Test Optional Tide Teases Retreat
It’s been four years since we all hunkered down in our safe spaces, barricading ourselves against the silent, deadly specter of COVID. As schools around the world shuttered, so did the standardized testing locations they hosted. As I noted in A Crack in the Ivy, the resulting dearth of testing opportunities prompted a preponderance of colleges to suspend SAT and ACT requirements for applicants, many of whom were simply unable to find testing centers.
Two turbulent years later, in March 2022, as school routines were stumbling towards some semblance of “normal,” the first colleges to reinstate their testing requirements were, unsurprisingly, Georgetown and MIT, who have long marched to their own particular drummers in admission. (MIT was the school that in March of 2020, as the pandemic engulfed us, summarily announced that they would no longer consider the results of SAT Subject Tests, which, as I recounted in RIP Subject Tests, is a primary reason “why the College Board finally took the revenue-draining Subject Tests out behind the proverbial woodshed and did away with them.”)
In March 2023, with one more admissions cycle under their belts, Columbia and The College of William & Mary entrenched their faith in “test optional,” extending their policies to that effect for the foreseeable future. Counselors, applicants, families, and test prep companies waited with bated breath for colleges to choose sides. And waited…
Then, just last month, Dartmouth broke the silence by announcing that they would be “reactivating and reimagining” their testing requirement. Lee Coffin, Vice President and Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, whom I’ve known for over 30 years, had taken some not-entirely-undeserved heat for policies that were initially seen as crystal clear and then became frustratingly murky. The new policy seeks to return the clarity and provide much-needed context. It is worth a read.
Yale and Brown followed suit shortly thereafter, and then Penn sided with Columbia, extending test-optional, but only for one more cycle.
The Yale policy, however, is the most intriguing. Each applicant is expected to submit scores from at least one of: the SAT, the ACT, IB exams, or AP exams. Students may selectively report SAT or ACT sections in order to achieve a Superscore, but if they choose IB or AP, they must report all available exam scores. (The Dartmouth policy allows an international candidate to substitute AP or IB scores, but not domestic applicants.)
While several New York independent schools offer International Baccalaureate (IB) programs, Browning is one of a precious few schools in our peer group that still administers Advanced Placement (AP) exams. Each year, well over half of our students arrive in senior year with one or more AP scores already under their belts. Down the road, particularly if other schools follow the Yale model, this may afford some of our students added flexibility as they approach varied testing requirements.
As I wrote in The Purpose of Testing, “Admissions offices have discovered, as I surmised they would, that they can admit an equally talented, more interesting, and often more diverse class without relying on standardized test scores.” That said, the most selective schools are also running headlong into a dilemma of their own making: grade inflation. Their obsessive pursuit of low admit rates has had the entirely expected, yet unintended, consequence of encouraging high schools to offer up ever-more qualified applicants characterized by increasingly perfect grades. “A is the new B,” we say. COVID-era grading policies, implemented to protect the increasingly fragile mental health of young people subjected to the jarring transition to learning in silos, only exacerbated the problem. With a growing majority of applicants bunched in the upper echelons of the GPA grid, these same schools are once again turning to standardized test scores, which can sometimes help tease out differences among high performing students.
Take heed, though. In Navigating the Choppy Waters of Test Optional, I cautioned you to “take test optional at face value,” adding: “It is painfully easy, and often tempting, to scamper down deep into the conspiracy theory rabbit hole. Neither happiness nor wisdom will be found in those dark recesses.” As policies start to shift, however, if your curiosity is getting the better of you and you find yourself desperately searching for a flashlight and a truly deep dive, there is no more illuminating guide than professed data geek Adam Ingersoll of Compass Prep.
For schools that remain test optional, the advice I gave in Navigating about when to submit scores still largely holds true, though the decision tree may become more nuanced. The overarching principle will remain “First, do no harm.” In this regard, schools that return to a testing requirement actually make the process profoundly less complicated and anxiety ridden by simply removing the choice.