Optics

But recently, many colleges decided to do away with standardized test score requirements. Over 600 four-year colleges and universities implemented test-optional policies during the pandemic, up from about 1,000 schools that didn’t require test scores prior to 2020. 46 percent of applications submitted through the Common App in the fall of 2020 included test results, a drop of over 30 percentage points from the previous year. 

This statement from Laurie Koehler, Senior Associate Provost for Enrollment Management at George Washington University, reflects the way many colleges publicly justified the move to test-optional:

“The test-optional policy should strengthen and diversify an already outstanding applicant pool and will broaden access for those high-achieving students who have historically been underrepresented at selective colleges and universities, including students of color, first-generation students and students from low-income households.”

But after the fall of 2022 had passed, some schools reversed course. This is what Stuart Schmill, Dean of Admissions and Student Financial Services at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had to say about the school’s decision to re-implement testing requirements for the fall of 2023:

“[E]ducational inequality impacts all aspects of a prospective student’s preparation and application, not just test-taking…low-income students, underrepresented students of color, and other disadvantaged populations often do not attend schools that offer advanced coursework…They often cannot afford expensive enrichment opportunities, cannot expect lengthy letters of recommendation from their overburdened teachers, or cannot otherwise benefit from this kind of educational capital…And unlike some other inequalities—like access to fancy internships or expensive extracurriculars—our empirical research shows the SAT/ACT actually do help us figure out if someone will do well at MIT.”

He added that he hoped the policy would help create a “robustly diverse” class.

These statements boil down to the same thing: the equity argument. But it’s being used to justify two opposite courses of action. 

A college can’t diverge from the norm—whether that’s going test-optional after years of testing requirements or re-implementing requirements after a period of test-optional—without a reason. The reason must be widely acceptable in the relatively liberal world of colleges and support an institution’s public goals, which usually include expanding access to higher education for those who have previously had difficulty securing it. 

So, contradictory actions can be backed by a uniform reason. Because though institutions may have an internal rationale that results in one policy or another, they know it benefits them to project an image mainstream in higher education—namely, that of an open-minded, diverse institution that opens doors to people of every background. 

This reputation maintenance is not necessarily malicious; every major institution has to worry about optics. Further, data on the legitimacy of test scores and impact of test-optional policies is not conclusive. 

The percentage of Black and Asian students offered admission to Harvard both rose about three percentage points in the spring of 2021 from the year prior, and the student body of the University of Southern California saw similar gains for Black and Hispanic students. Many institutions have seen significantly more applications from first-generation and racially underrepresented students and are celebrating freshman classes more diverse than ever before.

But previous studies have shown that test-optional policies implemented before the COVID-19 pandemic yielded minimal gains in diversity. One examining test-optional policies at 100 colleges that adopted the policy between 2005-06 and 2015-16 found that the share of Black, Latino, and Native American students, as well as the share of low-income students, each rose by only one percentage point, similar to schools that kept testing requirements. In fact, the improvement in enrollment for women exceeded that of the aforementioned underrepresented groups.

A 2014 study from the University of Georgia examining 32 selective liberal arts colleges with test-optional policies concluded that the policies had not made “any progress in narrowing these diversity-related gaps after they adopted test-optional policies” but had benefited the schools “in more institution-promoting ways.”

These schools are primarily focused on keeping dollars and applications rolling in. And to stay relevant and desirable, they compete with each other.

Colin S. Diver, formerly the president of Reed College, wrote a column in The New York Times in 2006 warning of how colleges benefit from going test-optional. “Once a few colleges adopt the tactic, their competitors feel pressure to follow suit, lest they suffer a drop in rank,” he wrote. “And so a new front opens in the admissions arms race.”

He astutely predicted what would happen nearly fifteen years later. Higher education author Jeffrey J. Selingo recounts a remark by an admissions dean at an Ivy League school after Selingo informed him that another selective college might soon drop its testing requirement: “That would give me an opening to follow,” he had said. “We just can’t be first.”

Save for Cornell University, which was the first Ivy League school to announce it was going test optional, in April of 2020, all of the Ivy League colleges made their test-optional announcements within two weeks of each other, in June. A similar pattern played out at other selective liberal arts schools in the spring and summer of that year.

The winds have just shifted in the test-optional direction. Colleges face backlash when going against the grain. 

Like students vying for spots in a school’s freshman class, colleges, too, are competing with each other—to appear more prestigious, more selective, to move up in the infamous U.S. News Rankings that claim to know which institution is the best in the country, and which is the second best, and why the first is number one and the second is number two and not the other way around.

For the institutions that care most about prestige, the new test-optional norm has panned out wonderfully. 

They can announce a commitment to diversity (pretty much a requirement in today’s world of higher education). They can enhance their appearance of exclusivity (with a massive boost in applications, acceptance rates have plummeted). And they can boast higher average standardized test scores than in years past (when no one is required to submit a test, the students who opt to send scores are largely those with higher ones).

“I sometimes think I should write a handbook for college admission officials titled ‘How to Play the U.S. News & World Report Ranking Game, and Win!’” writes Diver, the former Reed College president, in his New York Times op-ed. “I would devote the first chapter to a tactic called ‘SAT optional.’”

Even if these schools truly have gained ground in the equity department through test-optional, they’ve achieved this in a way that also benefits them. 

So, a win-win? Yes. But it’s less of a win for the students when one considers what else these schools could be doing to expand access to the education they offer, and aren’t.

High-profile institutions’ attempts to become—or appear—more equitable through test-optional policies do not fundamentally challenge the elite and selective image that these schools cultivate. Test-optional has become the path of least resistance—the path that maximizes internal diversity and creates shining optics while keeping the acceptance rates low, plus the path that practically every other high-profile institution is taking, too. 

It is not ingenuine or completely ineffective of these schools to try to make a difference. Top colleges have done a lot of good in bringing education to more people by offering online courses, implementing outreach programs for underrepresented minority students, and meeting families’ demonstrated financial need. 

But if they really wanted to make their supposedly world-class education more accessible, why not expand the size of their freshman class, perhaps open another campus? Why not drop advantages afforded to athletes, legacies, children of faculty and staff, and children of donors, a practice that favors white students? Why not eliminate Early Decision admissions, which benefits students who don’t have to worry about comparing financial aid offers across different schools? Why not expand recruitment beyond wealthy “feeder” high schools?

Unlike test-optional, these moves would not benefit elite schools. Some colleges have taken small steps in the right direction, but many more have stuck to the status quo. 

“In the rush to climb the pecking order, educational institutions are adopting practices, and rationalizations for those practices, unworthy of the intellectual rigor they seek to instill in their students,” Diver writes.