SAT and ACT test scores matter; use them

Even their biggest proponents acknowledge that standardized tests such as the SAT and ACT are imperfect tools for university admission. Expensive test prep can give affluent students a significant leg up. Critics have attacked some questions as culturally biased.

But in recent months, a handful of well-regarded universities have decided to once again require the tests after a Covid-induced suspension led as many as 2,000 schools to make them optional. Universities such as Dartmouth, MIT, Georgetown and Yale say they now believe that assessment testing is key to something crucial — helping schools identify promising students who might otherwise fly under their admissions radar.

We’re talking about the low-income student whose SAT score is 400 points higher than his school’s average. Or the student whose GPA suffered from family issues, but who still managed to ace the test.

“With a test-optional policy ... we were unintentionally overlooking applicants from less-resourced backgrounds who could thrive here,’’ wrote Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock, a cognitive scientist who said that will change starting next year.

When combined with other traditional tools such as grade point average, student essays and teacher recommendations, standardized tests allow for a fairer, more holistic evaluation of applicants.

This is not to criticize the many schools that went to optional testing after COVID began ripping through the nation four years ago. Most testing centers had to be closed because of social distancing. And given the already existing concerns about standardized tests, the path of least resistance clearly was to leave the testing decision up to students, who were told they could submit a score if they thought it would help but would not be penalized if they didn’t.

Dartmouth’s experience illustrates why that probably wasn’t the best move. When Beilock became president last year at the New Hampshire university, an Ivy League school that typically accepts about 6% of freshmen applicants, she asked for an internal study on standardized testing. She told The New York Times there were two main findings, one surprising and one not.

The not surprising: that test scores were a better predictor than grades, essays and teacher recommendations of academic success at Dartmouth. But researchers said their analysis of test score data also showed something unexpected — that lower-income students were withholding test scores that would have helped them get in.

The applicants thought their scores were too low, when admissions officers would have seen them as evidence they had overcome social and financial obstacles. Beilock said the analysis didn’t support claims that the tests are racially or economically biased.

“The research suggests this tool is helpful in finding students we might otherwise miss,’’ she told the Times.

That sounds like a win for everyone.