More Colleges Go To Test-Optional Admissions, And It Didn’t Take Lawsuits For Them To Do It

Within the past month, more colleges have decided to adopt a test-optional admissions policy whereby undergraduate applicants will not be required to submit standardized test scores such as the ACT or SAT to be admitted. These decisions show that the test-optional movement continues to pick up steam, as had been predicted after the role fraudulent standardized testing was proven to play in last year’s college admissions cheating scandal.

That scandal reignited the test-optional fire by revealing the outsized role of standardized tests in competitive admissions and by revisiting data that question the added predictive validity provided by such tests compared to student’s high school performance.

According to a September, 2019 report from the National Center for Fair And Open Testing (FairTest), 47 institutions announced new test-optional admissions policies in just the past year. Included in the more than 1,000 colleges and universities now using test-optional admissions are hundreds of highly regarded liberal arts colleges, public universities and private institutions.

“The past year has seen the fastest growth spurt ever of schools eliminating ACT/SAT requirements,” said FairTest Public Education Director Bob Schaeffer last September. “This summer alone, 20 colleges and universities went test-optional, a pace of more than one per week.”

“We are especially pleased to see many public universities and access-oriented private colleges deciding that test scores are not needed to make sound educational decisions,” Schaeffer continued. “By going test-optional, they increase diversity without any loss in academic quality. Eliminating ACT/SAT requirements is a ‘win-win’ for students and schools.”

In just the past few weeks, several more institutions have eliminated or reduced requirements of standardized tests in their admissions process. Among the most notable:

• Indiana University’s Board of Trustees voted last December to give each of its nine campuses the right to implement test-optional admissions. Last week, Indiana University (Bloomington), the state’s flagship institution, decided that beginning with students seeking to enroll in fall 2021, SAT and ACT scores will no longer be required. Indiana University is one of the country’s leading public research universities, a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities (AAU). For it to drop standardized test scores as an admissions requirement is a bellwether decision, comparable to the decision in 2018 by the University of Chicago – another AAU member – to go test-optional.
• This month, the California Institute of Technology, an AAU member and a Forbes top-ten university, announced it’s eliminating the requirement that applicants submit SAT subject test scores to be considered for admission. This change will go into effect for students applying to Caltech for the fall of 2021. Caltech had required students to submit scores in the SAT Subject Test in Mathematics Level 2, as well as one SAT science subject test in either ecological biology, molecular biology, chemistry, or physics. “In reviewing our admissions requirements, we have come to the conclusion that the requirement for submission of SAT subject test scores creates an unnecessary barrier to applying for a Caltech education,” said Nikki Chun, CalTech’s director of undergraduate admissions. While the school will still require an ACT or SAT score for admission, it’s decision to stop requiring subject test scores in the areas of math and science is a significant step given its vaunted reputation in STEM education.
• The University of North Carolina System has conducted a pilot study with three of its campuses about the effects of waiving SAT or ACT scores for students whose test scores were below required minimums but who had strong high-school GPAs. According to Education Dive, the results suggest that “once in college, the students with lower SAT/ACT scores performed no different from their counterparts who met the typical admissions standards.” This evidence is likely to move the UNC system closer to test-optional admissions.

Beyond the obvious policy implications of these recent moves, the fact that they occurred through normal, deliberative university governance is of great import. They weren’t forced by a lawsuit, required by a court or imposed by legislation.

Great attention has been drawn to the recent lawsuit brought by a coalition of plaintiffs who sued the University of California, alleging its use of the SAT and ACT was prejudicial and violated various civil liberties of applicants. Plaintiffs have demanded such tests be banned from the University’s admission process.

While the attention to this case is understandable, it’s also unfortunate because interjecting the courts lessens the chances that institutions will make changes to admissions policies that are carefully evaluated, tailored to the unique circumstances of each school and ultimately more likely to endure that court-mandated procedures. Anyone who thinks it’s a good idea to have courts order how colleges admit students has not learned many lessons about the confusion, contortions and controversy brought by Bakke and its progeny.

Institutions across the country, recently at the rate of about one a week, are discontinuing their requirement of standardized admission tests because they’ve concluded that the data point to that change as the best policy. Indeed, it’s quite likely the University of California would have come to that decision as well, had it been given the time to conclude the review of standardized admissions testing it was undertaking. In the long run, even for those of us who want to see the demise of standardized admissions tests, it’s best to allow colleges to reach decisions on such testing through their own deliberations rather than through a court’s dictate.