
The debate over the value of SAT and ACT tests has intensified over the last couple of months as elite institutions have come forward reinstating standardized testing requirements. Proponents emphasize standardized tests’ ability to predict college success. Conversely, opponents raise concerns about the tests’ potential biases and argue for more holistic admissions processes. For our last issue of Middle Grounds this semester, our writers have delved into this contentious debate. Keep reading to find out what they have to say.
- The Editorial Board
Pro: Universities Should Reinstate the SAT/ACT Requirement as it is the Most Objective Predictor of College Success
During the pandemic, colleges across the country adopted a test-optional approach to standardized testing, as safety concerns and testing cancellations left many high schoolers unable to take exams. Recently, prestigious institutions like Yale, MIT, Dartmouth, Harvard, and others reinstated standardized testing requirements. This decision reaffirms the commitment to meritocracy and fairness in higher education, deserving commendation as our country navigates the pandemic’s negative repercussions on education.
The transition regarding standardized testing by colleges is primarily driven by data indicating that test scores are more effective predictors of college success than high school grades. The influential Opportunity Insights study, which analyzed admissions records and first-year college grades from Ivy League institutions, Stanford, MIT, Duke, and the University of Chicago, found that students with higher SAT and ACT scores tend to achieve higher college GPAs than their counterparts with lower scores. Surprisingly, high school GPA showed limited predictive power regarding academic performance in college, partly because of grade inflation. Also, scores demonstrate a strong correlation with students’ post-college outcomes, including earnings, attendance at prestigious graduate schools, and employment at esteemed firms.
Empirical evidence points to the overarching significance of standardized testing in college admissions. Data from UT Austin reveals that among 9217 first-year students enrolled in 2023, those who opted to submit standardized test scores had an estimated average GPA 0.86 points higher during their fall semester, even after controlling for various factors such as high school class rank and GPA. Similarly, MIT’s decision to suspend its test requirement for two years was reevaluated after studying 15 years of admissions records. The analysis found that students accepted with lower test scores were more likely to face academic challenges or drop out. These findings do not come as a surprise, given that back in 2020, the University of California system found that standardized test scores were more predictive of student success than high school grades across its nine colleges, with a combined undergraduate enrollment exceeding 230,000.
While it is true that test scores are closely correlated with family income and race, with average scores for modest-income Black and Hispanic students typically lower than those for White, Asian, and upper-income students, dismissing standardized tests as biased overlooks crucial nuances. Many progressives argue that these tests perpetuate inequalities due to score gaps among different demographic groups. However, eliminating standardized tests from admissions criteria does not address the underlying issue of inequality in the United States. Disparities in SAT scores are a symptom rather than a cause of societal inequality, and research suggests that higher test scores correlate with better college performance across all racial groups. Moreover, there is no evidence to suggest that students from higher and lower socioeconomic statuses who achieve similar SAT/ACT scores demonstrate different levels of future performance.
The irony of test-optional and test-blind advocates is their failure to recognize that other factors in the college admissions process can be even more exclusionary. Wealthier students have the time and means to participate in expensive activities like internships, music lessons, and travel sports teams, boosting their application. Additionally, their essays can be heavily coached or even written by college consultants. A Stanford study indicated that essay quality is strongly correlated with household income. While affluent students have access to SAT tutoring, the most comprehensive study on the subject revealed that tutoring only produced a modest increase of approximately 20 points in test scores. Nevertheless, tutoring is far from a necessity, as initiatives like Khan Academy’s free extensive SAT prep seek to level the playing field. In essence, even with its flaws, standardized testing remains one of the more objective measures available to assess college readiness.
Contrary to popular rhetoric, the SAT/ACT plays a crucial role in identifying high-achieving students from low-income backgrounds who might otherwise be overlooked in a test-optional setting. An analysis conducted by Dartmouth revealed a concerning trend: hundreds of students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, despite achieving solid scores in the 1400s, chose not to submit them out of fear that they would pale in comparison to the perfect 1600. Research highlights the importance of considering applicants’ scores in relation to local high school norms to identify promising students. Furthermore, test scores serve as a vital differentiator among applicants, especially when 4.0 high school GPAs are ubiquitous. According to MIT admissions officers, without test scores, they were compelled to make guesses about applicants’ potential for success, possibly leading to the rejection of deserving candidates and the inadvertent admission of less qualified ones. Alternatively, MIT found itself rejecting more applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds while favoring those from privileged schools with stronger academic records, exacerbating existing disparities in educational access.
