When colleges go test-optional
Going “test-optional” is the latest trend in college admissions, and it should be. High school students are having a challenging time signing up and taking the ACT or SAT, and many don’t want to risk exposure to Covid-19. Whether colleges stay “test-optional” for rising high school juniors (entering college in 2022) and beyond remains to be seen. But for parents and students who are excited at that possibility, remember that test-optional means optional: you can submit a good standardized test score. If a university has an optional essay on their application (as some do), would you fill that out in hopes of providing them with another way to be impressed by you? The majority would. They wouldn’t skip the essay. The same could be said about your optional standardized test score.
Interestingly, two things happen when colleges/universities choose to go test-optional, both of which benefit the reputation of the school but don’t necessarily help the applicants: an increase in the average SAT/ACT scores for their accepted students and a lower acceptance rate.
Take the simplistic example of a hypothetical university with an SAT range of 1,200-1,400, average 1,300, and an acceptance rate of 40% (accepts 4,000 of 10,000 applicants). Once news gets out that the school is test-optional, applicants who have an SAT around 1,200 – 1,250 (or who academically would test in that approximate range) are more likely to either not take the SAT or choose not to submit their scores to the university. Why submit a score that’s near the bottom quarter of the range? Being test-optional also encourages similar students who previously wouldn’t even bother applying to the university to change their mind and give it a shot – why not apply since I’m not going to show them my lower scores?
So … since these applicants generally don’t submit their lower SAT scores (1,200-1,250), the scores that do get submitted are now in the range 1,250 – 1,400 (average 1,325). Also, with more students applying, the acceptance rate goes down: the college now accepts 4,000 out of 11,000 applicants, an acceptance rate of 36.36% (yes, some colleges measure acceptance rate to two decimal places).
The college “appears” more selective and prestigious with an increase in average SAT scores from 1,300 to 1,325 and decrease in acceptance rate from 40% to 36%. But there’s no proof that the student body is any better academically – or any different – than before going test-optional.
The funny / not-so-funny thing is some colleges that have been test-optional for a while (NYU, George Washington, Holy Cross) still brag about the high ACT / SAT scores of their incoming freshman classes on their websites! They seem to be talking out of both sides of their mouths: “look at us, we don’t require standardized test scores” … followed by … “look at how great the scores are for the students we accepted!!”. Or, “you don’t need to submit your test scores, but we’re going to admit a lot of students who do submit good scores and then we're going to tell everyone about these high scores, just like we did before we changed to test-optional.”