FairTest has been battling the abuse, misuse, and overuse of standardized testing since the early 1970s. It took a global pandemic to demonstrate that students applying to college need not take a standardized test for admission. How will colleges decide whom to admit? They will figure it out. Just watch. Many colleges and universities went test-optional years ago and managed to choose their first-year class.
MORE THAN HALF OF ALL U.S. FOUR-YEARS COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES WILL BE TEST-OPTIONAL FOR FALL 2021 ADMISSION;
SHARP INCREASE IN SCHOOLS DROPPING ACT/SAT DRIVES TOTAL TO 1,240
A new tally of higher education testing policies shows that more than half of all 4-year colleges and universities will not require applicants to submit ACT or SAT scores for fall 2021 admission. The National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest), which maintains a master list, reports that 1,240 institutions are now test-optional. The National Center for Educational Statistics counted 2,330 U.S. bachelor-degree granting schools during the 2018-2019 academic year.
Fully 85% of the U.S. News “Top 100” national liberal arts colleges now have ACT/SAT-optional policies in place, according to a FairTest data table. So do 60 of the “Top 100” national universities, including such recent additions as Brown, CalTech, Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, UPenn, Virginia, Washington University in St. Louis, and Yale.
Bob Schaeffer, FairTest’s interim Executive Director, explained, “The test-optional admissions was growing rapidly before the COVID-19 pandemic. 2019 was the best year ever with 51 more schools dropping ACT/SAT requirements, driving the total to 1,040. Another 21 colleges and universities followed suit in the first 10 weeks of this year. Since mid-March, however, the strong ACT/SAT-optional wave became a tsunami.” FairTest has led the test-optional movement since the late-1980s when standardized exams were required by all but a handful of schools.
A FairTest chronology shows that nearly 200 additional colleges and universities have gone test-optional so far this spring. All told, U.S. News now lists more than 540 test-optional schools in the first tier of their respective classifications, including public university systems in California, Delaware, Indiana, New Hampshire, Oregon, and Washington State.
“We are especially pleased to see many public universities and access-oriented private colleges deciding that test scores are not needed to make sound admissions decisions,” Schaeffer continued. “By going test-optional, all types of schools can increase diversity without any loss of academic quality. Eliminating ACT/SAT requirements is a ‘win-win’ for students and schools.”
New Tally – Majority of Colleges Are ACT/SAT-Optional for 2021
Schaeffer also noted that interest in FairTest’s web directory has spiked over the past three months, “Daily visitor levels have nearly tripled, demonstrating the appeal of test-optional admissions to teenagers, who know that these schools will treat them as more than a score.”
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– FairTest’s frequently updated directory of test-optional, 4-year schools is available free online at https://www.fairtest.org/university/optional — sort geographically by clicking on “State”
– A current chronology of schools dropping ACT/SAT requirements is at http://www.fairtest.org/sites/default/files/Optional-Growth-Chronology.pdf
– The list of test-optional schools ranked in the top tiers by U.S. News & World Report is posted at http://www.fairtest.org/sites/default/files/Optional-Schools-in-U.S.News-Top-Tiers.pdf
I hope the AP exams are next – does not prepare students for higher education.
Now to take down the AP Empire!
I know I’m an outlier here but this worries me. There is subjective bias. That exists. What’s the protection for students that they’ll get a fair shot in college admissions?
I think it’s oddly elitist to believe that each student is getting or will get a rigorous, multi-layered evaluation for college admission at non-selective colleges. I just don’t think that happens in the colleges and universities the vast, vast majority of students attend.
It’s nice that Harvard and Stanford can do it. What about the other 99%?
The lower income kids who come out of my local high school with a high ACT score HAVE THAT to compete with. It’s vital for them. They need the score to even have a shot. What’s my guarantee that college admissions metrics will be any fairer without these tests?
If you think that each student who enrolls at a community college or non-selective state school is getting an exhaustive, nuanced group eval on their abilities prior to enrollment I would submit that you have not attended one of these schools. That just isn’t going to happen. They’re going to use some other shortcut, some other proxy, except now we won’t know what they’re using.
I don’t think this is progress.
