The SAT’s Not Quite Comeback

By

Stephen Burd

This is the second post in a series that is examining the future of the SAT in college admissions.

At the start of 2024, we were told that, like it or not, the SAT was making a comeback.

The source of this news was no less than the New York Times's influential journalist and columnist David Leonhardt. In an article entitled "The Misguided War on the SAT," Leonhardt reported that selective college leaders, many of whom had stopped requiring applicants to submit test scores during the pandemic, were reconsidering their decision to have their institutions adopt "test optional" policies. "A growing number of experts and university administrators wonder whether the switch has been a mistake," he wrote.

Leonhardt's column got the ball rolling. In the weeks and months that followed, nearly two dozen articles, op-eds, and newspaper editorials called on colleges to make the submission of test scores mandatory again. In many of these publications, supporters of the SAT and of its parent company, the College Board, essentially took a victory lap, forecasting the collapse of the test optional movement, which they said had been driven by "politically correct" ideologues opposed to standardized testing

"The Days of Optional SAT Scores May Be Coming to an End," a column in The Hill prophesied. "Colleges Are Bringing Back the SAT. It's the Right Move," The Washington Post's editorial board declared. "SAT Isn't Racist. How Liberals Got It Wrong With Standardized Tests," an op-ed in USA Today argued. "Higher Ed Got It Wrong - the SAT Still Matters," the Republican columnist Rich Barlow wrote for WBUR, a public radio station in Boston.

"The SAT and ACT, which long split schools into pro and anti benches, became optional on many campuses during COVID, justifiably, to avoid mass, close-quarters testing and viral superspreading," Barlow wrote. "Now, only the virus of unbending ideology impedes the return of testing on more campuses."

Similarly, Leonhardt wrote, "Standardized tests have become especially unpopular among political progressives, and universities are dominated by progressives."

With the end of the year quickly approaching, it's a good time to revisit these forecasts to determine how accurate they were. Did the SAT make a triumphant return? And is the test optional movement on the verge of collapsing?

Hardly. After all the sturm and drang, only a little more than a dozen colleges and universities dropped their test optional policies in 2024, according to FairTest, which advocates on behalf of test-optional schools. Nearly 90 percent of the nation's 2,275 bachelor's degree granting institutions remain either test optional, leaving it up to students to choose whether or not to submit scores, or "test blind," meaning that they do not consider test scores at all.

To be fair, the list of institutions that stopped being test optional is made up of some of the biggest names in higher ed, including Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, the University of Texas at Austin, and Yale. The New York Times ran individual stories when most, if not all, of these colleges announced they were switching back (see here, here, here, and here, for example), leaving the impression that selective colleges were falling like dominoes.

But many big-name schools, such as Columbia, Emory, the Universities of Michigan and Wisconsin, and Vanderbilt, chose to extend their test optional policies or make them permanent this year. But none of their decisions garnered headlines from the New York Times.

And despite Leonhardt's contention, the leaders of these colleges did not stick with these policies because they are liberals or politically correct. Many have remained test optional because they have found that their institutions are attracting a larger and more diverse set of applicants than they previously had, in keeping with their institutions' strategic goals and mission.

Take Texas Tech University, hardly a hot-bed of left-wing radicalism. According to Jason Hale, Texas Tech's assistant vice president of enrollment management, going test optional has helped the university fulfill the primary plank in its current strategic plan: "Educate and empower a diverse student body."

"As a state institution, we really have a mission to mimic the demographics of our state," Hale said during a panel discussion on test optional admissions at the National Association for College Admissions Counseling's annual conference in Los Angeles in September. "And test optional has helped us do that."

Texas Tech's experience is not uncommon, as the preliminary results of a national research study released this summer showed that many colleges that became test optional during the pandemic have become more diverse. The researchers found that moderately selective colleges experienced a statistically significant increase in Black student enrollment of 13 to 19 percent after they stopped requiring applicants to submit test scores. The study also found evidence that highly selective test optional colleges are enrolling more low-income students as a result of these policies.

"While test-optional and test-free policies are no panacea to the entrenched inequities that surround higher education admissions, they remain a tool that may be able to expand access in a modest fashion," the primary authors of the research study - Julie J Park, Kelly Rosinger, and Dominique J. Baker of the College Admissions Futures Collaborative - wrote in a column in Inside Higher Ed in August.

Despite the backlash earlier this year, test optional and test blind admissions remain alive and well, and delivering on their promise at many colleges. That is good news but does that mean that advocates for these policies can now rest easy?

Certainly not. Supporters of standardized testing will continue pushing colleges to bring back the SAT for the 2025-2026 academic year. And their efforts could be bolstered by the country's changing political climate. With Trump returning to the White House, colleges' diversity efforts will come under even more fire than they have already.

But the challenges of the past year have shown the test optional movement's strength and resilience, as well as the widespread appeal of these policies to the majority of four-year colleges.