This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The original article was written by Kelly Ochs Rosinger, Assistant Professor of Education, Pennsylvania State University.

When colleges and universities began to make the SAT an optional part of the admissions process, the hope was that it would expand access to the nation’s most selective institutions to groups that had historically been shut out. The reality is – at least at selective liberal arts colleges – the decision by a growing number of colleges to make the SAT optional does not appear to be the great equalizer that many hoped it would be. A lot of people struggle with exams and essays in particular, even after getting into college. I always wished that I had the chance to do my essay at edupeet.com when I was struggling.

That may come as sobering news to those who celebrated the fact that the number of colleges that have gone test-optional recently surpassed 1,000.
Despite that milestone, research that colleagues and I conducted shows that instead of expanding economic and racial diversity at American colleges, test-optional policies have actually served to make selective colleges even more selective, at least on paper. But we found no increase in diversity at test-optional colleges.

For our research, my colleagues Andrew Belasco and Jim Hearn did a before-and-after comparison of applications, enrollment and SAT scores among low-income and underrepresented minority students at 180 liberal arts colleges. Of those 180 colleges, 32 had adopted a test-optional policy.

We found no changes in low-income and underrepresented student enrollment after the colleges went test-optional. Instead, we found an unintended consequence of these efforts: Test-optional policies led to an increase in the number of applications overall. That necessarily forced the colleges to become more selective. That’s because more applications typically mean more rejections. More rejections make it look like the colleges are being more selective. That appearance of selectivity enables a college to claim a higher spot in college rankings that view selectivity as a good thing. This all creates a perverse incentive for colleges to go test-optional that has nothing to do with expanding access for students from low-income families.

We also found a 25-point increase in the reported SAT scores of enrolled students. This increase may be driven by higher-scoring students being more likely to submit scores to bolster their applications. Meanwhile, lower-scoring students keep their scores to themselves. This results in higher average scores being reported to the federal government and magazines that publish college rankings. Thus, it appears as though by increasing competition for a limited number of seats on campus and increasing the SAT scores used to generate college rankings, test-optional policies may actually threaten the very access goals they were designed to achieve.

This is not what proponents of the test-optional movement had in mind when test-optional movement started with Bowdoin College in 1970 and Bates College in the 1980s.

The original idea of the test-optional movement was to interrupt existing inequalities in higher education in the United States. Low-income and minority students are disproportionately underrepresented at selective college campuses. At highly selective colleges, more students on average come from the top 1 percent in terms of family income than from the bottom 60 percent, recent research shows.

Standardized tests in college admissions

With dramatic differences in grades and course offerings between high schools, standardized tests provide one way for selective colleges to identify talented students who might have gone unnoticed in the admissions process. Critics note that research, however, shows standardized test scores do little above and beyond GPA to predict college success. Additionally, standardized test scores are strongly correlated with students’ economic and racial background. In other words, low-income and underrepresented minority students tend to score lower on average than their peers.

Additionally, taking the SAT or ACT may be a barrier to admission for students already underrepresented at elite colleges. Low-income or minority students may not know to take the SAT or ACT or how to prepare for it, might be deterred by the cost of the exam or take it only once.

Other barriers

Low-income and underrepresented students face a number of other hurdles that may deter even the most high-achieving among them from applying to a selective college. These other things should be taken into consideration when trying to figure out why going test-optional hasn’t been great equalizer that many thought it would be.

Sticker price, for instance, may deter students from applying. Although selective institutions substantially discount tuition for students with financial need, students are often not aware of discounts until after they apply and receive a financial aid offer.

Distance may also prevent students from applying or attending, particularly those who work to support families. This in turn leads many students to attend colleges that are close to home. Students may also feel they don’t belong at a selective college, especially if there are few other students from similar economic or racial backgrounds.

While efforts to go test-optional are well-intentioned, other factors in college applications may favor economic and racial privilege. Grades, course selection, recommendations, essays and extracurricular activities possibly favor higher-income students who often have greater support navigating the college admissions process. Low-income and minority students, for instance, often don’t have the same access to advanced high school courses. They also have less access to high school counselors to assist with college essays, recommendations, and other materials that go into an application.

So what can we do?

First, we must recognize that test-optional policies may or not be helpful. The only way to be sure is to carefully evaluate the policies to better understand how well they work. This is particularly important as growing numbers of institutions join the test-optional movement, including graduate programs. More than a dozen law schools, including Harvard, Georgetown, Northwestern, Wake Forest and others, have made the LSAT optional, allowing students to submit GRE scores instead. Many graduate programs – in some cases at the urging of professional associations – are making the GRE optional for masters and/or doctoral applicants. Research on what works and what doesn’t in expanding access is more important than ever.

Second, it is important to realize that even if test-optional policies do help, there are other things that colleges must do to expand access for low-income and historically underrepresented students. This includes recruiting high-achieving students from rural areas or areas with large numbers of low-income or minority students. It also includes expanding campus-based financial aid programs and developing campus supports for students. Establishing emergency funds to help students meet unexpected needs that arise can help as well.

