all, they view they’re building something. And they’ve all believed that, right or wrong, whatever you may think about it, that Truth Social is free from censorship, that it allows Trump and others to say what they want. And they really believe that as the founding principles, they’re the original owners essentially going to be of this company, and they’re helping it flourish and build.

So this has become a real personal thing for a lot of them, more so than I think I’ve ever seen with any other publicly traded company before.

So the folks who are investing in this SPAC, anticipating it will eventually get together with Truth Social, and who, as you have just said, sustained this through its darkest chapter, they aren’t really there because they see this as a highly profitable business. You just said, Matt, that it was losing money.

They’re doing it as a statement and I guess a measure of their fervor for Trump, for the movement he represents. Buying the stock is a way for them to put their money where their mouth is when it comes to MAGA.

Right, right. For them, this is about supporting Trump and supporting this company, which they view as critically important n keeping its message out there alive.

So, Matt, I think that more or less brings us to this week, when this turnaround you’re describing results in this crazy takeoff of the stock price. But just walk us through the mechanics of it.

What happened was there’s the shareholder vote. And the way it works is Digital World shareholders have to vote to approve the merger with Trump Media. It was at this point it was a foregone conclusion. But it’s a vote, so you never know what’s going to happen, though. And they get the vote on Friday. It’s overwhelming. I think it was 29 million shares voted in favor, and 200,000 voted against. I mean, you just don’t see that.

A landslide.

A landslide. Yes, like an electoral landslide. So the deal goes through. On Monday, the deal is actually closed, and we have our first day of trading on Tuesday of this week.

Ticker symbol DJT.

Donald John Donald.

Donald J Trump.

Former President Donald Trump’s newly merged social media company has begun trading, and shares are soaring.

It opens for trading at around $40 something a share.

More than 6.5 million shares in Trump Media had changed hands by 9:50 this morning.

They have to actually halt trading briefly because the volume, the level of trading is off the charts in the stock.

And currently you take a look at where shares are, they’re up about 40 percent.

At one point, it reaches $70 a share.

This is the highest profile SPAC we’ve seen in quite a while.

Really, I’d say ever, Katie. I mean —

And on the end of trading on Tuesday, it closes around $60 or so. And that’s how we get this $7, $8 billion valuation for the company and the paper gain of $5.6 billion —

But for now, quote, unquote, “DJT” is the mother of all meme stocks, with the stock up 32 percent up, as much as 58 percent today, hard to disagree.

I just want to make sure I understand why this company is now valued so highly. And I guess what I’m really getting at is, is there an actual business case for it, given what folks in your calling would describe as the fundamentals of the business? Or is this just a measure of these Trump-supporting investors’ deep affinity for him? Is this basically a bubble, or is there maybe a true financial justification that can be laid out here?

OK, so if we go pure fundamentals, it’s crazy. This company is not a $7 or $8 billion company. It had $3.3 million in revenues for the first nine months of last year. It lost about $49 million.

Yeah, that is not the makings of an $8 billion valuation company.

No, no, no. I mean, the one good thing it got going, it got $300 million in cash from this merger. Not for Trump, for the company. So that’s good. They can use that cash to go out and buy something, bring in more people, hire influencers on Truth Social.

But even then, they have 10 million downloads of Truth Social. I mean, Twitter is what, like hundreds of millions of users? I’m sorry, X has hundreds millions of users. Where’s it going to go for that kind of growth to justify that?

But this is what Wall Street is. I mean, we call them our meme stocks. They’re fantasy stocks. They take on a life of their own. We had this during the pandemic with GameStop and AMC. The shares run up to ridiculous levels, driven largely by retail investors.

And just to remind people, those were stocks where retail investors were buying shares it felt like because they wanted to send a message, largely anti-establishment message, they were mad at a hedge fund that had shorted it in one case, I remember. They wanted to make a point. They wanted to stick it to the man.

Right. And also it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It becomes a mania. Then others see this and get in because you feel like if you keep buying, it’s never going to fall. It’s never going to go down. And that can work for a while, but eventually gravity will always take hold at some part.

I’m not saying that Trump Media is going to collapse. But at some point, something will happen that will trigger the stock to sell off.

