After four months filled with six cancellations, I sat in a silent, stuffy gym and finally achieved the quintessential high school experience of sitting down for 180 minutes to take the SAT. It was October, a month before my first round of college applications were due, and a few months after I had given up on studying. Around the country, many students experienced the same struggles: despite lockdowns and quarantines, the College Board reported that 2.2 million students still managed to take the SAT at least once in 2020. In a world where a global pandemic brought all events to a standstill, ceaseless police brutality caused racial tensions to boil over, and natural disasters ravaged the South and Southwest, standardized testing should have been the least of students’ worries. Yet colleges resisted going test-optional until the last minute, and some—such as Florida state schools, due to the reliance of state scholarship programs on standardized testing—never went test-optional at all. Though standardized testing is considered an essential piece of applications to many colleges, colleges should no longer require test scores because they disadvantage applicants of color and applicants from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. And, as the 2020-2021 application cycle has demonstrated, colleges are capable of carrying out admissions with test-optional policies.
Standardized testing should not be required in college admissions because it historically disadvantages applicants of color and applicants of lower socioeconomic backgrounds. The greatest predictor of standardized testing scores is not stellar grades or a long list of extracurriculars, but family income; students whose families make more than $80,000 tend to do far better on the SAT than those whose families make less (Perry). Unfortunately, wealth distribution runs along racial lines, as “white families had the highest median family wealth at $171,000, compared to black and Hispanic families, which had $17,600 and $20,700, respectively” (Perry). This inequality means that students of color, who may have to work in order to support their families and often lack access to tutoring, practice tests, and other important resources, struggle more on standardized testing. In 2019, while 55% of Asian-American students and 45% of white students scored over a 1200 (about 75th percentile) on the SAT, only 12% of Hispanic students and 9% of black students achieved the same (College Board). These disparities in scores reveal that by requiring these tests for applications, colleges hold students of color at a disadvantage. In order to make the college process more equitable to students of lower economic statuses and to students of color, colleges should adopt test-optional policies.
Furthermore, the purpose of standardized testing for the companies that own them is profit, rather than the benefit of students, which harms students’ mental health. Historically, it is evident that the College Board—which owns the SAT—engineers its testing systems to best generate revenue, despite its status as a “nonprofit” organization. For instance, both the ACT and the College Board give students the option to purchase study materials upon test registration; yet these organizations, the College Board in particular, “never claimed that test prep could improve scores until it was available for free online, at which point the evidence of improvement came rolling in” (Perry). Rather than acknowledging the impact income inequality has on their tests, the College Board chose to hide the advantage gained by test prep, while continuing to supply it to those who could pay. Recently, in January of 2021, the College Board decided to no longer offer SAT subject tests or the optional essay. While they claimed that this was done to alleviate pressure on students, the evidence, such as College Board’s loss of over $200 million from canceled tests during the pandemic, suggests a financial motive. Eliminating subject tests places greater emphasis on AP exams, class-specific tests that are also offered by the College Board. But while it costs $26 for three SAT subject tests, students pay $95 for a single AP exam; furthermore, “the College Board’s own data shows that Black and Latino students routinely score worse than white students on AP exams, as they do on the SAT” (Adams). Under the guise of supporting students’ mental health, the College Board has eliminated an unprofitable enterprise to place more emphasis on AP testing, which costs more in addition to carrying the same racial biases as the SAT. Rather than prioritizing the mental health and ultimate success of students, standardized testing companies view students as sources of revenue.
