Out of the few thousand four-year higher education institutions in the United States, over 800 do not require SAT or ACT scores from applicants. Over 125 of these schools place in the “top-tier” of their respective academic categories, including Middlebury College and Bowdoin College.
As an institution claiming to promote a “welcoming environment that embraces the full spectrum of human attributes and perspectives,” the University should join these schools and drop its application requirement of submitting either a SAT or ACT score to help diversify our student body by helping to encourage students from a more diverse range of backgrounds to apply, and create a better learning environment.
Just this past summer, George Washington University announced it would be dropping testing requirements in an effort to prevent students who perform very well in high school, but not on the test, from self-selecting out of the applicant pool, and help students from different backgrounds “recognize GW as a place where they can thrive.”
Removing test standards is a plausible means to encourage a diversified applicant pool. Testing requirements make it harder for low-income for students to get into good schools since higher test scores are closely associated with higher socioeconomic status. Standardized tests often deter potential students who are not comfortable taking them as a result. In fact, research by Claude Steele, dean for the School of Education at Stanford University, has shown underrepresented groups are more likely than others to be “put off by test score requirements.” This is further supported by a finding that, in test-optional schools, those who do not submit scores are more likely than those who do to be the first in their families to go to college, non-white, female or Pell Grant recipients.
In this way, standardized tests defeat the purpose for which they were created — to widen access to universities and create a more egalitarian admissions process by providing schools with a standard base on which to compare students from different backgrounds.
Although the implementation of these tests certainly had noble intentions, they fail even on their basic function to help colleges select applicants based on merit rather than privilege. While Cyndie Schmeiser, the chief of assessment at College Board, has said research has repeatedly shown the SAT to be a strong predictor of academic success, studies of test-optional universities have shown otherwise.
One study in particular compared the academic performance among students who submitted test scores to that achieved by those who did not, which was about 30 percent of the student body in the schools studied. The study found that, between the two groups, there was “virtually no difference” in grades. This could be due to the fact that standardized tests tend to measure how well someone takes a test, rather than his creative or critical thinking skills. Furthermore, they measure performance on one particular day, rather than the student’s successes throughout high school. Martha Blevins Allman, the dean of admissions at Wake Forest University, which is also test-optional, said the school “[finds] much more value in a student’s accomplishments in four years of high school than in four hours of Saturday testing.” In this sense, that study also confirms high school grades remain the best predictor of college grades.
If experience is any sign, transitioning to test-optional could greatly increase applications to the University. When Ithaca College adopted the practice, it expected a 7 percent increase in applicants. Instead it saw a 13 percent increase, with a quarter of those applicants choosing not to submit scores, meaning the school was able to attract about 4,000 more applications than it otherwise would. In addition, its first class to enter afterwards was the most diverse in its history at that time, while the quality of that class, as measured by grade point average, was “essentially identical” to that of the class before.
In the words of Joseph Soares, a sociology professor at Wake Forest who has written extensively about standardized admissions tests, “Test scores transmit social disparities without improving our ability to select youths who will succeed in college” as a result. As an institution of higher education seeking to provide an optimal learning environment both inside and outside the classroom, ensuring that our student body is composed of qualified people with a wide range of perspectives to offer should be of utmost concern to the University. The University should stop requiring applicants to submit standardized test scores in order to expand opportunity for students with low socioeconomic status and minorities, and in doing so, the breadth of its applicant pool.
Alyssa Imam is a Viewpoint writer.
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