We are excited to announce the launch of the modified 2020-2021 WATS season on our new website pages for the Western Academic Talent Search!
Please note a few advisories, as there is still quite a bit of uncertainty about public health: While testing companies and sites may only offer testing if they abide by a very strict set of health and safety guidelines that include socially distanced seating charts, preadmission health screening, required mask-wearing, distanced proctors, and classroom capacity limits, the need for seats at sites heavily outweighs the current capacity available due to rescheduled testing reaching all the way back to March. Testing companies are prioritizing reschedules for high school juniors and seniors who still need results for college admissions and scholarship purposes. This means that seats for our Talent Search students nationally are limited. At this time, ACT has suspended all Talent Search testing until at least December while they try to manage their backlog. Most of our area is moving to required SAT testing, and we encourage you to consider taking the SAT this year as an alternative.
College Board is proceeding in accepting new registrations with the frank acknowledgement that sites may continue to close (many along the Front Range were open in August), and students may continue to fall ill and need to reschedule. All rescheduling for these reasons will need to be managed between you and the company, as we do not manage these sites directly. If you were rescheduled and still have not tested, and as we are now into a new testing season, we no longer will issue refunds but will continue to work with you to get your test scheduled for this season. There is a new segment in our application that will allow for this irregularity.
All that said, the benefits of WATS remain an incentive to test, whether your reasons are to practice a state-mandated test without the high-risk pressure or because the value of above-level testing results still does help shape the academic future of our very bright students in adding to a body of evidence, an accelerated learning plan, or an IEP as you work with a school team to identify local resources for needed acceleration. We hope you hang in there with us as we all navigate this bizarre school year together!