As the pandemic has forced many colleges to go test-optional thanks to shutdowns and test closures, colleges are finally acknowledging this incredible toll preparing for these tests takes on students. Even the Ivy League, which holds its applicants to the highest standard, adopted test-optional policies for the 2020-2021 admissions cycle. In statements announcing these policies to the public, Brown states that “we hope that adopting a test-optional policy for the 2020-21 admission cycle will better enable students to prioritize their health and well-being, and that of their families, as the summer and fall continue to unfold,” and Dartmouth reassures students that “‘Optional’ is not a trick word … Worries about oversubscribed test sites, anxiety regarding limited registration access and the incongruity of test prep during a quarantine can be set aside” (Hess). While these statements acknowledge that quarantines have certainly made standardized testing more difficult, why should colleges resume their disregard for students’ mental health once the world goes back to normal? Cornell states that only students who “have not experienced lost income for one or more of their household providers or other significant new hardships and losses during 2020” are expected to submit test scores (Hess). But “lost income” and “significant hardships” are problems that harm students even without COVID-19. Whether or not colleges such as these Ivies adopt a test-optional policy once the pandemic subsides will reveal whether they truly care about students’ mental health, or are simply capitalizing on it as a publicity stunt. As students have to navigate the stressful time of college application season—while continuing to participate in extracurriculars, take on heavy course loads, and work at minimum-wage jobs—they should not be forced to have their academic worth determined by companies who clearly value students for their testing fees rather than their intellectual merit. By removing testing requirements, colleges allow students to prioritize their mental health as they navigate the stressful application process.
Colleges have been considering test-optional policies for many years, and as evidenced by the 2020-2021 application cycle, standardized testing, while perhaps helpful, is not necessary for college admissions. In 2021, over 1,600 schools went test-optional to accommodate to nationwide testing center closes due to the pandemic (Adams). As the final colleges release admissions results and Decision Day quickly approaches, these colleges have managed to fill their ranks with qualified students without mandatory standardized testing. Though it may have been difficult, test-optional policies are clearly viable to the admissions process, causing colleges to focus on other areas of a student’s application (such as essays, letters of recommendation, and extracurriculars) instead. But while the pandemic has certainly hastened the shift to test-optional, it did not initiate it. Aware of the disadvantages that standardized testing requirements give students of color, the University of California system—the largest American institution of higher education—explored the idea of going test-optional before the pandemic, finally announcing in May of 2020 their decision to eradicate standardized testing requirements by 2023 (Adams). UC’s decision demonstrates how colleges have already begun to leave the SAT and ACT behind. While this pattern has yet to become widespread amongst larger universities, recent history suggests that they will soon follow suit. UC sealed the downfall of SAT subject tests once it lifted their requirement in 2012, and as Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education, states, “this will quite possibly lead other public universities to say, ‘Well if the U.C. can do without it, why do we still need it?’” (Hubler). This shift, accelerated by the pandemic, clearly demonstrates that colleges all over the nation are capable of conducting admissions without standardized testing.
Many advocates for standardized testing claim that the SAT and ACT help colleges accurately predict first-year grades and retention rate. In a study conducted in 2019, the College Board reports that the most accurate predictor of students’ first-year college GPA to be the SAT combined with high school GPA, stating that adding the use of SAT scores increase accuracy by 15%. Furthermore, the study found that students with higher scores were more likely return to their first-year colleges, with students scoring between 1400 and 1600 having a 92% retention rate, as opposed to a 72% rate for students scoring between a 800 and 990 (College Board). To admissions counselors seeking to craft freshman classes stocked with successful students, these statistics are alluring. Seeking to counter the idea that standardized testing harms applicants of color, the College Board points out that the SAT and ACT helped some black and Hispanic along with low-income students “by offering an additional metric for those who might have been rejected based on grades” (Hubler). However, these points are easily addressed by examining the methodology of the College Board’s 2019 study and by understanding the meaning of “test-optional.” First, it is evident that the College Board yet again ignored—or perhaps intentionally excluded—minority students in its 2019 study; its methodology states that “the study sample, which included students who were enrolled in college, tended to have slightly more female students, slightly more white students and fewer black or African American students, and more students whose highest parental education level was a bachelor’s degree or higher than the overall SAT-taking population” (College Board). By focusing on the white students whose parents had attained higher degrees (which, incidentally, happens to also be the wealthiest demographic), the College Board attains results that only apply to the already-successful population. While mandatory standardized testing may aid admissions offices in predicting achievements for these applicants, there is little evidence stating that this benefit applies to the students who are actively harmed by standardized testing. Second, under a test- optional policy, students who benefit from standardized testing (such as the aforementioned minorities with high test scores and low grades) retain the opportunity to submit their scores. Rather than taking benefits away, colleges who adopt test-optional policies for admission allow the students who do well on these tests to showcase their strengths, while removing the barriers of race, socioeconomic status, and stress that harm so many students under the status quo.
