On June 2nd, the college board put out a statement asking colleges to “show flexibility in admissions this year” amidst the ongoing challenges with providing universal access to standardized testing. So, when the college board released the upcoming summer and fall test dates, they asked colleges to extend their deadlines for receiving test scores from prospective students AND to also equally consider students who were unable to take the test due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Here’s an exact breakdown of the three ways that the college board asked for flexibility from colleges:

Accepting scores as late as possible in their process, especially by extending score deadlines for early action and early decision to take some pressure off and give students more time to test and send their scores.
Equally considering students for admission who are unable to take the exam due to covid-19 as those who submitted scores. (The College Board will keep colleges up to date on testing availability).
Recognizing that students who do submit scores may not have been able to take the test more than once. (e.g., taking into account that students who tested as high school juniors but who could not as seniors would have likely achieved score gains).

Before the upcoming test dates were released on May 28th, the college board was considering administering the SAT online. That plan was scrapped because taking the test would require three hours of uninterrupted, video quality internet – which is not something that all families and students have access to. We were happy to see the college board acknowledge the fact that asking every family for three hours of crystal clear internet is not realistic, but it’s obvious that there are much bigger issues at hand. And it now seems that the college board is trying to push the problem off of themselves, and into the hands of other institutions.

The question is this: do we need to rethink the college admissions process? At TKG we think that we do. The SAT and ACT have been the standard, and supporters of the tests are reluctant to step away from the longstanding tradition. But the things students need to do well on these tests, whether that’s a sturdy internet connection, a prep course, or a practice booklet, or high-priced tutors, are not universal.

There is no shortage of arguments on both sides of the pro-test / anti-test spectrum. But when evaluating test fairness, we think that comparing ACT composite scores by family income paints a clear picture. This document is four years old (if you can find a more recent breakdown, let us know!) but in 2016, the average ACT score for students who come from high-income families was 23.6. For lower-income students, the average score was 19.5. It’s also worth noting that the achievement gap increased slightly from 2012-2016.

You might be thinking: what would college admissions look like without standardized tests? One of the first things we can look to is colleges that have gone test-optional in the past. Wake Forest went test-optional in 2008, this excerpt directly from their website explains why by saying:

“For the record, it’s not that we think standardized tests are evil. We just think that the measure of your intelligence and potential requires a deeper dive. It’s about life experience, aspiration, work ethic, engagement and all of what makes you who you are.”

And in the wake of Coronavirus, we’re now seeing numerous colleges adopt the policy this year which suggests that it is possible to adjust the pie chart that speaks to a student’s viability at any given school.

We know who does well on standardized tests. The news cycle over the past few weeks shows a demand for aspects of our society to be rethought. We are at an inflection point and higher education is not immune from the conversation. As we said in our newsletter, “higher education has a bad track record when it comes to racial equality and equity.” We believe that the only way to level this particular years’ playing field is to remove standardized testing entirely. In the future, we hope to see more institutions move away from standardized testing in favor of creating a holistic application process without test scores.

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