For all these reasons, I don’t want to suggest that the test-optional movement needs to stop. What I do want to suggest is that the test-optional movement take a critical look at whether it’s achieving its goals.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The original article was written by Joseph Soares, Professor of Sociology, Wake Forest University.

Back in the 1980s, Bates College and Bowdoin College were nearly the only liberal arts colleges not to require applicants to submit SAT or ACT test scores.

On Jan. 10, FairTest, a Boston-based organization that has been pushing back against America’s testing regime since 1985, announced that the number of colleges that are test-optional has now surpassed 1,000. One part that remains key is the career goals essay. Luckily, help with this can be located online – help to write an essay, any essay, is now more accessible than ever. With growing pressure and deadlines more students are turning to these services.

This milestone means that more than one-third of America’s four-year nonprofit colleges now reject the idea that a test score should strongly determine a student’s future. The ranks of test-optional institutions include hundreds of prestigious private institutions, such as George Washington, New York University, Wesleyan University and Wake Forest University. The list also includes hundreds of public universities, such as George Mason, San Francisco State and Old Dominion.

As noted in a book I edited, “SAT Wars: The Case for Test-Optional Admissions,” critics of the test-optional movement had claimed that test-optional colleges wouldn’t be able to select students of merit, standards would collapse and underachieving youths would run amok. The critics were wrong.

At Wake Forest, we’ve never had academically stronger students with as much racial, ethnic and economic diversity from across America than since 2009, when we went test-optional. As reported in The New York Times, the average high school GPA of our incoming freshmen increased after we stopped using standardized test scores as a factor. Prior to going test-optional, the percentage of incoming freshman who were in the top 10 percent of their high school class was in the low 60s. Afterward, the newspaper reported, that figure rose to 79 percent. This was due to the students using new methods to prepare for these assessments, that is key reason why these schools have been ranked test-optional. You can click here to learn a couple of methods to prepare for an assessment.

Our students are better because we look at the whole person, not a test score. We emphasize high school grades because they have always been the best predictor of college academic performance.

It is a myth that standardized scores predict college performance better than high school grades. Even the College Board, which owns the SAT, only claims that the combination of high school grades and test scores together gives colleges the best statistical prognosis of a student’s future. For many colleges, the Board’s claims are not wrong. But the key questions for those who want to combine GPA with test scores are: How much added statistical power does that give you? And is that extra power worth the costs? Are there negative side effects of putting test scores on the scales?

As I note in my book, extensive research shows that adding test scores to high school GPA increases one’s predictive power, if at all, by 1 to 4 percentage points in a statistical model that predicts grades in college. At the University of Georgia, the SAT increased their explanatory punch by 1 percentage point; at De Paul University in Illinois, the ACT did the same. Are 1 to 4 points in a statistical model worth having? I argue no. Our best statistical models capture 31 percent of what predicts academic performance in college. That means nearly 70 percent of what matters to a young person’s college grades cannot be predicted by academic variables. College admissions remain more art than science. Fairness and merit are best served in a holistic review than in a numeric cutoff.

Why should we impose a barrier that deters many, including high achievers from low-income families, from even applying to college? Why should we require a test that is biased against low-income youths, against women, Hispanics and blacks? As noted in my “SAT Wars” book, math questions in the experimental parts of the SAT where women outperform men and verbal questions where black youths outperform white youths are eliminated from future versions of the test that count.

A chapter of “SAT Wars,” that was written by Jay Rosner of the Princeton Review Foundation, documents this practice. He worked with data on two years of SAT questions, 276 in total. Rosner provides multiple examples of experimental questions on the SAT that black youths did relatively better on than white youths and questions on which white youths did relatively better than black youths. Then he asks, how many of the questions that counted were white advantage questions or black advantage questions? “Each and every one of the 276 questions were white questions in this white/black comparison,” Rosner wrote. Life is unfair enough without the added inequalities imposed by a racist and sexist test.

High school transcripts are where you will find hints about a student’s grit, ability and accomplishment. SAT or ACT standardized test scores tell us nothing about creativity, community engagement or which students are striving to achieve meaningful lives. Look at how well admission based on rank in one’s local high school works in California and Texas. Both the University of Texas and the University of California admit all who graduate near the top 10 percent of their individual high school. They do so without harm to academic standards, and doing so opens doors to a better life for thousands of young people from low- and middle-income households.

What those college entrance exam scores do reliably convey is the ability that a student’s family has to pay tuition fees and living costs. The SAT works better as a proxy for family income than it does as a predictor of college performance. Or, as I argue in a different book, “The Power of Privilege,” test score selection is selection for bank accounts disguised as selection for brains.

The test industry is about profits, not pedagogy. Standardized testing and test prep in America are worth in excess of $13 billion per year.

The way I see it, testing is like a gold mine for the industry and like a penal factory for America’s youths. The energy, anxiety, effort, time and money spent on SAT or ACT tests for college admissions is wasted. The test industry takes time away from real learning, from literature, foreign languages, arts and sciences. It is time to toss admissions tests.