Standardized testing has been a central part of college applications for decades. Yet it is apparent that standardized testing unfairly disadvantages students of color and of lower socioeconomic statuses, while also taking an enormous toll on students’ mental health. Test-optional policies eliminate this burden, while preserving the advantages gained by all high-scoring individuals. In eliminating requirements for the SAT and ACT, colleges prove to students that they value them as people, rather than a group of statistics. The question in focus shifts from What is the best way to assess a student’s academic potential? to How can we best cultivate students’ future success and well-being? And as college-bound seniors trying our best just to finish out the year, that makes all the difference.
Works CitedAdams, Susan. "The College Board Is Eliminating The SAT Essay And Subject Tests And Reviving Plans To Offer The SAT Online." Forbes, 19 Jan. 2021, www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2021/01/19/the-college-board-is-eliminat... y-and-subject-tests-and-reviving-plans-to-offer-the-sat-online/?sh=3ce8486979ab. Accessed 15 Mar. 2021.
Hess, Abigail. "Harvard, Yale and 5 Other Ivy League Schools Will Not Require SATs or ACTs for Admissions Next Year." CNBC, 18 June 2020, www.cnbc.com/2020/06/17/7-ivy-league-schools-will-not-require-sats-or-ac... l. Accessed 9 Mar. 2021.
Hubler, Shawn. "Why Is the SAT Falling Out of Favor?" The New York Times, 23 May 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/05/23/us/SAT-ACT-abolish-debate-california.html. Accessed 15 Mar. 2021.
Perry, Andre M. "Students Need More Than an SAT Adversity Score, They Need a Boost in Wealth." Brookings, 15 July 2019, www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2019/05/17/students-need-more-than-an-.... Accessed 9 Mar. 2021.
Westrick, Paul A., et al. "Validity of the SAT for Predicting First-Year Grades and Retention to the Second Year." College Board, 2019, https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/national-sat-validity-stud.... Accessed 9 Mar. 2021.
Standardized testing should not be required in college admissions because it historically disadvantages applicants of color and applicants of lower socioeconomic backgrounds. The greatest predictor of standardized testing scores is not stellar grades or a long list of extracurriculars, but family income; students whose families make more than $80,000 tend to do far better on the SAT than those whose families make less (Perry). Unfortunately, wealth distribution runs along racial lines, as “white families had the highest median family wealth at $171,000, compared to black and Hispanic families, which had $17,600 and $20,700, respectively” (Perry). This inequality means that students of color, who may have to work in order to support their families and often lack access to tutoring, practice tests, and other important resources, struggle more on standardized testing. In 2019, while 55% of Asian-American students and 45% of white students scored over a 1200 (about 75th percentile) on the SAT, only 12% of Hispanic students and 9% of black students achieved the same (College Board). These disparities in scores reveal that by requiring these tests for applications, colleges hold students of color at a disadvantage. In order to make the college process more equitable to students of lower economic statuses and to students of color, colleges should adopt test-optional policies.
