Yes, the Common app is pretty easy at figuring out who needs what. We sent her scores out a couple weeks ago through the College Board site even though a lot are test optional. There's a checklist the Common app gives on what you need to turn in and what's optional. Though it feels like optional is not really optional unless it's not going to help their application. Our guy said to send her scores to all but two of the colleges she wants to apply to. One was a head scratcher because that school is test neutral and said a score would not be counted against you if you submitted it. He said her school would be on the low end of what they get which is still funny to me as her score is better than 92% of the people who took the SAT.
We plan to apply to these Nov 1st schools by Thursday. We had planned on applying early to UT but when we took the tour on Columbus Day they said don't apply early unless you are completely done and ready because applying early had no bearing on getting in or not it just meant you'd get a decision faster.
We did an open house of UT-Dallas on Saturday. She has a direct admission offer from them through Common and it would save us some money if she lived at home for the first year. I really want her to go out of the city though, just for her to grow as a person. We are facing the very real possibility that maybe she's just not ready. She's applied to North Texas and was accepted already. I think she just wanted that as a backup. UTD would be fine for her as she could double major in psychology and child development. They told her it would just be one additional course since both are under the Psychology department and share most of the same coursework. She wants to be a child/teen therapist. The direct admission offer is confusing. She's not admitted if she applies. She just doesn't have to turn in the personal essay, counselor recommendation, and teacher evaluations/other recommendations. The admissions person we talked to said they'll just flag her application when it comes in so she's put in the highly considered pile.