The Classic Learning Test and College Applications: What Maryland Families Should Know!
While the majority of college applicants spend months, if not years, prepping for their high-stakes SATs and ACTs, an alternative does exist. Although this alternative is rarely visible to many Maryland families, it is, in fact, a choice depending on your child's unique learning profile and their college list.
I want you to picture a college admissions test where, instead of skimming a 100 word reading passage, your child sits with a 600 word excerpt from classic figures such as Aristotle or Frederick Douglass and is asked to read, analyze, and interpret the passage. That's the Classic Learning Test, or the CLT, a Maryland-grown alternative to the SAT and ACT that has recorded more than half a million test-takers over the past decade. The CLT is now accepted at over 350 colleges nationwide, including my alma mater, the University of Florida, as one of the early adopters.
What the CLT Actually Is
The Classic Learning Test, a two-hour test, was founded in 2015 right here in Maryland. Its headquarters are located in a 200-year-old brick home in historic Annapolis. The structure of the exam will feel familiar to anyone who has prepped for and taken the SAT: sections in verbal reasoning, grammar and writing, and quantitative reasoning. The signature difference is the reading content. Where SAT passages tend to run between 25 and 150 words, CLT passages expand 500 to 600 words. They are pulled from authors the test's developers consider foundational such as classical philosophers and historical thinkers.
Why It's Suddenly in the Conversation
The CLT has become culturally charged due to the involvement of prominent conservative voices. Additionally, the test has been embraced by parochial and Christian schools, the homeschool community, and a growing number of red-state public university systems. The test's advocates describe the CLT as a return to a classical model of education. However, the test's critics argue that it leans toward an ideological narrative about what a "real" education should look like. All politics aside, what I can share, as someone who has spent over twenty years inside Kâ12 education, is that this test provides another option for our students and children.
The Maryland Reality
The ironic twist in the CLT's story is that despite its national coverage, in the state where the CLT was created, almost no one accepts it. As of this spring, only three Maryland institutions count CLT scores in admissions:
St. John's College
Mount St. Mary's University
The U.S. Naval Academy
Last year, roughly 250,000 students took the CLT nationwide while the SAT had 2 million. The ACT had 1.38 million. The CLT is growing, but it remains a small player and a niche option on our midatlantic region.
So When Does the CLT Make Sense and When Does It Not?
In my work as an educational consultant, the CLT comes up most often in three scenarios:
The first is families targeting a specific set of schools that genuinely value the test such as liberal arts or classical Christian colleges
The second is homeschooling families and students at small classical or parochial schools whose curricula have already immersed them in the kinds of texts the CLT draws on. For these students, the test format is an extension of their academic learning.
The third is the strong and avid reader who genuinely thrives on classical text as they might actually outperform their SAT or ACT profile on a CLT-style exam.
That said, the reading passages are simply very dense, and many students find them genuinely harder than SAT or ACT material. For students with diagnosed reading challenges, processing speed deficits, or twice-exceptional profiles, the CLT's longer, more linguistically demanding passages can become a barrier rather than a place for students to shine.
How SERA Consulting Can Help
At SERA Consulting, my work spans Kâ12 school placement, psycho educational assessment interpretation, IEP/504 advocacy, college planning and essay writing, and standardized test strategy.
My work in education is focused on supporting students individually and holistically, when working with a high schooler, I look closely at their academic profile, their learning style, previous benchmarking and data, and their hopes and dreams for college admissions. From there, we build a testing strategy that serves the student rather than chasing a trend.
For families exploring independent schools in the Baltimore area, navigating admissions or placement decisions, interpreting a recent psychoeducational evaluation, or planning a multi-year testing roadmap, I welcome a conversation anytime.
