If UC system drops the SAT, what would take its place?

The debate over whether to stop using the SAT in admissions at the sprawling and nationally influential University of California is approaching a turning point. Anti-testing groups are expected to file a lawsuit Tuesday demanding that the university drop the requirement for students to submit scores on the exam. This year’s Varsity Blues scandal illustrated just how far wealthy families will go to game it. And a growing number of UC regents and chancellors are publicly questioning its usefulness.

Less obvious, however, is what a post-SAT University of California might look like. Would the university simply go test-optional — letting students choose whether to submit scores — or test-flexi

ble, accepting another standardized test in lieu of the SAT and its lesser-used cousin, the ACT? Should standardized tests be used just to decide whether an applicant is eligible for admission, or to winnow the pool of well-qualified contenders? And are test scores a necessary part of admissions at all?

The stakes are high: UC is one of the largest recipients of SAT scores in the country, and California State University, the nation’s biggest public fouryear university system, could follow its lead.

“We understand what’s at stake here because whatever decision we make will have widespread impact on admissions policy nationally,” said Eddie Comeaux, a UC Riverside professor and co-chair of a faculty committee that will make a recommendation by early next year on whether and how the university should continue to use the SAT and ACT. “So that’s why we want to get it right.”

The battle lines over the use of the test are well-defined. Critics say it unfairly locks out low-income and non-white students from selective campuses, giving an advantage to students whose families can afford pricey test prep courses.

“If UC cannot legally consider the effect or race and segregation on test performance, neither should it consider SAT or ACT scores,” said Saul Geiser, a research associate at UC Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education who studied SAT scores for students applying to UC from 1994 to 2016. Family background — including race, income and parents’ education — accounted for nearly 40% of the variation among students’ SAT scores in 2016, he found, an effect that had grown over time. Private schools are overrepresented among high schools with the highest SAT scores nationwide, according to a recent Wall Street Journal analysis.

The College Board, which administers the test, has argued that it provides an objective measure of students’ achievement that can help balance the wide variation in how high schools award grades. It recently developed a dashboard with information on high school and neighborhood demographics that it says will help colleges consider students’ scores in the context of the opportunities available to them.

“The notion that we would get rid of a standardized, objective measure and put all of our eggs into the high school GPA basket in the name of equity is misguided,” Jessica Howell, the College Board’s vice president

of research, said at a conference on admissions policy at UC Berkeley last month.

About 60 percent of freshman applicants to UC’s fall 2019 class submitted SAT scores, 20 percent sent ACT scores, and the rest took both exams. Cal State requires the test for applicants whose high school GPAs are lower than 3.0, or who want to attend a campus or program with high demand.

UC began requiring the SAT at a time when it was becoming a top-ranked research university and seeking to free up faculty from responsibilities such as teaching and overseeing admissions, said Nicholas Lemann, author of The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy.

“Part of the reason for putting these tests in place was to change the kind of life faculty members lived, and part of getting rid of the tests and having it work well would also be changing the way faculty live,” he said.

Comeaux’s committee is examining how to shape the contours of that change, though the UC regents will have the final say.

Of the more than 1,000 colleges nationally that are test-optional, the University of Chicago perhaps provides the most relevant example. The university, which typically admits less than 10% of applicants, stopped requiring applicants to submit SAT or ACT scores last year as part of a push to increase diversity in its student body.

In addition to grades and teacher recommendations, students can submit two-minute videos explaining why they’re a fit for the school, and choose from an array of quirky essay questions. (Sample prompt: “If there’s a limited amount of matter in the universe, how can Olive Garden offer truly unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks?”)

Applications went up by one-fifth the year of the change, according to the university’s director of undergraduate admissions, Peter Wilson. The school also saw a 24% increase in the number of first-generation students who enrolled, and a 60% bump in the number of rural students. Black students made up 10% of the new class, compared with 5% of the university’s

enrollment overall, and the number of veterans on campus also increased.

Some of those increases could stem from other changes the university made at the same time as going test-optional, said Wilson, including giving automatic $5,000 scholarships to all first-generation students and recruiting more heavily in rural areas. The school’s 35 full-time admissions officers read just under 35,000 applications last year.

“Every high school in the world is assigned an admissions officer, so they’re each able to read the application in the context of where the student is coming from,” said Wilson. “We have admissions officers who are trained on reading Chinese applications. People find their niches.”

It’s unclear how that level of specialization would work at UC, where UCLA alone received more than 100,000 applications for its fall 2019 entering class and some campuses hire armies of temporary admissions readers. The university’s holistic review process takes into account 14 factors, including honors and advanced placement courses, class rank and special talents.

UC could choose to add scores from the state’s 11th grade assessment test to that mix, an option endorsed by a number of education researchers and Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Every California student is required to take that test, which is known as Smarter Balanced and was developed at UC. The computeradaptive exam predicts first-year college performance about as well as the SAT but yields more diversity among students at the top of the applicant pool, according to a study by the independent think tank Policy Analysis for California Education.

“It’s more aligned to our state standards, is a richer test in terms of the content that it covers and seems to have less of a disparate impact on underrepresented minorities,” said study author Michal Kurlaender. Accepting scores from the Smarter Balanced test as well as those on the SAT and ACT for a period of time would allow researchers to learn more about how the tests compare, Kurlaender said.

Because students already prepare for the Smarter Balanced test in class, those whose families can pay for tutoring might have less of an advantage, said Michael Kirst, a Stanford education professor and former chair of the state Board of Education.

“I can work with my teacher to improve my scores,” said Kirst. “That would be a very different strategy than ‘I’m going to go off and buy tutoring at some shopping center.’ ”

“If UC cannot legally consider the effect or race and segregation on test performance, neither should it consider SAT or ACT scores.”

—Saul Geiser