Right, it’s fragile.

It’s fragile, right. It’s not sustainable at this level. But when it’s happening, it’s hard for me or anyone to give you a rational reason, and that’s why there’s this old thing, irrational exuberance. It’s not necessarily unusual. It’s just that it’s unusual because you have a very loyal investor base to him personally that is driving a lot of these surges in the stock.

I’m really curious how Trump’s position in this presidential campaign factors into what you just described. Because it feels like this irrational exuberance has to be linked somewhat to the reality that he is the now lead candidate in the polls for re-election. But I’m curious what investors think about that, how they think his chances of becoming president with the financial health and future promise of this company.

It’s definitely, I think, going to be a barometer, actually, of Trump and his political fortunes. I mean just by way of example, the SPAC stock started to soar this year when Trump was on the verge of locking up the nomination. It was around the time DeSantis dropped out in New Hampshire.

The stock surged like 60 percent, 70 percent overnight. It was really because people were like, hey, Trump is going to be the nominee, and we’re going to be going forward.

But can you just explain that? What does one have to do with the other?

In theory, it doesn’t have anything to do with it. But it’s like a proxy for him.

It’s also the idea that as long as Trump is still politically viable, Trump Media is viable. Truth Social is viable.

And presumably a president 2.0 Trump is the best possible situation for this stock price.

If he wins, I think it probably will be a high watermark for the stock. And I would just think given the dynamic with the election right now, it’s hard to see the stock not continuing to rise at least until November.

OK. I want to turn now to Trump’s access to this very valuable stock at a time when, as we all know, he seems to need money. How and when could he tap into this money?

OK. So at the moment, he actually can’t.

He can’t. There’s what’s called a lockup, a restriction. It’s not just for him. It’s for any major shareholders. They can’t sell for six months. It’s actually not unusual in these kind of circumstances.

The logic is you don’t want important people to the company, important shareholders, to bolt as soon as the deal goes through.

But there are other ways you can get around that. One way is for the board. It’s a seven member board. They’re all loyalists, for the most part. They could allow him to sell shares early. I personally think that’s unlikely because it shows a lack of faith. Just like if he had jumped from Truth Social onto Twitter, this would be the same kind of message being sent.

What they could do is allow him to pledge those shares, meaning he can go out and get a loan, use it as collateral. The shares don’t get sold, but you’re giving them to some other like a bank or probably more likely a hedge fund. So that would be a way for him to monetize his stock without actually selling it.

So if Trump really wanted to, he could find a way working through this board of loyalists to tap into this money pretty quickly if he so chose to.

If he asked the board to do it, I think there’s probably a good chance the board would do it. But if he doesn’t really need the money that desperately, I think he probably won’t. And I think the board would be reluctant because it doesn’t really help anyone to have lots of stock coming out into the market. That only will probably depress the price of the shares.

And it doesn’t help to have the face of the company, the man whose initials are on the ticker, selling the stock because that suggests he doesn’t have a tremendous amount of faith in the business. And that might trigger a sell off, which would undermine the value of the rest of his stock. It’s a pretty bad cycle to start.

It’s a bad — right, that’s like the event that starts to send the sell off. And even at that point, even your most loyal shareholders may say, well, I don’t want to be left the last one holding the bag.

Right. I want to step way back for just a minute and think about the larger meaning of what has happened with Truth Social. I mean, I’ve covered a lot of Trump’s businesses through the years, investigated them when he was a candidate in 2016. And it really strikes me that of all the businesses he’s been in, real estate, casinos, Trump University, selling Trump steaks, Trump wine, whatever, those made money.

This, in some ways, feels like the least sound business of all, and yet it has made him the richest by far. That’s a little bit weird to wrap your head around. What does that tell you about the nature of Trump and these investors who believe in this?

It is weird. I’m not a politics reporter, but from a business perspective, this has given me a little bit better insight into his seemingly unending kind of popularity and support. There’s the old adage on Wall Street, never fall in love with a stock. But the reality is a lot of his shareholders here are in love with the stock. They have fallen in love with it, and they’re in love with him to a large extent.

And when you have that sort of mix there, it allows a stock to soar to unreal levels that we’re seeing now. And who knows where it goes from here? But for the moment, it’s clearly working for Mr. Trump.

