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Search Cliff Calculator

See how your school's inquiries, enrollments, and net tuition revenue will be impacted from the upcoming changes to College Board® Student Search Service®.

search impact landing page hero
CollegeVina search impact calculator tool

What’s the Search Cliff?

College Board® is shifting their PSAT® and SAT® exams to a digital format. As they make this change, students who take the exam through their district (e.g. school day test taker) will not be accessible in Search due to state privacy laws. This change means that over the next 3 years, the volume of Search names available from the College Board® will drop substantially.

Projected drop in student names relative to 2023
Projected drop in search availability

What’s the impact?

This change only affects school day test takers across the PSAT® and SAT® in the fall. Weekend test takers and students who enroll in Search through other pathways like BigFuture® are unaffected.

Every college will see a different impact based on where they buy names and the breakdown of those names by ethnicity, median family income, and scoreband. For example, our projections show 54% fewer names available in California for the Fall '27 cohort, and 37,000 fewer Search inquiries from Hispanic students in Arizona in the same year.

In-school test takers to be excluded from Search
in-school test takers excluded graph

Timing

These impacts will begin to materialize with the upcoming fall PSAT® and then the SATs® in the spring. The impact for each year after Fall ‘24 is larger because previous cohorts of students have already entered Search using the paper exam. The largest impact will be felt for the Fall ‘27 cohort once a full cycle of students complete only digital exams.

timing illustration - the impact will grow as new students complete digital only exams
Project how your institution may be impacted
About the data in the calculator

This data tool analyzes PSAT® and SAT®-taking cohorts from numerous government sources and projects how they funnel into Search. Read our full methodology document to learn more and see all sources.

PSAT®, SAT® and College Board® are trademarks registered by the College Board, which is not affiliated with and does not endorse CollegeVine®.

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