I guess I’m very dense today Chiara but I don’t understand. Community colleges are open admissions, requiring only diploma or GED, w/the exception of a few specialized programs. Likewise to a somewhat lesser degree non-selective state schools. Why would they be doing a nuanced admissions evaln or need test-scores et al shortcuts?
Thanks for the response. My concern is that without the score they won’t get any real evaluation and they rely on the scores to award money for college in community colleges and state schools.
I just think if you’re coming from a high school that doesn’t offer all of the courses a richer school might – advanced science and math, that sort of thing, the ACT score can give you an edge over students who come from better-resourced schools.
I know that I personally benefited from a higher standardized test score. I got a nearly full ride at a less competitive college because they wanted to attract higher scoring students. I graduated having paid a total of 1500 hundred dollars out of pocket. They told us it was based on being top ten in scores for their school.
I just think it’s a route for students and I would be reluctant to cut it off. It benefits some of them. I know. I was one. Is it too reductive and kind of a dumb game? Yes. But they have to play. They can’t just hope the rules change.
@Chiara….The amount of dollars available for merit based scholarships hasn’t increased in many, many years, but the amount of students vying for that scholarship money his increased dramatically. Wealthy parents will pay for the tutoring and test prep to “compete” for this money (given based on SAT scores) yet these are the same parents that can afford to send their children off to college. Sorry, but the tests need to go and the scholarship money should be allocated to those who actually need the funds.
I’m thinking the same thing as LisaM, Chiara. What scholarship $?
I’m a generation older than you. In the mid-’60’s I got an Ivy League ed at state-school prices thanks to NYRegents Scholarship, & it wasn’t about SAT scores, just a solid B+ plugger & Natl Honor Society. 40 yrs later the availability of scholarship $ for my millennial sons was near-nil, reserved for stars. One got a 25% disc off [reasonable, small-school] tuition, thanks again not to [middling] SAT but to good hisch grades/ being a plugger [IEP student]. Today? You tell me, you’ve got teens…
Meanwhile, admission to CC does not require high SAT scores nor scholarship assistance. The tuition at our local CC is $10k: doable for many midclass NJ families; also a # which can be earned by a hisch grad twice over by working a min-wage NJ job for 1 yr, thus earning price of AA. It’s a good CC network w/many branches & majors. Many of my millennial kids’ cohort chose that path, then transferred to 4-yr NJ state colleges by virtue of how well they did in CC – SAT/ ACT not a factor in whether they got tuition assistance there [price double CC @ $20k/yr]. They may have needed loans for that transition. But, again: $20k/yr can be earned in one year of FT min-wage work here. So any loans reqd can be paid off in a reasonable pd of time, w/o reqg hi-wage salary right off the bat.
Of course, the picture I paint requires the student to be living at home & commuting to school, which all of those kids were doing. I recognize that NJ is not Ohio: it’s quite possible to do that here due to dense pop. There are many CCs & 4-yr colleges of good reputation w/n reach of studs’ family homes, even by public transportation.
But the point is, scholarship assistance by virtue of high SAT/ACT doesn’t even come into play– & I suspect it’s a myth for your ave college student anyway. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that’s a paradigm applying only to unusual students applying to well-endowed colleges.
But this is not about equity. It is all about the bottom line. They want to expand the market, attract more students and get paid.
Given the gender bias in grading (girls who expected to graduate high school in 2013 had, on average, a 5.5% higher overall high school gpa than boys, boys had a .4% higher overall ACT score), I think ending standardized exams will cause colleges and universities to become even more female. UNC Chapel Hill is about 60% female. If high school grades are the only allowed criteria, I would not be surprised to them go to 70% or more female.
See https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/Info-Brief-2014-12.pdf for the gender breakdown of grades and ACT scores.
Girls have long had an advantage over boys on reading tests. How will ending the tests give them a bigger advantage? Since men still control Most major corporations, what difference do girls’ higher test scores make in life outcomes?
As cited above, girls do not have an advantage in the ACT exam. Because they do with grades, public ivies like UNC Chapel Hill will be even more female. Women earn a little over 57% of the undergraduate degrees, a little over 58% of the masters degrees, and a little 52% of the masters degrees (see https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_318.10.asp?current=yes) when we allow teacher independent evidence of academic proficiency, how much higher do you think it will be if we disallow these teacher independent measures like AP, SAT, SAT subject exams, and ACT exams?
