Yale is the latest university reconsidering its pandemic-era move to make standardized testing optional, underscoring a debate in higher education over how to best vet prospective students.
Why it matters: The correlation between SAT and ACT results and future student success is complicated, surrounded by conflicting research and points of view among school administrators and education advocates.
Admissions officers have pointed to varied research on whether test scores or GPA are more accurate predictors of students’ college performance and eventual graduation rates. What’s happening: Yale might bring back SAT/ACT requirements in coming weeks — after Dartmouth earlier this month reinstated them following MIT in 2022.
Yale’s undergraduate admissions office “expects to announce a decision on its long-term testing policy in the next few weeks,” spokesperson Karen Peart told Axios. Fall 2024 applicants are subject to the test-optional policy.
At Brown, a committee is developing recommendations on standardized testing, legacy admissions and early decision, said Brian Clark, a university spokesperson. The school’s decision is expected in the coming months.
Dartmouth cited a research study commissioned by its president that “confirms that standardized testing — when assessed using the local norms at a student’s high school” is valuable for undergraduate applications.
Other schools including Harvard, Cornell and Princeton have announced extensions on test-optional policies. In Columbia’s case, it’s permanent.
In response to the virus pandemic and nationwide Black Lives Matter riots in the summer of 2020, some elite colleges and universities shredded testing requirements for admission. Several years later, the test-optional admission has yet to produce the promising results for racial and class-based equity that many woke academic institutions wished.
The failure of test-optional admission policies has forced Dartmouth College to reinstate standardized test scores for admission starting next year. This should never have been eliminated, as merit will always prevail.
“Nearly four years later, having studied the role of testing in our admissions process as well as its value as a predictor of student success at Dartmouth, we are removing the extended pause and reactivating the standardized testing requirement for undergraduate admission, effective with the Class of 2029,” Dartmouth wrote in a press release Monday morning.
“For Dartmouth, the evidence supporting our reactivation of a required testing policy is clear. Our bottom line is simple: we believe a standardized testing requirement will improve—not detract from—our ability to bring the most promising and diverse students to our campus,” the elite college said.
Who would’ve thought eliminating standardized tests for admission because a fringe minority said they were instruments of racism and a biased system was ever a good idea?
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