In the past month, many elite colleges have begun to go back on their test-optional policy; this includes schools such as Yale, Dartmouth, MIT, Georgetown, and UT Austin. Faculty Researchers at Dartmouth announced on their admissions website that SAT and ACT scores are a “key method” in predicting how well students can perform in college. Additionally, the researchers found that the test-optional policy makes it more difficult for schools to find less advantaged applicants who don’t submit their test scores.
On the other side, a study published by Harvard Economists for Opportunity Insights concluded that “students from low-income families and other less advantaged backgrounds have lower standardized test scores and are less likely to take the test than students from higher-income families,” implying that required testing inherently puts less wealthy students at a disadvantage in college admissions.
For a long time, standardized testing has solidified itself as an integral part of American college admissions, often viewed as the most reliable measure of a student’s academic ability. However, over time, many colleges have begun to question the validity of standardized testing due to its inequality to students without the necessary resources to succeed on the test, pushing some colleges to go test-optional. This belief, along with pandemic-related obstacles, caused many colleges that previously required testing to go test-optional. Only recently have schools started to push back on this test-optional policy.
Regardless of these arguments, many colleges will be forced to decide whether or not they follow this new trend of reinstating standardized testing requirements. For students applying to college in the future, this resurgence of required standardized testing will undoubtedly change how the college admissions process is approached.