Well, Matt, thank you very much.

When the stock market closed on Wednesday afternoon, shares of Trump’s new media company reached $66 a share, up 14 percent from the previous day. As of this morning, the company is worth $9.4 billion.

Here’s what else you need to know today. Authorities said that the six missing workers who were on the Francis Scott Key Bridge when it collapsed are now presumed dead. The workers were members of a construction crew who were repairing masonry and potholes when a massive container ship plowed into the bridge on Tuesday morning.

This is no ordinary bridge. This is one of the cathedrals of American infrastructure.

Experts say that rebuilding the bridge, which carried 30,000 vehicles a day, will probably take years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars, a reality acknowledged by the Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg.

So the path to normalcy will not be easy. It will not be quick. It will not be inexpensive. But we will rebuild together.

And the first ever congestion pricing system in the United States crossed a major milestone on Wednesday when New York officially approved tolls for cars driving through the busiest sections of Manhattan. The system, modeled on those in London and Singapore, is designed to significantly reduce traffic and air pollution. The tolls, $15 for most passenger cars and as much as $36 for large trucks, are expected to raise $1 billion a year for mass transportation.

The new system could still be blocked by several lawsuits seeking to derail it. But if those cases fail, the tolls will begin in mid-June.

Today’s episode was produced by Will Reid, Mary Wilson, and Asthaa Chaturvedi. It was edited by Lexie Diao, contains original music by Marion Lozano and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

• April 1, 2024   •   36:14 Ronna McDaniel, TV News and the Trump Problem
• March 29, 2024   •   48:42 Hamas Took Her, and Still Has Her Husband
• March 28, 2024   •   33:40 The Newest Tech Start-Up Billionaire? Donald Trump.
• March 27, 2024   •   28:06 Democrats’ Plan to Save the Republican House Speaker
• March 26, 2024   •   29:13 The United States vs. the iPhone
• March 25, 2024   •   25:59 A Terrorist Attack in Russia
• March 24, 2024   •   21:39 The Sunday Read: ‘My Goldendoodle Spent a Week at Some Luxury Dog ‘Hotels.’ I Tagged Along.’
• March 22, 2024   •   35:30 Chuck Schumer on His Campaign to Oust Israel’s Leader
• March 21, 2024   •   27:18 The Caitlin Clark Phenomenon
• March 20, 2024   •   25:58 The Bombshell Case That Will Transform the Housing Market
• March 19, 2024   •   27:29 Trump’s Plan to Take Away Biden’s Biggest Advantage
• March 18, 2024   •   23:18 Your Car May Be Spying on You
• Share full article

Hosted by Michael Barbaro

Featuring Matthew Goldstein

Produced by Will Reid ,  Mary Wilson and Asthaa Chaturvedi

Edited by Lexie Diao

Original music by Marion Lozano and Dan Powell

Engineered by Alyssa Moxley

Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

Over the past few years, Donald Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, has been dismissed as a money-losing boondoggle.

This week, that all changed. Matthew Goldstein, a New York Times business reporter, explains how its parent venture, Truth Media, became a publicly traded company worth billions of dollars.

On today’s episode

Matthew Goldstein , a New York Times business reporter.

Background reading

What to know about Trump Media’s high-flying stock debut .

Ethics experts say the publicly traded company could present a new way for foreign actors or others to influence Mr. Trump , if he is elected president.

There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.

We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.

The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Dan Farrell, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson and Nina Lassam.

Matthew Goldstein covers Wall Street and white-collar crime and housing issues. More about Matthew Goldstein

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, the college board has ended the sat essay.

SAT Logistics

On January 19th, 2021, the CollegeBoard announced that it would stop offering the optional SAT Essay after June 2021. 

This is a big change, and students are curious about how this may impact the college admissions process. In this article, we’ll cover these new changes to the SAT Essay testing process and help you understand what they mean for you. 

Here’s what you need to know. 

The College Board No Longer Offers the SAT Essay

As of June 2021, the College Board will no longer offer the SAT Essay to high school students. That means high schoolers will no longer be able to schedule or take the SAT Essay exam after the 2021 June SAT date (June 5, 2021). 

