Brown University will require SAT scores again
Brown University will again require that applicants submit standardized-test scores, university officials announced Tuesday, making it the third Ivy League school to reinstate that pre-pandemic admission norm in recent weeks.
The school will continue to give an advantage to applicants whose parents attended or work at Brown, and will still allow students to apply early, if they choose.
Like officials at Yale University and Dartmouth College, both of which recently announced they would resume requiring standardized tests from applicants, officials at Brown said research indicated that SAT and ACT scores are highly predictive of students’ academic performance in college. Brown Provost Francis J. Doyle III, who co-chaired a committee studying admissions policies, said in an interview Tuesday that removing the testing requirement made it more difficult for admissions officers to assess whether Brown hopefuls were likely to thrive at the school. He said reinstating the requirement will make the admissions office more “effective.”
But Doyle emphasized repeatedly that Brown did not find that students admitted during the temporary period of test-optional admissions were struggling more than their peers.
“This is a question a lot of people jump to, ‘Were there questions about the students admitted under test-optional?’” Doyle said. “No, we have no doubts about what happened there.”
Brown’s test requirement will take effect for prospective students who are applying throughout next fall and winter, and would matriculate at the university in fall 2025.
Like many schools, Brown stopped requiring the SAT and ACT – for decades, a mandatory rite of passage for college-bound students – when the coronavirus pandemic shut down testing centers. The shift to test-optional soon inspired a surge in applicants at schools that made the switch nationwide.
The SAT and ACT have drawn criticism for years from detractors.
Many colleges chose to continue their test-optional policies even after the public health crisis lessened, gathering data on how the policy was working out. Now, institutions across the United States are trying to figure out what comes next.
Some are decisively sticking with test-optionality, including Columbia and the University of Michigan. The University of California system has been wholly test-free since 2020 and appears committed to that policy.
But in other places, college leaders say that tests are too important of a predictor to forgo.
At Yale, school officials found that test scores predicted students’ grades at Yale better than any other information on their applications. Researchers at Dartmouth concluded that scores were one of the best indications of success in college – and helpful in identifying first-generation and low-income high school hopefuls. These findings track with a recent Opportunity Insights study of a dozen highly selective colleges that determined SAT and ACT scores “have substantial predictive power for academic success.”
At Brown, President Christina H. Paxton formulated a committee to study admissions this September, spurred by a national debate over the use of various preferences in admissions that had been growing for decades but caught fire in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s seminal decision striking down racial preferences.
She charged the committee with answering several questions: Whether Brown should alter its early-decision policy, which allows students ready to commit to the school to apply by Nov. 1; whether it should reinstate a standardized test score requirement; and whether to change the existing preferences given to applicants with family connections to Brown.
After months of work, the committee reached consensus on reinstating testing and keeping the early-decision policy, Doyle said. The top argument for nixing early decision was that some families might feel like committing endangered their financial aid, Doyle said – “so we have to double down on our efforts to communicate that we are indeed need-blind.”
As for legacy admissions, the committee felt that more research is required before Brown can make a final decision, Doyle said, although he promised the school would act as swiftly as possible.
“We’re really wrestling with questions about access and merit and unearned advantage on the one hand, against questions involving the benefits of lifelong affinity and intergenerational community building with our alums, philanthropic support,” Doyle said. “We concluded that we needed more analysis, more information.”