Is Standardized Testing Back?

Was “test-optional” just a COVID anomaly?

The idea of ditching “standardized” testing isn’t new. Test-optional policies have been around long before COVID-19. All that the pandemic did was push many schools to put it into practice – a live “test run,” if you will.

A brief history of “test-optional” policies in U.S. schools

The idea that standardized tests don’t accurately reflect students’ achievements has been around probably as long as the tests themselves – and it was especially picking up steam in the lead-up to the pandemic of 2020. If you brush the digital dust off some old newspaper archives, you can find many articles from before the pandemic that bemoan admissions offices’ reliance on tests – such as this article from 2017, or this one from March of 2019. Long before things like “herd immunity” and “social distancing” became everyday parlance, people were talking about ditching the SAT.

The first school to go “test-optional” was Bowdoin College, which went test-optional in 1969 – fifty years before the COVID pandemic. Another notable example of a pre-pandemic test-optional policy (albeit a much more recent one) is that of Brandeis, which has been in place for ten years. As the Brandeis website says,

“Since 2013, Brandeis University's test-optional policy has allowed applicants to decide for themselves whether their test results best reflect their academic ability and potential.”

FairTest, also known as The National Center for Fair & Open Testing, is an organization that has even been promoting the test-optional process since the 1980’s. (Learn more about “test-optional” and “test-blind” admissions processes on their page.) 

Clearly, the idea that SAT and ACT scores don’t fully (or even accurately) reflect an individual student has been around for a long time.

How did COVID affect “test-optional”?

During the pandemic (and especially for students who applied in 2020, when much of the world was still on lockdown), many students simply couldn’t take standardized tests. Often there were no open testing centers nearby. In addition, many students had an elderly relative at home and, for that relative’s safety, couldn’t risk exposing themselves, catching SARS-CoV-2, and bringing the disease into their family.

Schools had to cope with the sudden surge of applicants wanting to apply without test scores, or risk drastically cutting down their applicant pool. The answer, for most of them, was to go “optional” – an idea that was preexistent on many schools’ radars, and had probably already been voiced by members of the admissions committees. Most schools allowed students to apply without tests (with the exception of some in places like Florida and Georgia). However, there was no easy way to make students prove that they hadn’t taken the test because they couldn’t take it. (Perhaps some students had taken the test, and simply didn’t want to submit their scores. Schools had to accept this.) The pandemic forced most of the USA’s schools to become, effectively, “test-optional.”

But is this approach to admissions over now? Was this only a pandemic-era trend?

Is the test coming back? (Yes and no.)

Post-pandemic, the test still exists, but it’s not making much of a comeback.

In 2023, there are now vaccines for the virus, and despite continued high infection rates, pandemic-era restrictions have been dropped in most places. However, most schools are still not bringing back standardized testing requirements.

In 2021, the University of California required all schools to remove the SAT and ACT from their admissions criteria – and it hasn’t reversed that decision. More recently, the California State schools have followed along, ditching any form of “standardized” testing altogether.

Is the “test” finally coming to an end?

A handful of schools will keep testing going

As much as those who disapprove of the SAT may rejoice at this seemingly-continued test-optional movement, there are holdouts – some schools, in fact, are going back to the old way of things. The most high-profile of these isn’t Harvard or Stanford; Harvard has extended its “test-optional” policy to 2025, and Stanford is continuing to not require tests. The school “bucking the trend,” however, is no less prestigious; it’s the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In a complete turn-around, MIT has decided to reinstate its testing requirement.

Why bring it back?

In a very long article with copious footnotes, Stu Schmill, the Dean of Admissions and Student Financial Services at MIT, makes the school’s case for doing this. Part of this appeal is for academic preparedness in mathematics – which the SAT does, in fact, measure reasonably well. Because it’s a technical school, mathematics is crucial to all students at MIT, regardless of major. Therefore, MIT must make sure that its students can handle its rigorous math courses. That much, at least, is what you might expect.

However, Schmill makes a second point that may leave many readers confused: that having test scores as a required component of students’ applications actually increases diversity in the admitted student body.

How do test scores increase diversity?

This claim is in direct opposition to what most SAT-opponents claim: that the SAT is unfair to low-income students. Schmill’s claim isn’t against this; rather, he argues that, among its alternatives, the SAT is in fact more equitable.

And MIT isn’t the only school to come to this conclusion. A 229-page report published by the University of California (despite the UC system’s decision to scrap standardized testing requirements) showed that having the test as a factor actually helped minorities.

A major issue among low-income families (and all students, really) is the drop-out rate, and the SAT may have something to do with that. The study reveals a positive correlation between students’ SAT scores and their likelihood of finishing college, showing that “a student admitted with a low SAT score is between two and five times more likely to drop out after one year, and up to three times less likely to complete their degree compared to a student with a high score.”

Here’s the study's surprising finding: if you just look at a student’s grades, it doesn’t tell you as much about their likelihood of graduating college as their SAT score does. And the UC study discovered that many minorities and low-income students were in fact admitted to the UC because of their test scores – that is, their grades alone wouldn’t have been enough.

It’s not popular, but…

The ideas supported by MIT and the UC study are certainly worth considering: that even if the test isn’t close to perfect, it does offer an avenue for low-income students to get into college. This article from the National Review explains how high-income students have easy access to a lot of non-SAT components of an application, such as “essays, extracurriculars, and legacy status”… all of which low-income students don’t often have.

As much as many upper- or middle-class Bay Area students may chafe at being required, once again, to take the SAT, the test could level the playing field a bit more across the income-board. Not everyone has the means to join a robotics club or volunteer at a hospital, but most students can set aside a few hours of their day to study.

Is the test a bad thing?

No. The SAT is neither straightforwardly good nor bad. As for its ability to determine a student’s admissibility to a college… this remains a complicated topic. MIT has decided that it can make a better-informed admissions decision with, not without, this information. Other schools, such as Purdue and Georgia Tech, have followed suit.

However, what if you aren’t applying to these schools? Should you take the test?

Yes. If you’re able to take it, you should. If you don’t receive the results you’d like, then test-optional policies allow you to simply not offer information that would work against you. A good test score, however, can only give you more positive information to present to colleges, even if the colleges are test-optional! 

The test is a good indicator of several things, such as:

• ability to study

• ability to form and meet deadlines

• dedication

To schools that are still test-optional (i.e. most of them), students are of course not obligated to send their scores. But take it and – even if you’re not applying to Georgia Tech or MIT – study hard to do the absolute best that you can. Taking the test would give you a choice of what to do with your test scores – a choice augmented, not diminished, by test-optional policies.