At a time when race-based admissions are at the forefront of public officials’ agendas, new data published last week suggests that the path to a college degree will soon become one that models equity and fairness. This is good news for our graduating seniors and the quality of higher education, experts note.
The latest tally by FairTest, a group that seeks to dismantle the misuses and flaws of standardized testing, reveals that more than 1,900 U.S. colleges and universities aren’t requiring SAT or ACT scores for fall 2023 admissions. More than 200 colleges made this decision since the fall of 2020. The current statistic represents 83% of four-year institutions.
At least 78% of higher education institutions have already extended these policies through the fall of 2024 in anticipation of the pending U.S. Supreme Court decision surrounding affirmative action.
“Admissions offices increasingly recognize that test requirements, given their negative disparate impact on Black and Latinx applicants, are ‘race-conscious’ factors, which can create unfair barriers to access higher education,” FairTest Executive Harry Feder said in a statement. “They also know that standardized exams are, at best, weak predictors of academic success and largely unrelated to college-ready skills and knowledge.”
“If the Supreme Court bars affirmative action, we expect that very few schools will continue to require the ACT or SAT. And it is likely that many more graduate programs will eliminate requirements for exams such as the GRE, GMAT, LSAT and GMAT.”
That being said, institutions’ transitions to test-optional policies are a race-neutral solution to enhancing campus diversity, FairTest Public Education Director Bob Schaeffer added.
“Though not a full substitute for affirmative action, they are important tools in a robust set of holistic missions strategies to improve access for under-represented applicants.”
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Per the data, there’s no sign of these strategies slowing down any time soon. Here’s an in-depth tally provided by FairTest that reflects the growing number of four-year institutions adopting test-optional policies since the start of the pandemic:
- 1,075 ACT/SAT-optional schools pre-pandemic (March 15, 2020)
- 1,700 schools did not require scores for the fall of 2020
- 1,775 schools did not require scores for the fall of 2021
- 1,825 schools did not require scores for the fall of 2022
- 1,904 schools don’t require scores for the fall of 2023
The long-awaited Supreme Court decision may very well be “the death knell” for standardized admissions tests, said Schaeffer.
