China Daily Global Edition (USA)
HEATED DEBATE TRIGGERED AS MORE US COLLEGES GO ‘TEST OPTIONAL’
Hundreds of institutions no longer require exam scores for admission
The Scholastic Aptitude Test, or SAT, a college-entrance exam created nearly 100 years ago to ensure equal opportunities regardless of income, is the subject of heated debate in the United States.
Discussion centers around whether the examination poses barriers to the advancement of students from low-income families.
Due to concerns over the COVID19 pandemic and inequality, more colleges and universities are moving away from requiring the exam as part of their application process, more than 50 years since the SAT was first widely required in the US.
According to FairTest, a nonprofit organization that advocates for a more limited use of standardized tests, as of late March, at least 1,830 US colleges and universities no longer require SAT scores for admission, representing 78 percent of institutions granting four-year bachelor’s degrees, an all-time high.
The move toward dropping standardized tests such as the SAT and the American College Testing, or the ACT, in higher education has been building for years, but accelerated in 2020 after the pandemic forced testing sites to close, making exams difficult to administer.
In 2020, the multischool University of California system voted to abandon the SAT requirement, while late last year, it announced that it would no longer consider using any tests as part of its undergraduate admissions process.
The California State University system recently joined the University of California in ending the use of college entrance exams, making the state the first and only one in the US with no public university accepting standardized test scores for admission.
Officials at California State University cited studies showing that high school grades, rather than test scores, better predict how well students will perform in their first year at college.
The system is creating a new set of eligibility criteria with the focus on students’ high school grades and life experiences.
In Michigan, high school students will be able to decide whether to submit SAT scores under a bill recently approved by the state House of Representatives. Michigan state law requires high schools to place SAT scores on official student transcripts.
State Representative David Martin, sponsor of the bill, said the SAT mandate leaves Michigan students at a disadvantage when applying to colleges. Their scores are not “the best way to gauge their knowledge or their capability to succeed”, Martin said in explaining the reason for removing the requirement.
University System of Georgia, the fifth largest state university system in the United States, announced in March that it would temporarily waive test score requirements for admission at 23 of its 26 colleges and universities.
Centers closed
Elizabeth Venturini, a US college consultant and author of Tiger Mom Wisdom — US College Admissions Success Through Creativity, Character, and Community, said, “Prior to COVID-19, colleges prioritized admissions based on the rigor of coursework and high test scores.
“During the 2020 and 2021 admissions cycles, testing centers were shut down to protect students against COVID-19. College admissions had to rely more heavily on other criteria for student admittance.”
Venturini said that as institutions shift to “test-optional” or “testblind” admissions, their essays, writing supplements, extracurricular work, teacher and counselor recommendations, and community service will begin to gain more importance in the admissions process.
Test-blind admission means that even if a student submits the SAT or ACT score with his or her application, the score will not be visible to admission officers. The University of California, for example, has permanently adopted the test-blind policy. Test-optional means that students can submit a score, but don’t have to if they think it won’t help them.
Venturini said test-optional gives students a choice on how to best present themselves to an admissions team. “If the school states it is test-optional, students should still be encouraged to take college admissions tests, particularly if they are good test-takers. Use it to your advantage. A good SAT score can only help the student for admission to the desired school, especially if the student scores within the required top range to be considered for admission,” she said.
While many universities are extending their test-optional policies, at least one prestigious institution is abandoning such policies after dropping the requirement for two years during the pandemic.
In March, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, announced it would again require SAT or ACT test scores for admission in autumn next year. It said the tests help identify whether applicants are academically prepared.
Stu Schmill, MIT dean of admissions, wrote in a blog about the decision, “Our ability to accurately predict student academic success at MIT is significantly improved by considering standardized testing — especially in mathematics.’’
He said the tests “also help us identify socioeconomically disadvantaged students who lack access to advanced coursework or other enrichment opportunities that would otherwise demonstrate their readiness for MIT”. Schmill added, “We believe a requirement is more equitable and transparent than a test-optional policy.”
Proponents of test-optional admissions argue that standardized testing affects the chances of applicants who routinely do not perform well in such tests, such as immigrant students, those whose parents did not go to college, and black, Hispanic and Latino students.
Critics of SAT and other standardized tests also have long been worried about race and income inequality influencing results. They criticize standardized tests for rewarding students who have the financial resources to hire tutors or who enroll in expensive preparatory programs to improve their scores, leaving low-income students at a disadvantage.
Student barriers
The SAT costs $55 for the 2021-22 school year. Gabrielle Piccirilli, who is majoring in English at Villanova University, wrote in an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal that high schools often encourage students to take exams multiple times to improve their scores, and these costs are barriers to low-income students “scoring as high as their intelligence allows”.
“A student who can take the SAT four times after rigorous test-specific prep will have a better shot than one who can only afford to take it once without preparation outside of schooling — even if they are equally smart,” Piccirilli wrote.
Schools seeking to diversify their student body are also concerned that test scores are often closely linked to a student’s race and wealth.
A study in 2020 by researchers at the Brookings Institution found a wide racial gap in SAT results, particularly in math.
