Colleges are bringing the SAT back. Rightly so

The pandemic spawned a number of social experiments by necessity. One of them was a profound change in higher education: Schools stopped requiring applicants to submit standardized test scores.

Now the experiment might be ending. Yale University announced last week it would again require standardized scores, after nearly four years in which it allowed applicants to omit SAT and ACT results. Yale followed Dartmouth College, which made the same choice earlier this month, as well as MIT and Georgetown University. The scores, officials say, are the best predictor of students’ academic performance.

By contrast, the University of California has decided not to consider SAT and ACT scores at all as of fall 2023 – going

“test blind,” not merely “test optional.” Its leaders celebrated increases in racial and socioeconomic diversity between 2020 and 2021 that many test critics credit to the demise of the SAT/ACT regime. This is an argument the nation has been having since long before the pandemic. The good news is that the disruption, and the changes it prompted, produced a trove of new data to make that debate more evidence-based than ever. And it shows that eschewing much-criticized standardized tests doesn’t help colleges or disadvantaged students.

The core charge against standardized tests is that they systematically disadvantage poorer students and certain students of color. Seventeen percent of kids from families in the top 20% of earners, the New York Times found, score at least 1300 on the 1600-point SAT; only 2.4% from the lowest income quintile do so. Of the top 0.1% whose parents can easily pay for world-class tutoring, the share is 38%.

Racial score gaps are less dramatic. But they’re significant, especially in math. College Board data shows that almost 60% of white test-takers and 80% of Asian test-takers meet a designated “college readiness” benchmark. Less than a third of Latino students and less than a quarter of Black students do.

This is a challenge for colleges relying on test results to determine whom they admit while also pursuing diversity. Fortunately, most colleges regard tests as one factor among many. Paired with something like an “adversity score,” their consideration can be useful, particularly when a university wants to distinguish among applicants with similar backgrounds. The idea is to recruit a diverse class full of students equipped to succeed.

Another reason to take test scores into account: Other factors considered in any holistic admissions process, such as essay quality, extracurricular activities and teacher recommendations, tilt even more in favor of white and well-off students, many of whom have college admissions officers at their high schools to teach them how to polish their applications.

The effect of a thoughtful test scores policy ought to be exactly what Yale described when it announced its recent decision: The students across racial and socioeconomic groups most likely to excel become those most likely to be admitted. Diversity, meanwhile, doesn’t suffer. Such an outcome is possible: Most research on the past years’ test-optional and test-blind policies has not shown a dramatic rise in diversity attributable to them.

Obsessing over tests misses an essential point. SAT and ACT scores encode serious shortcomings in the schooling of lowincome and minority students. The way to improve scores is, in large part, to better serve those students from the start – not to put more 1600s on the board but to make sure all children acquire the knowledge and skills to thrive.