There’s one exception to the no-more-SAT-Essay rule. If you’re required to take the SAT Essay as part of the high school graduation requirements for your state, you may still have to take the essay test! 

States that require students to take the SAT to graduate also participate in SAT School Days . SAT School Days is when students are able to take the SAT for free during...well, a school day! The College Board will continue to administer the SAT Essay to students on School Days in participating states. 

There’s a good chance that these states may drop the SAT Essay requirement in the future. Be sure to check with your high school administrators or guidance counselors for the most up-to-date information on whether you have to take the SAT Essay to graduate. 

SAT Essay Options for Currently Registered Students

If you’re already scheduled to take the SAT Essay exam in 2021, you have a few options going forward. 

First, if you've already registered for the SAT with Essay in March, May, or June of 2021, you can still take the essay test!  You can write your essay, have it scored, and send it to your colleges...no changes necessary. 

But you might decide you no longer need to take the SAT Essay as a result of these new changes. The College Board is letting students who’ve already registered for the SAT Essay cancel their registrations free of charge. 

To do this, just log into your College Board online account and cancel the essay! In order to avoid any additional charges, make sure you cancel your SAT Essay test prior to the registration deadline. 

Why End the SAT Essay? 

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 was a tough year for both high school students and the College Board. Not only were SAT tests cancelled repeatedly, many universities dropped the SAT requirement entirely for 2020-2021 ...and in some cases, beyond . 

In their official statement about dropping the SAT Essay test, the College Board acknowledged how hard circumstances have been for high school students because of the pandemic. The College Board explains that by dropping the SAT Essay, they're helping to “reduce demands on students” both now and in the future. 

While the desire to help students is sincere, experts point out that the College Board may have made this decision for more practical reasons as well. In his article for Forbes , journalist Akil Bello points out that most universities don't require SAT Essay scores as part of the admissions process. That means the SAT Essay has been optional for most college-bound students.

As a result, many students had already stopped taking the SAT Essay —in 2020, only 57% of SAT test takers also took the essay portion of the exam. So the College Board may have dropped the SAT Essay for financial and operational reasons, too. 

What Does This Change Mean for Students? 

Starting in June 2021, students taking the SAT will no longer be able to take the SAT Essay exam (unless it’s part of an SAT School Days requirement). 

Not being able to take the SAT Essay is most impactful for students who’d planned to use their essay scores to make their applications stand out. For instance, if you’d hoped your essay score would help overcome a low SAT Math score —or even a less-than-stellar GPA—then you’ll have to make your college application stand out in other ways. We recommend making sure your application has a spike , but you can also add extracurricular activities to your resume, boost your GPA , and raise your SAT score !

Additionally, if your college required the SAT Essay in the past, you may see some differences in the admissions process. Some schools may simply drop the essay requirement, while other schools may ask you to submit additional writing samples to fulfill that requirement. 

The same will be true for departments that used the SAT Essay to determine whether to admit students . Students applying to degree programs that involve lots of writing—like English, History, or Journalism—may end up having to submit additional samples, or even take a department-specific placement test. 

But what if the colleges you’re applying to never required the SAT Essay? If your dream school didn’t require the SAT Essay or consider SAT Essay scores, this change won’t really affect you. The admissions processes at these schools aren’t impacted by the College Board’s new policies, so your chances of getting in are the same as before the College Board’s announcement. 

Our advice? Check with your potential schools to see how the new SAT Essay policies will affect your admissions process and chances. Admissions counselors will be happy to help you out! 

What’s Next? 

• Now that the SAT Essay test is going away, you’ll need to think of new ways to make your college application stand out. Here are seven things that look amazing on college apps. 
• Another great way to stand out from the crowd? Make a perfect score on the SAT . That’s not an impossible goal if you follow our advice to getting a perfect score. 
• Maybe you’re new to the SAT in general. Don’t worry! Here’s a primer on the SAT to get you started. 

Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points? We've written a guide about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now:

Ashley Sufflé Robinson has a Ph.D. in 19th Century English Literature. As a content writer for PrepScholar, Ashley is passionate about giving college-bound students the in-depth information they need to get into the school of their dreams.

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