CEO’s of major corporations are a lagging indicator of education. They reflect education and society as it was 30-40 years ago.
Girls have had reading test scores superior to boys for many years on NAEP.
The same is true on other standardized tests.
If you read the work of conservative economist Jay Greene at the Walton-funded Department of Education Reform of the University of Arkansas, you will learn that test scores have no bearing on later life success.
I don’t understand your point, TE. Women represent a tiny %age of CEO’s, & that’s reflected right down through the corporate hierarchy. I listen in on my husband’s covid-era conference calls: women participants are about 1/15. His is the engrg/constr field; I was in it in ’70’s-’80’s; women represented maybe 1/30+ then. As you say, CEO stats lag ed by 30-40 yrs. So what if sans SAT/ACT women come to represent even more than 60% of unis? Guess you’re saying, they’re better bets on graduating [from admissions POV] cuz of high GPA’s, compared to men w/their marginally higher test scores. So men will have to accept admissions at lesser colleges, but will continue to outpace women in the working world for the foreseeable future? Pity.
Women have outnumbered men in college for about 30 years. Girls get higher reading scores than boys. But men dominate the top corporations.
I agree with Chiara and Teachingeconomist. What are we celebrating? Replacing an imperfect college admissions criterion with pure subjectivity?
Now all the power lies in the admissions committee. Whom will they like? Soccer players? pianists? social activists? Maybe they will pick students whose families have money or whose parents were alumni.
High school GPA is an important criterion but also is not perfect. Grades can often reflect accommodating behaviors, not abilities.
And as I have written before on this blog (based on experiences as both a teacher and as a parent), the SAT and ACT give boys a chance to show abilities that they often do not show in the classroom.
Also, living in a rural state, I am aware that students in tiny schools might easily get straight As (there isn’t a lot of competition) and, without a national test, they will never know how they compare with students in schools with many more opportunities. Nor will colleges really know their abilities.
Are admissions committees going to interview every student? Even if they did, that also is subjective–a committee could take a dislike to a student’s personality. Are they going to place heavier emphasis on admissions essays? If so, that often would benefit girls.
In my opinion, the best decisions are based on a wide variety of criteria. This no-test trend isn’t as simple or easy or fair as it is being presented.
Nothing objective about the SAT. The more money your family has, the higher your scores will be. In addition to pre-existing advantages, rich families hire tutors.
Do you think that high school grades are objective? The more money a family has, the higher the gpa.
A four-year transcript tells college officials more about a student than a test score on one day.
We are getting rid of all the exams though, correct? My middle child took the PSAT, SAT, Three SAT subject exams, and 9 AP exams. Might those exam scores have some useful information about academic achievement?
This is such an interesting post, Montana teacher. I find myself agreeing & disagreeing w/you in turns.
“Grades can often reflect accommodating behaviors, not abilities.”
This is a direct attack on teachers’ professionalism. (You sound like a Mom of boys, like me.) I like to think that it all averages out. In hisch, a kid has some 20 teachers. As a Mom of 3 boys, I did not find the majority leaning toward “accommodating behaviors [i.e., girls’ behaviors].” (Nor did I find that in earlier grades.) I found au contraire that teachers leaned into those who showed intelligence & aptitude, yet had difficulties “toeing the line.” If anything, I’d say the boys got more attention than the girls, precisely because they seemed to need drawing out. If anything, the accommodating girls were taken for granted.
“the SAT and ACT give boys a chance to show abilities that they often do not show in the classroom.” Well I just have trouble w/that cuz all 3 of my boys were creative & great on projects, yet not great at testing… And also cuz they were pretty darn good at piping up & contributing to class discussion. Whereas there were plenty of girls who sat back mute as boys discussed, yet outdid them in testing!
“students in tiny schools might easily get straight As (there isn’t a lot of competition) and, without a national test, they will never know how they compare with students in schools with many more opportunities. Nor will colleges really know their abilities.” Here I think you hone in on the one perhaps primary support for SAT/ACT. We have such a vastly diverse population, & those in tiny rural-pocket schools have no rep to recommend them to admissions folks. Same goes for kids in poor inner-city urban schools. How else can the unusual sudent deserving of attention stand out?
Kids in poor inner city schools get no boost from standardized test because they are highly correlated with family income