Bringing back the SAT

The SAT and ACT are making a small but important comeback after the tests were widely dropped as a requirement for college applications during the pandemic.

Most schools went test-optional, meaning students could submit scores if they wanted but not doing so wouldn’t count against them. The University of California won’t consider test scores at all.

Only a handful of schools have resurrected the testing requirement, but among them are heavyweights in the world of higher education: MIT, Dartmouth and Georgetown. Most recently, the University of Texas at Austin and Brown University

joined the list and the University of North Carolina is considering it. Yale also will require standardized test scores, but tests such as Advanced Placement can be used in place of college entrance exams.

Additional competitive schools are likely to join the group, along with schools that aren’t as selective. The University of Tennessee, which accepts 68 percent of applicants, decided a year and a half ago to bring the tests back.

The tests were criticized long before the pandemic as giving an unfair boost to more affluent students who could afford tutoring. And it’s true that scores are closely correlated with family income. But the pause in testing gave colleges a chance to study the issue more closely. They found that SAT scores were extremely effective at predicting whether students would succeed in college.

No one should be surprised. The University of California convened a panel several years ago to study the issue at length and it reached the same conclusion. The standardized tests were more equitable than grades, the panel said, because grade inflation is more pervasive at affluent schools. Yet UC refuses to consider test scores, after bowing to pressure from critics. We hope that the trend toward reinstating the tests in admissions makes UC leaders rethink this position.

Making the tests optional was actually counterproductive, Dartmouth, Yale and Brown found.