In the face of growing criticism about the test’s relevance and fairness, a critical mass of schools now offer an escape route. Hundreds of colleges and universities—and the list seems to grow weekly—have made the SAT and ACT optional.
The SAT dropouts include some of the most highly regarded
schools in the country, including Bowdoin College, Mount Holyoke College, Pitzer College, Middlebury College, and the University of Texas at Austin. In fact, nearly a third of the schools that belong on the U.S. News & World Report’s list of the top 100 liberal arts schools have instituted an SAT or ACT-optional policy.
Before shouting for joy, you need to know what this means. Some
colleges aren’t as generous with the test-challenged as it might seem.
Schools, for example, may only waive the test for students who meet a
minimum grade point average or who have reached a certain class
rank, such as in the top 10% of the student’s graduating class. Certain
schools make teenagers without test scores submit samples of graded
work from their junior and senior year.
It used to be that choosing the SAT-optional route wouldn’t work
for many students because some colleges and universities wouldn’t
award merit money for students who skipped the Saturday morning
SAT ritual.
Members of the National Association for College Admissions
Counseling, however, overwhelmingly endorsed the position that
member schools can’t use minimum scores as the sole criterion for accepting
students or determining who gets scholarships and financial
aid. That new standard went into effect for the 2008–2009 school year.
While some schools, such as Bates College in Lewiston, Maine,
dropped the SAT requirement back in the 1980s, skeptics argue that
plenty of the latecomers have ditched the SAT for cynical reasons. If
a school, for instance, eliminates the SAT requirement, it could experience
a sizable bump in the number of applications it receives. When
word gets out about the change in policy, kids with lackluster (or even
very good but not phenomenal) test scores will conclude that they now
may qualify for a school that they once considered an impossibility.
Schools are delighted when they receive more applications because
it can help the institution claw its way up on U.S. News & World
Report’s college rankings list. How does that happen? When a school
is deluged with applications, it can reject far more kids. As perverse as
this may seem to many anxious families, the magazine gives brownie
points to schools that reject the greatest percentage of applicants. As
I said, this is the cynic’s take on the SAT-optional phenomenon.
Here’s another reason why industry insiders suggest that the motivation
of some schools is suspicious. If a school makes the SAT optional,
the institution’s average SAT score for its incoming freshmen
class should improve. After all, many of the kids with lackluster scores
won’t send them along. And guess what? U.S. News & World Report
and other college guide books reward schools that can brag about
higher SAT scores since they don’t care how these figures are generated.
In an op-ed piece in The New York Times, Colin S. Diver, the president
of Reed College in Portland, Oregon, provided this withering
take on the SAT-optional trend: “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!’ I would devote the
first chapter to a tactic called ‘SAT optional.’” Diver called the move
toward SAT optional admissions a “disheartening” trend. He said: “In
the rush to climb the pecking order, educational institutions are
adopting practices, and rationalization for those practices, unworthy
of the intellectual rigor they seek to instill in their students.”
Regardless of a school’s ulterior motives, supporters of dropping
the SAT requirement insist that it will make the college admission
process fairer. It would open up more schools to minority applicants,
as well as those from less affluent households. (Of course, a school
could be more inclusive simply by giving less weight to the tests for
certain applicants or for everybody who applies.) It would also help
level the playing field among those who can afford expensive SAT tutoring
and classes and those whose only preparation is a good night’s sleep.
One of the leading SAT critics is the National Center for Fair &
Open Testing (FairTest), which is a nonprofit dedicated to fighting
standardized testing. It argues that SAT scores are a lousy predictor of
how a student will fare at college and whether a student will graduate.
Despite significant differences in instructional quality at high schools,
FairTest maintains that better predictors of success are high school
grade point averages and class rank.
After living with the SAT optional policy for more than two
decades, Bates College in Maine has accumulated extensive data that
shows that its students’ performance remains strong. After gathering
five years of data on its experience, Hamilton College concluded that
the students who don’t submit their test scores do slightly better academically
than their peers.
In all likelihood, the SAT/ACT debate will never end. And in some
respect the arguments—pro and con—aren’t relevant to an individual
student, who is trying to figure out where to apply. But what is worth
thinking about is whether a high schooler should walk through the
SAT-optional door. Based strictly on your grades, you may be able to
win a fat admittance package from a school like Sarah Lawrence
College or Bates College, but you need to think about whether an
academically elite school is the right fit. If you got a 510 on the English
portion of the SAT—that was recently the national average
score—can you write cogent papers at an elite school?
You can obtain a comprehensive list of SAT and ACT-optional
schools by visiting the Web site of FairTest, (www.fairtest.org). The
schools on the list, according to the organization, “de-emphasize” the
use of standardized testing. To survive the cut, schools must make admission
decisions about a substantial number of applicants without relying
on the ACT or SAT. Recently, more than 750 schools were on the
growing list.
Here is a small sampling of the wide variety of schools that made
the list:
- Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona
- Austin Peay State University, Clarksville, Tennessee
- Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York
- Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont
- Bluefield State College, Bluefield, West Virginia
- Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine
- Cazenovia College, Cazenovia, New York
- Connecticut College, New London, Connecticut
- Denison University, Granville, Ohio
- Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania
- Drew University, Madison, New Jersey
- Eckerd College, St. Petersburg, Florida
- Emporia State University, Emporia, Kansas
- George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia
- Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
- Grambling State University, Grambling, Louisiana
- Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland
- Green Mountain College, Poultney, Vermont
- Hamilton College, Clinton, New York
- Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana
- Julliard School, New York, New York
- Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois
- Lake Forest College, Lake Forest, Illinois
- Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon
- McDaniel College, Westminster, Maryland
- Pitzer College, Claremont, California
- Portland State University, Portland, Oregon
- Prescott College, Prescott, Arizona
- Providence College, Providence, Rhode Island
- Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida
- St. John’s College Santa Fe, New Mexico and Annapolis, Maryland
- Texas A&M University, several campuses
- University of Arkansas, several campuses
- University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho
- University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa
- University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas
- University of Maine, several campuses
- University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee
- University of Montana, Missoula, Montana
- University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma
- University of Wisconsin, several campuses
- Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts
- Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, Massachusetts
- York College, York, Nebraska
While many schools still require SAT scores, some have reduced
the value of these scores. To get an idea of how crucial the SAT or ACT
score is, ask an admissions officer whether the standardized scores are
less important than in the past. Contact individual schools to learn
what their specific standardized test policies are.
Obviously, it’s better if a student has high standardized test scores
and excellent grades in high school. But for kids who can’t pull off that
feat, schools typically put more stock on grades than standardized test numbers.
Action Plan
If you perform poorly on the SAT, consider applying to schools
where the test isn’t required.
Source: The College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right School at the Right Price