It is imperative for more colleges to embrace the overwhelming evidence supporting the use of standardized tests in admissions processes. University administrators are aware of the value of test scores, yet fear the potential backlash in an environment where political correctness heavily influences campus culture. Institutions must prioritize integrity and evidence over political considerations.
- Mira Ramachandran
Con: Universities Should Not Reinstate the SAT/ACT Requirement Due to Their Limited Relevance, High Stress Nature, and Unjust Outcomes
The Covid-19 pandemic both exacerbated existing problems in the U.S. education system and expedited their solutions. One such example is the requirement of standardized testing for college admissions. Educators, administrators, parents, and students had long expressed concerns about the weight of SAT or ACT scores in college applications. While Bowdoin College became the first test optional college in 1969, the policy remained the minority — until the spring of 2020. In light of pandemic-related testing cancellations and a nationwide reckoning with racial injustice, the number of four-year universities and colleges with test-optional policies nearly doubled between the spring of 2020 and fall of 2021, increasing from 713 to 1,350. This year, the number of colleges and universities with ACT or SAT-optional, test-blind, or score-free admissions processes hovers around 1,900 — 83% of U.S. colleges offering four year programs.
The expansion of test-optional policies has been a long time coming. After all, the SAT was created in the 1920s, and a very few other aspects of the admissions process remain the same a century later. Nonetheless, several selective universities, including Dartmouth College and Brown University, have recently reinstated testing requirements. To support student wellbeing and remove socioeconomic and racial barriers to the admissions process, schools should continue to steer clear from standardized testing requirements.
The simplest argument against requiring standardized tests is that their relevance in today’s world is diminishing. Both the SAT and ACT are timed, allowing test takers around three hours to complete sections in reading comprehension, grammar, math, and, for the ACT, science. Until the SAT revealed its online test this year, the exams had been device-free, closed-note, and proctored in often-overcrowded high school gyms or cafeterias. For students, very few situations in college or beyond will emulate these conditions. Are these tests really measuring students’ academic caliber, study habits, and potential to do well in college? While test-taking and working under pressure are important skills to learn, the testing conditions are unrealistic when considering our increasingly technological and connected world.
Further, the SAT and ACT and the preparation that they require cause exorbitant amounts of stress; 2018 research found that as high-stakes tests loom, cortisol levels (a chemical marker for stress) rise by an average of 15 percent, a physiological response linked to an 80-percent drop in SAT scores. Thus, the stress of these tests, which many students take multiple times throughout their junior and senior years, both distract from other academic commitments and can inhibit one’s ability to increase their scores. The effects are aggravated for students with learning disabilities.
Another key argument against requiring standardized tests regards equity. Particularly since the U.S. Supreme Court ended race-based affirmative action last summer, there has been an increase in attention on the ways in which many colleges favor wealthy and white applicants. While differences in academic performance by race have declined in the last 50 years, Black and Hispanic families are disproportionately likely to live in poor neighborhoods and their children are more likely to attend high-poverty schools. Recent data found that test takers whose families were in the top 20 percent of earners were seven times as likely as those in the bottom 20 to score at least 1300 on the SAT. The children of the richest 1 percent were 13 times as likely as the poorest students to score that high, while those in the top 0.1 percent scored even higher.
To explain these disparities, author and economist Nate G. Hilger stated, “K-12 schools only manage 10 percent of children’s time, and they do it pretty equitably. The other 90 percent of nonschool time — early childhood, after school, summer, private, extracurriculars, counseling, tutoring, coaching, therapy, health management — masks all the most important inequality of opportunity.” The income-based variations in test scores are a mere symptom of a problem that can begin as early as preschool. For aspiring college students, SAT and ACT scores capture only a small part of their story. Their scores are often more reflective of their parents’ literacy, their access (or lack thereof) to tutors and prep courses, and the quality of their schools than their aptitude.
Some argue that the benefit of standardized tests comes in the fact that they are standardized, therefore offering a more objective insight into a candidate than things like high school GPA, which can be affected by grade inflation. However, there are numerous other pieces of an application that can provide insight into an applicant more effectively than one number — think a course list, personal essays, and extracurricular commitments. In an ideal world, standardized tests would be just one piece of the puzzle in college admissions. But until all schools commit to a truly holistic admissions process, requiring SAT or ACT scores offers unfair advantages to a select, wealthy few and can disregard the potential of other otherwise qualified students who happen to have lower test scores.
- Lucy Newmyer
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