Furthermore, the purpose of standardized testing for the companies that own them is profit, rather than the benefit of students, which harms students’ mental health. Historically, it is evident that the College Board—which owns the SAT—engineers its testing systems to best generate revenue, despite its status as a “nonprofit” organization. For instance, both the ACT and the College Board give students the option to purchase study materials upon test registration; yet these organizations, the College Board in particular, “never claimed that test prep could improve scores until it was available for free online, at which point the evidence of improvement came rolling in” (Perry). Rather than acknowledging the impact income inequality has on their tests, the College Board chose to hide the advantage gained by test prep, while continuing to supply it to those who could pay. Recently, in January of 2021, the College Board decided to no longer offer SAT subject tests or the optional essay. While they claimed that this was done to alleviate pressure on students, the evidence, such as College Board’s loss of over $200 million from canceled tests during the pandemic, suggests a financial motive. Eliminating subject tests places greater emphasis on AP exams, class-specific tests that are also offered by the College Board. But while it costs $26 for three SAT subject tests, students pay $95 for a single AP exam; furthermore, “the College Board’s own data shows that Black and Latino students routinely score worse than white students on AP exams, as they do on the SAT” (Adams). Under the guise of supporting students’ mental health, the College Board has eliminated an unprofitable enterprise to place more emphasis on AP testing, which costs more in addition to carrying the same racial biases as the SAT. Rather than prioritizing the mental health and ultimate success of students, standardized testing companies view students as sources of revenue.
As the pandemic has forced many colleges to go test-optional thanks to shutdowns and test closures, colleges are finally acknowledging this incredible toll preparing for these tests takes on students. Even the Ivy League, which holds its applicants to the highest standard, adopted test-optional policies for the 2020-2021 admissions cycle. In statements announcing these policies to the public, Brown states that “we hope that adopting a test-optional policy for the 2020-21 admission cycle will better enable students to prioritize their health and well-being, and that of their families, as the summer and fall continue to unfold,” and Dartmouth reassures students that “‘Optional’ is not a trick word … Worries about oversubscribed test sites, anxiety regarding limited registration access and the incongruity of test prep during a quarantine can be set aside” (Hess). While these statements acknowledge that quarantines have certainly made standardized testing more difficult, why should colleges resume their disregard for students’ mental health once the world goes back to normal? Cornell states that only students who “have not experienced lost income for one or more of their household providers or other significant new hardships and losses during 2020” are expected to submit test scores (Hess). But “lost income” and “significant hardships” are problems that harm students even without COVID-19. Whether or not colleges such as these Ivies adopt a test-optional policy once the pandemic subsides will reveal whether they truly care about students’ mental health, or are simply capitalizing on it as a publicity stunt. As students have to navigate the stressful time of college application season—while continuing to participate in extracurriculars, take on heavy course loads, and work at minimum-wage jobs—they should not be forced to have their academic worth determined by companies who clearly value students for their testing fees rather than their intellectual merit. By removing testing requirements, colleges allow students to prioritize their mental health as they navigate the stressful application process.
Colleges have been considering test-optional policies for many years, and as evidenced by the 2020-2021 application cycle, standardized testing, while perhaps helpful, is not necessary for college admissions. In 2021, over 1,600 schools went test-optional to accommodate to nationwide testing center closes due to the pandemic (Adams). As the final colleges release admissions results and Decision Day quickly approaches, these colleges have managed to fill their ranks with qualified students without mandatory standardized testing. Though it may have been difficult, test-optional policies are clearly viable to the admissions process, causing colleges to focus on other areas of a student’s application (such as essays, letters of recommendation, and extracurriculars) instead. But while the pandemic has certainly hastened the shift to test-optional, it did not initiate it. Aware of the disadvantages that standardized testing requirements give students of color, the University of California system—the largest American institution of higher education—explored the idea of going test-optional before the pandemic, finally announcing in May of 2020 their decision to eradicate standardized testing requirements by 2023 (Adams). UC’s decision demonstrates how colleges have already begun to leave the SAT and ACT behind. While this pattern has yet to become widespread amongst larger universities, recent history suggests that they will soon follow suit. UC sealed the downfall of SAT subject tests once it lifted their requirement in 2012, and as Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education, states, “this will quite possibly lead other public universities to say, ‘Well if the U.C. can do without it, why do we still need it?’” (Hubler). This shift, accelerated by the pandemic, clearly demonstrates that colleges all over the nation are capable of conducting admissions without standardized testing.
