Parents have been calling, texting and emailing me nonstop, particularly since the day that Yale University announced it had returned to requiring test scores for admissions. Frantic parents are desperate to know how the change will affect their kids. (Currently, three Ivy League schools — Dartmouth, Yale and Brown — have returned to requiring test scores).
I just keep telling them the same thing: Nothing has changed. Don’t overthink it. Good scores help students get into good colleges.
It is understandable that people want to adapt to changes to best position their kids for success. At elite colleges, however, the change back from test-optional to test-required is, for the vast majority of students, a change in name only.
In 2020 and even 2021, elite colleges were actually test-optional — not just in name only but in legitimate practice. COVID-19 had shut down schools, many students simply could not take the SAT or ACT, and so colleges that would have never dreamed of offering such an option were suddenly forced to no longer require standardized tests.
But the pandemic is over, schools are open, and availability to take the SAT and ACT has returned. Elite colleges have functionally returned to test-required, even if some still call themselves “test-optional.”
Why? Honesty is a large reason Yale went back to test-required admissions. Yale’s dean of admissions, Jeremiah Quinlan, said he became more and more convinced that Yale was not “being honest about the reality of our admissions process to students and parents” because it was “denying 98% of students who were applying without test scores.”
Yale did the right thing: With a three-times-higher admit rate for students who submitted test scores, it publicly went back to the testing policy that it was functionally already employing. And who were those 2% of applicants without test scores who were admitted? Yale doesn’t say, but, based on the data and my experience seeing athletes get recruited without test scores, I wouldn’t be surprised if those admitted without test scores were primarily recruited athletes — for Ivy sports such as squash and lacrosse.
Additionally, Yale and Dartmouth realized that disadvantaged students were being further disadvantaged by test-optional admissions because test-optional policies mislead students into thinking that they have an equal chance of admission without test scores. They don’t. At elite colleges, SAT/ACT scores are more predictive than grades, so — especially without the Advanced Placement classes and other college prep indicators of well-resourced students — disadvantaged students were unable to provide evidence of a sufficient academic foundation if they didn’t submit SAT/ACT scores. Test-optional admissions, pitched as a boon for equity, were actually further disadvantaging the disadvantaged.
Test-optional admissions create more pressure to do better on innumerably more things. Unless, of course, you take my advice and assume the school is test-required in practice. So if going back to test-required is actually the right thing to do, why aren’t all colleges, elite or not, switching back? Because doing so is not always financially beneficial to a college.
Consider the statement from Gene Davis, a member of the University of North Carolina board of governers’ Committee on Educational Planning, Policies, and Programs, saying the quiet part out loud when responding to whether UNC would go back to requiring test scores: “We look at things from an academic perspective, but also from a business perspective,” Davis said. “We have to look at what other institutions that our North Carolina high school students are applying to. We have to recognize that we will be putting ourselves, our constituent institutions at a competitive disadvantage.”
Translation: From an academic perspective that prioritizes education, we would require test scores. From a business perspective that prioritizes finances, we think fewer people will apply if we require test scores, which means less money in our institution’s coffers.
Whether elite colleges will do the right thing, even though it means giving up the benefits of test-optional admissions — increased application numbers and artificially higher average SAT/ACT score for their school, for example — remains to be seen. But, for students and their families, it doesn’t really matter. De facto, the elite colleges are already functionally test-required.
After advising thousands of students through their application process and watching the unprecedented evolution of admissions criteria since COVID-19, I can sum all of this up for you very simply. No matter what they describe their testing policies to be — functionally speaking — all colleges have only one of two policies: test-required (a standardized test score of some kind is required to apply) or test-optional (a standardized test score of some kind can be used to help make admissions decisions — even if a college calls itself “test-optional” or “test-blind”).
Will elite colleges drop the facade and publicly announce the test-required policy that they privately use? I have no idea. But it makes no difference when it comes to what your kid needs to do with their application. The SAT and ACT evaluate students on the fundamentals of rhetoric, grammar, mathematics, reading and data analysis, and colleges care about those skills.
As I continually tell students and parents: Nothing has changed. Use common sense. SAT/ACT scores are better predictors of academic success at elite colleges than anything else, and admissions officers know that. Colleges, with a mandate for academic excellence, would be irrational to throw out this information, so most don’t. Unless students meet a very high institutional priority, such as athletic recruitment, then they need good test scores to get into good schools. And that’s not optional.
David Blobaum is an expert in the entrance exam and college admissions industry. He is on the board of directors and is the director of outreach for the National Test Prep Association, a nonprofit that works to support the appropriate use of testing in admissions. In 2013, he co-founded the education company Summit Prep.
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