How to send your SAT scores

Every weekend SAT registration includes four free score sends, and they expire nine days after test day. After that, each report costs $15. Everything else about sending scores is timing: when scores are released, how long delivery takes, and whether that lands before your deadline.

The four free sends, and the deadline that closes them

For weekend testing, College Board states: “Each time you register to take the SAT on a weekend, you can send your score to up to four organizations for free.” And: “You also have until nine days after the test to use or change your free score sends. After that, there’s a fee” (College Board, sending scores from SAT weekend).

Nine days after test day is before the score release date. That is not an accident, and it has a real consequence: you choose your free recipients without knowing your score. You can assign them at registration, or wait and assign them in your College Board account during the nine-day window, but either way the window shuts before the number appears.

For in-school testing the window is shorter. “If you take the SAT during the week at your school, you must choose your free score sends during exam setup or within three days after testing” (College Board, SAT School Day). School Day selections are made through Bluebook using your test sign-in ticket.

One important interaction: free sends bypass Score Choice. College Board says Score Choice “is not available to any of your free score sends”, so a designated recipient receives that sitting automatically. If you want the option to withhold a test date later, leave the free sends unassigned and pay per report. The tradeoff is explained in Score Choice and superscoring are not the same thing.

What sending costs

Fees as published on College Board’s fee page, retrieved 27 August 2026. Prices change between cycles, so check the source before budgeting.

Service	Fee
First 4 score reports, ordered within 9 days of the test	$0
Additional score report	$15 per report
Rush report	$31
Scores by phone	$15 per call
Archived scores	$35
Score verification	$55

Source: College Board, SAT test fees. The same page notes that a fee waiver includes unlimited free score reports, along with waived registration and late registration charges. If you qualify for a fee waiver, none of the $15 arithmetic below applies to you.

The $15 is charged per report, meaning per college per test date. Sending two sittings to six colleges is twelve reports, not two.

How long delivery takes

Two speeds exist.

Standard delivery. Scores are sent electronically “within 5-10 business days of your order being placed or a couple of weeks after test day if you designated score recipients as a part of your registration.”

Rush reporting. “Rush reports are sent within 1-4 business days (not counting holidays and weekends)” and cost $31. Two conditions apply: “Rush reports are available only for scores that were already released,” and once ordered they “can’t be changed or canceled” (College Board, rush reporting).

Rush reporting speeds up College Board’s side only. College Board’s own advice is to confirm with the institution that it can process a late-arriving score at all, and whether it accepts an October or November test date for an early deadline. A $31 rush report that arrives at an office which stopped reading scores on 1 November has bought you nothing.

When scores are released

College Board says “Most scores from weekend tests are released 2-4 weeks after test day.” The published fall 2026 schedule is tighter than that range suggests: every date below releases 13 days after the test.

Test date	Score release date
22 August 2026	4 September 2026
12 September 2026	25 September 2026
3 October 2026	16 October 2026
7 November 2026	20 November 2026
5 December 2026	18 December 2026

Source: College Board, score release dates, retrieved 27 August 2026. Confirm your own date on that page, since schedules are published per cycle and can shift.

Working backward from an application deadline

Chain the two intervals: test date, plus about 13 days to release, plus delivery time.

For a 1 November deadline, the 3 October test releases on 16 October. Order a send that day and standard delivery of 5-10 business days puts arrival somewhere in the last week of October. That works, with no slack for anything going wrong. The 7 November test does not release until 20 November, so it cannot reach a 1 November deadline by any method, rush included.

For a 1 January deadline, the 5 December test releases 18 December, and 5-10 business days across the holiday period is genuinely tight. Rush reporting exists for exactly this case, but the December route depends on the college accepting a score that arrives in the first days of January. Ask before you rely on it.

Two habits reduce risk. Designate recipients at registration when you already know a college requires all scores, since that removes the ordering step entirely. And where a college posts a score-receipt deadline that differs from its application deadline, work to the earlier of the two.

What the college actually receives

When you order a send through your College Board account, College Board says it sends “your scores, certain demographic information, and other information you provide to College Board to those institutions and organizations.” For School Day sends the wording is “your scores along with demographic information sufficient for identity matching” (College Board Help Center).

Some things follow from that, and they are worth being precise about.

A college receives only the test dates you sent it. There is no shared repository an admissions office can browse. If you sent one sitting, one sitting is what exists in their file.

A report covers one administration. It carries your total score, your Reading and Writing section score, and your Math section score. Digital score reports no longer include subscores or cross-test scores; those were eliminated when the test went digital, and performance is now shown across four Reading and Writing and four Math content domains. If you want to sanity-check what those numbers mean, use the digital SAT score calculator or the SAT score chart.

No superscore is included. College Board does not compute one. If a college superscores, it does that itself from the reports it holds, which is why sending the right sittings matters more than sending many. See SAT superscoring explained, or build the number on the SAT superscore calculator.

We have not independently verified the exact layout of the institutional copy against the student copy, so we will not claim they are identical. What is documented is the content above: scores plus identifying data.

A checklist

1. Confirm each college’s testing policy and its score-receipt deadline on that college’s own admissions site. Record the date you checked.
2. Decide before test day whether to assign your free sends or hold them, knowing free sends bypass Score Choice and that holding them costs $15 per report later.
3. If you assign them, do it at registration or within nine days of the test. Three days for School Day.
4. Check your score release date and count forward 5-10 business days for standard delivery.
5. Use rush reporting only for released scores, and only after confirming the college can act on a late arrival.
6. Keep the order confirmation. It is your only evidence of when you sent.

For where your number sits against the national distribution, see SAT percentiles and the SAT percentile calculator. For how we source and check every figure on this site, see our methodology.