SUBJECT TESTS

DEFINITION OF SUBJECT TESTS
Offered by the College Board, Subject Tests (formerly known as SAT II and Achievement tests) are 20, one-hour primarily multiple-choice standardized tests in five general subject areas. Students can take up to three Subject Tests on one single test date. The scores for each subject test are reported on a scale from 200 to 800. Some colleges use Subject Test scores for admissions purposes and many others for course placement once a student enrolls at their colleges.

There are 20 Subject Tests across five content areas, including:

ENGLISH
Literature

HISTORY & SOCIAL STUDIES
US History
World History

MATHEMATICS
Math Level 1
Math Level 2

SCIENCE
Biology (Ecological or Molecular)
Chemistry
Physics

LANGUAGES
Chinese with listening
French
French with listening
German
German with listening
Modern Hebrew
Italian
Japanese
Japanese with listening
Korean
Latin
Spanish
Spanish with listening

THE BOTTOM LINE
While a number of colleges do not require or recommend Subject Tests, many colleges do. For these schools, Subject Tests are important, sometimes even more important than the SAT Reasoning or ACT tests. At this point, the most Subject Tests required at any college in the U.S. Is two. Beginning with students applying for fall 2012, Subject Tests will no longer be required for the University of California system. More importantly, students who don’t submit Subject Test scores will not be penalized during the review process.