Harvard applicants must again submit scores

Research has found that standardized exams can help identify standout applicants from lowincome backgrounds.

Harvard College will once again require applicants to submit standardized test scores, joining a handful of elite colleges that have reinstated testing requirements nixed during the pandemic.

In announcing the policy change Thursday, Harvard cited a growing body of research showing standardized tests can help colleges spot talented students from less-affluent high schools. Yale University, Dartmouth College, and Brown University used the same rationale to restore testing requirements earlier this year; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology revived its standardized testing requirement two years ago.

The move comes as the nation’s top colleges search for ways to maintain racial and socioeconomic diversity on campus without using race as a factor in admissions, which the US Supreme Court prohibited in its landmark affirmative action ruling against last summer.

Hopi Hoekstra, dean of the faculty of arts and sciences at Harvard, said standardized tests help colleges predict student success regardless of a student’s background. Students who did not submit test scores, she said, may have unintentionally withheld information that could have strengthened their overall application.

“Fundamentally, we know that talent is universal, but opportunity is not,” Hoekstra said in a statement Thursday. “With this change, we hope to strengthen our ability to identify these promising students, and to give Harvard the opportunity to support their development as thinkers and leaders who will contribute to shaping our world.”

The college dropped its standardized testing requirement in 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic limited some students’ access to the tests. Applicants had the option of submitting ACT and SAT scores to supplement their applications. The majority of students who matriculated at Harvard in past four years did so, even though it wasn’t required, according to the university.

Critics have long asserted standardized tests are biased toward students from wealthier families, who are more likely to take expensive test prep classes and have better educational opportunities overall.

Earlier this year, however, research by the Harvard-affiliated Opportunity Insights group found that standardized exams can help identify standout applicants from low-income backgrounds whose raw scores might not be as high as upper income students’, but who outperform their classmates. That lined up with some earlier studies, including

one from a committee at the University of California system, which found tests like the SAT were more likely to predict student achievement than high school GPAs.

Opportunity Insights also found that preferences toward legacy admissions and student athletes do more to restrict diversity than requiring standardized tests.

Raj Chetty, a Harvard professor of economics and the director of Opportunity Insights, said in a statement that it’s true standardized tests are biased toward students from higher-income families, who may have greater access to test prep resources.

“But the data reveal that other measures — recommendation letters, extracurriculars, essays — are even more prone to such biases,” Chetty said. “Considering standardized test scores is likely to make the admissions process at Harvard more meritocratic while increasing socioeconomic diversity.”

David J. Deming, academic dean of the Harvard Kennedy School, said the widespread availability and the universality of the tests help ensure fairness, though some barriers still exist.

“Not everyone can hire an expensive college coach to help them craft a personal essay. But everyone has the chance to ace the SAT or the ACT,” Deming said in a statement.

Phillip Levine, a Wellesley College economics professor and expert in the business of higher education, said Harvard’s move is more evidence that elite colleges are moving back toward the SAT requirement.

“Clearly, this is going to start filtering down to other institutions as well,” he said.

But Levine said it was too early to say whether less-exclusive schools would follow Harvard and the other Ivies’ lead.

“You get more applications if you don’t require the SAT. So in a world in which you’re seeking more applications, reinstituting the requirement may not be advantageous for you,” he said. “At the top end of the market, where you’re less worried about applications, that is less of a problem.”

Bob Schaeffer, director of public education at the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, a nonprofit that tracks and critiques standardized exams and testing companies, said he did not anticipate Harvard’s policy change would create waves among colleges nationwide.

“The Ivy League and the other super-selective schools are exceptions to the general rule,” he said.

Schaeffer said other schools will likely closely monitor diversity and student success data at Harvard and elsewhere throughout the next academic year before determining whether to revive their own testing requirements.

In a survey of more than 200 of the nation’s top test-optional liberal arts colleges and universities conducted by education services company Kaplan Inc., which offers test preparation courses for the ACT, SAT, and others, around 15 percent said they were considering reinstating standardized testing requirements, according to Kaplan. Around two-thirds of surveyed schools said submitting an ACT or SAT score helps students’ applications.

For applicants without access to the SAT or ACT, Harvard said it will accept a handful of alternative tests, including Advanced Placement exam results and International Baccalaureate scores.

Joy St. John, Harvard’s director of admissions, said there may be fewer students taking the SAT or ACT than in the past, and accessing those tests can create barriers for international applicants.

“We hope that promising students faced with such challenges will still apply, using alternative forms of testing,” St. John said in a statement Thursday.

Levine said having a wider scope of application materials allows admissions counselors to weigh the strengths and weaknesses of different metrics, which is overall beneficial to the system.

“Regardless of how you think about it, there’s no such thing as a perfect measure of who you should accept,” Levine said.