Many advocates for standardized testing claim that the SAT and ACT help colleges accurately predict first-year grades and retention rate. In a study conducted in 2019, the College Board reports that the most accurate predictor of students’ first-year college GPA to be the SAT combined with high school GPA, stating that adding the use of SAT scores increase accuracy by 15%. Furthermore, the study found that students with higher scores were more likely return to their first-year colleges, with students scoring between 1400 and 1600 having a 92% retention rate, as opposed to a 72% rate for students scoring between a 800 and 990 (College Board). To admissions counselors seeking to craft freshman classes stocked with successful students, these statistics are alluring. Seeking to counter the idea that standardized testing harms applicants of color, the College Board points out that the SAT and ACT helped some black and Hispanic along with low-income students “by offering an additional metric for those who might have been rejected based on grades” (Hubler). However, these points are easily addressed by examining the methodology of the College Board’s 2019 study and by understanding the meaning of “test-optional.” First, it is evident that the College Board yet again ignored—or perhaps intentionally excluded—minority students in its 2019 study; its methodology states that “the study sample, which included students who were enrolled in college, tended to have slightly more female students, slightly more white students and fewer black or African American students, and more students whose highest parental education level was a bachelor’s degree or higher than the overall SAT-taking population” (College Board). By focusing on the white students whose parents had attained higher degrees (which, incidentally, happens to also be the wealthiest demographic), the College Board attains results that only apply to the already-successful population. While mandatory standardized testing may aid admissions offices in predicting achievements for these applicants, there is little evidence stating that this benefit applies to the students who are actively harmed by standardized testing. Second, under a test- optional policy, students who benefit from standardized testing (such as the aforementioned minorities with high test scores and low grades) retain the opportunity to submit their scores. Rather than taking benefits away, colleges who adopt test-optional policies for admission allow the students who do well on these tests to showcase their strengths, while removing the barriers of race, socioeconomic status, and stress that harm so many students under the status quo.
Standardized testing has been a central part of college applications for decades. Yet it is apparent that standardized testing unfairly disadvantages students of color and of lower socioeconomic statuses, while also taking an enormous toll on students’ mental health. Test-optional policies eliminate this burden, while preserving the advantages gained by all high-scoring individuals. In eliminating requirements for the SAT and ACT, colleges prove to students that they value them as people, rather than a group of statistics. The question in focus shifts from What is the best way to assess a student’s academic potential? to How can we best cultivate students’ future success and well-being? And as college-bound seniors trying our best just to finish out the year, that makes all the difference.
Works CitedAdams, Susan. "The College Board Is Eliminating The SAT Essay And Subject Tests And Reviving Plans To Offer The SAT Online." Forbes, 19 Jan. 2021, www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2021/01/19/the-college-board-is-eliminat... y-and-subject-tests-and-reviving-plans-to-offer-the-sat-online/?sh=3ce8486979ab. Accessed 15 Mar. 2021.
Hess, Abigail. "Harvard, Yale and 5 Other Ivy League Schools Will Not Require SATs or ACTs for Admissions Next Year." CNBC, 18 June 2020, www.cnbc.com/2020/06/17/7-ivy-league-schools-will-not-require-sats-or-ac... l. Accessed 9 Mar. 2021.
Hubler, Shawn. "Why Is the SAT Falling Out of Favor?" The New York Times, 23 May 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/05/23/us/SAT-ACT-abolish-debate-california.html. Accessed 15 Mar. 2021.
Perry, Andre M. "Students Need More Than an SAT Adversity Score, They Need a Boost in Wealth." Brookings, 15 July 2019, www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2019/05/17/students-need-more-than-an-.... Accessed 9 Mar. 2021.
Westrick, Paul A., et al. "Validity of the SAT for Predicting First-Year Grades and Retention to the Second Year." College Board, 2019, https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/national-sat-validity-stud.... Accessed 9 Mar. 2021.
Comments
Log in or register to post comments.