Many Colleges to Return to Test-Required Admissions
By Jack Pegler ‘24
In a statement released on February 5th of this year, Dartmouth College announced that a standardized testing requirement will return starting next year for applicants to the class of 2029.
The decision made by the institution located in Hanover, New Hampshire, broke from the 3 years of COVID-19 era test-optional admissions policy, which allowed students to decide whether or not they’d like their SAT and/or ACT scores to be one of the factors considered in their application alongside supplemental essays and grades.
The statement underscores that test-required admissions would allow the university to curate a diverse class of students across a wide range of backgrounds. With the wide variability of grading systems and curricula in US high schools, the university claims test scores serve as a more objective measure of the level of rigor an applicant is prepared to handle in their next level of education.
Dartmouth is not the only top university that has made the decision to do away with test-optional admissions. On February 22nd, Yale University announced that it will be implementing a “test-flexible” policy in the next admissions cycle, which will allow students to submit scores on alternative tests like AP and IB exams rather than the traditional SAT and ACT tests. Students are required to submit a score from at least one of the four.
Yale echoed similar statements in its decision, claiming that test-optional policies hurt lower-income applicants as students from well-resourced schools could fill their resume with alternative measures of preparedness, such as transcripts with more unique and/or advanced course loads, raving teacher recommendations, and numerous out-of-school extracurricular activities.
However, some critics argue that those same students from well-resourced schools and higher income communities will also be better equipped to ace standardized tests with the help of paid tutors and test taking classes, in addition to the price of sitting for the tests themselves–$60 and $65 for the SAT and ACT respectively. Considering that students can take the tests an unlimited number of times, many high income families are willing to shell out thousands of dollars in the hopes that their child will achieve a perfect or near perfect score on either test. In response to this concern, both universities emphasized the availability of free test preparation resources and fee waivers to mitigate these barriers and disadvantages.
As the debate continues, many are left wondering whether the actions of Dartmouth and Yale may influence other colleges and universities contemplating the future of standardized testing in their admissions policies. In the meantime, college-bound high school students will have no choice but to continue navigating the ever-complicated and changing college admissions process.
