When Alexis Huynh signed up for the SAT, the College Board’s website listed nearby testing centers. There weren’t many options.
“It gives you centers within 10 miles, 50 miles, 75 miles,” Huynh said. “I think the nearest center, the first time I took it, was about 75 miles away.”
She woke up around 4 a.m., then drove an hour and a half from El Centro to Thermal. It’s an unincorporated community in the Coachella Valley.
“Without enough rest, and just the stress of taking the drive, it was quite stressful,” she said.
Two years before, Huynh’s brother took the SAT in San Diego. He stayed in a hotel the night before. But she knows that’s not an option for everyone.
“I know a lot of people don't have the means to just get a hotel and stay over for a night,” she said.
Huynh started asking her classmates whether they were taking the SAT at all. Many of them said they weren’t because of the distance. She brought her concern to the Imperial County Board of Education.
“For us, it was kind of like an invitation,” said Denise Cabanilla, the Imperial County Office of Education’s senior director of higher education and adult learning.
The county office of education is opening a new SAT center at its office in El Centro later this month. More than 40 students have signed up to take it there on Aug. 22.
“We're very excited to be able to provide this opportunity to our community,” Cabanilla said.
Imperial County previously had two testing centers, Cabanilla said. They closed when the University of California and California State University systems stopped requiring SAT or ACT scores in 2020.
But the need didn’t go away.
“Even within California, some private, independent colleges require it, as well as some of our out of state institutions,” Cabanilla said. “So it really was a gap that needed to be filled.”
Huynh was the catalyst for closing that gap, she said.
“She's really going to make an impact on our community as a whole,” Cabanilla said.
Huynh scored 1480 on the SAT. That puts her in the top 10% of test takers, according to the College Board. She’s about to start her freshman year at Stanford University.
She said access to the SAT ensures Imperial Valley students like her have a chance to experience — and make up — diverse college communities.
“Being exposed to so many perspectives and different people's experiences makes college life so much richer,” she said.
