More colleges are making the SAT optional. Should high school students still take them?

PITTSBURGH — When she participates in fall meetings with parents of college-bound seniors, Clairton, Pennsylvania, high school counselor Maureen Shaw has come to expect a disconnect on the subject of standardized tests.

Specifically, it’s over the option students have today not to take them.

“It’s different than when they went to school and everyone took the SAT,” Shaw said. “It’s foreign to a lot of them.”

But might those students unwittingly be shutting doors on themselves by not taking the exam?

Indeed, three-quarters of bachelor’s degree-granting colleges and universities — more than 1,700 of them — will not require ACT or SAT scores from recent high school graduates seeking to enroll in fall of 2023, according to a survey reported in July by FairTest, a group long critical of standardized testing in college admissions.

For parents and students, the challenge may be to capitalize on the latitude they now have while making sure they do not overlook the possibility that their short list of campuses includes those that still mandate the test.

“Don’t assume,” said Kellie Laurenzi, associate vice president for enrollment management at Robert Morris University, which has a test-optional policy.

“Students should look at their colleges to see if its policies are different than test optional. Some may still require it,” she said. “A blanket test-optional policy may not apply to all majors.”

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It’s worth checking to see if certain scholarships or honors programs require the tests, experts say. Depending on the student, and how strong a test-taker that person is, taking the exam and choosing to submit scores as part of an application could strengthen their case for admission.

“Use it if it helps you,” Shaw said of the test. “Don’t use it if it doesn’t.'”

During the last three decades, the share of colleges requiring standardized tests already had diminished amid complaints that exams disadvantage low-income and minority students, as well as disagreements over how well the tests actually predict campus success.

Then, in 2020, the pandemic hit, creating a whole new dynamic.

That year, as instruction went remote and families struggled with health and financial effects of COVID-19, colleges suddenly had a harder time predicting who would show up to enroll and how many of that group could take the exam, given lockdowns and canceled testing dates.

The number of schools with test-optional policies ballooned — from 1,070 just before the pandemic to over 1,700 for the 2023 admissions cycle. Many began as experiments that some campuses opted to extend. It remains unclear how many will revert to requiring the exams, and some schools have recently opted to make their optional policies permanent.

The University of Pittsburgh extended its optional policy through fall 2023.

Provost Ann Cudd has cited both the pandemic and a desire to recruit students “whose diverse talents and potential for leadership may not be well measured by standardized tests.”

The test optional policy for admissions applies to all programs on Pitt’s five campuses, said Kellie Kane, associate vice provost for enrollment and executive director for admissions.

“It’s a personal choice,” she said. “It will not be used against them if they choose not to submit a score. You will be equally considered. We’re completely test optional.”

Meanwhile, the debate continues over the usefulness of those tests — and whether other methods to judge college readiness are any better.

The College Board said there are reasons to take the exam, and that most students — 83% when surveyed — want at least the option to use them.

In the class of 2020, nearly 1.7 million U.S. students had SAT scores that confirmed or exceeded their high school GPA, said Priscilla Rodriguez, College Board senior vice president of college readiness assessments.

“That means that their SAT scores were a point of strength on their college applications. Among those students, more than 300,000 were from small towns and rural communities; 600,000 were first-generation college goers; and 700,000 were Native, Black or Latino,” she said in a statement.

Earlier this year, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology generated news by announcing that it was reinstating the SAT requirement.

“Our research has shown that, in most cases, we cannot reliably predict students will do well at MIT unless we consider standardized test results alongside grades, coursework, and other factors,” said Stuart Schmill, MIT’s dean of admissions and student financial services. “These findings are statistically robust and stable over time, and hold when you control for socioeconomic factors and look across demographic groups.”

A standardized test requirement also is being reinstated at Georgetown University, some university systems in the South, among them Florida and Georgia, plus some small religious oriented colleges for institution-specific or ideological reasons, FairTest officials said.

Others are going in the opposite direction, extending or even making their optional test policies permanent.

The University of Connecticut is extending its test-optional pilot through at least fall 2026.

Public universities in Iowa are making their optional test policies permanent. The board of regents governing those schools noted in a report that others in the Big 10 and Big 12 had done the same and laid out why Iowa was joining them.

“Analysis showed that while standardized tests do provide some additional information on student preparation, they are not strong predictors of student success outside of first year college grades,” its report stated. “The likelihood of graduating in four years was fairly consistent based on GPA, irrespective of the ACT score level.”