According to an investigation by the institution into the SAT math scores for more than 2.1 million high school graduates in 2020, white students scored an average of 93 points higher than black students, and 69 points higher than Hispanic or Latino students. Asian students scored 85 points higher than white students.
Of those scoring more than 700 points in the 800-point math test, 43 percent were Asian and 45 percent white, while 6 percent were Hispanic or Latino, and 1 percent black.
“Black, Hispanic or Latino students routinely score lower in the math section of the SAT — a likely result of generations of exclusionary housing, education and economic policy — which too often means that rather than reducing existing racial gaps, using the test in college admissions reinforces them,” researchers said in their report. “While attempting to measure college readiness, the SAT both mirrors and maintains racial inequity.”
These findings echo an analysis by Georgetown University researchers in 2019, who found that if the most selective US colleges and universities relied solely on SAT scores for admission decisions, their campuses would be wealthier, whiter and have more male students.
The biggest losers were black and Latino students, whose numbers would be cut nearly in half, with the principal winners being wealthy white male students, whose ranks would increase, according to the analysis.
After dropping the standardized testing requirement, some universities have seen significant increases in applications for admissions. The University of California received record-level applications for autumn last year and admitted its largest and most diverse undergraduate intake ever, according to its president’s office.
Cornell University reported that it enrolled a more diverse intake, including a nearly 50 percent rise in the proportion of first-generation college students — those whose parents did not complete a four-year college or university degree.
The University of Chicago shifted to test-optional admissions in 2018 to expand diversity. Its current intake of freshmen has 56 percent more black students, 26 percent more Hispanic and Latino students, 33 percent more rural students and 36 percent more first-generation students than the intake that enrolled before the policy change.
Strong disapproval
However, test-optional policies have been strongly opposed by some Asian organizations, which insist that college admission should be based solely on merit.
One of the fiercest critics is the Asian American Coalition for Education, based in New Jersey, which accused the University of California’s test-blind admissions of “undermining the merit-based principle to the detriments of our nation’s technological progress and national security”.
The coalition argued that standardized tests are “objective and transparent measures”, and the move to drop the SAT would “further deprive disadvantaged students, including too many Asian American children, of their fair chances to succeed academically.”
The group has long criticized elite schools for rejecting Asian American students despite their perfect SAT scores. It said on its website that it united more than 60 Asian American organizations in 2015 to file a complaint with the US government against what it said was Harvard University’s “discriminatory” practices against Asian American applicants.
The coalition also has worked closely with Edward Blum, a conservative activist who sued Harvard in 2014, accusing it of discriminating against Asian American applicants by holding them to a higher admissions standard. In November 2020, an appellate court dismissed the claim, but in January the Supreme Court decided to hear the challenge.
According to a report last year by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, even if standardized test scores were the only factor considered in admissions, the proportion of Asian American enrollment at selective colleges would rise by no more than 2 percentage points.
Anthony Carnevale, lead author of the report, said: “If we used testbased merit as the singular admissions requirement, the gain for Asian American applicants would be marginal. But on the flip side, 21 percent of Asian American applicants who were previously admitted would no longer qualify.”
Kathryn Paige Harden, a clinical psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said the SAT test itself is not unfair, but society is unfair, so getting rid of the test does not remedy underlying injustice, but makes it harder to see and solve the problem.
Admissions officials commonly consider not only grades but also other factors such as which classes students have taken, access to advanced coursework, sports teams, volunteer positions and overseas study trips, Harden wrote in a recent article published by The Atlantic.
“Dropping any admissions requirement is necessarily a decision to weigh other factors more heavily, such as essays, recommendations and coursework, which are more strongly correlated with family income than test scores are,” she wrote.
An effective way to dismantle the barriers between low-income students and colleges is not to eliminate the tests but to provide students with free, accessible universal testing, she added.
The Brookings Institution researchers, although concluding that the SAT maintains “racial inequality”, believe it is not time to abandon the tests altogether because this risks “making matters even worse”.
“Scrapping tests altogether in college admissions could result in colleges overemphasizing factors that privilege being rich just as much,” the researchers said. “If we want a true meritocratic college admissions process, we need to give all children the chance to compete by addressing inequity early in life so that students, regardless of background, can succeed.”
To solve the problem, the researchers suggest increasing cash transfers to disadvantaged parents with young children, improving access to quality preschool programs, teaching parents the skills they need to effectively raise their children, and improving outcomes in weaker K-12 systems. K-12 education refers to the combination of primary and secondary schooling children receive from kindergarten to the 12th grade.
Venturini, the college consultant and author, said: “If getting into college was simply dependent on perfect test scores, colleges could quickly fill up an incoming class. Students are more than just a test score to a college. Colleges want unique kids with breakout talents who have engaged in their passions and excelled in them.
“They want students who are creative, have character and a sense of community. With the move toward test-optional admissions, students will have more opportunity to focus on these traits and the value they bring to the college.”
During the 2020 and 2021 admissions cycles, testing centers were shut down to protect students against COVID-19. College admissions had to rely more heavily on other criteria for student admittance.”
Elizabeth Venturini, a US college consultant
We believe a requirement is more equitable and transparent than a testoptional policy.”
Stu Schmill, MIT dean of admissions, writing in a blog