1. Colleges and universities continue to debate whether applicants should be required to submit SAT or ACT scores. Supporters argue that standardized tests can add useful academic information and identify talented students who might otherwise be overlooked, while critics argue that tests reflect unequal schooling, wealth, and access to preparation.

Carefully read the following six sources, including the introductory information for each source. Write an essay that synthesizes material from at least three of the sources and develops your position on what role, if any, standardized tests should play in college admissions.

Schmill, Stuart. "We Are Reinstating Our SAT/ACT Requirement for Future Admissions Cycles." MIT Admissions, 28 Mar. 2022, mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-our-sat-act-requirement-for-future-admissions-cycles/.

At MIT Admissions, our mission is to recruit, select, and enroll a diverse and talented group of students who are a good match for MIT’s unique education and culture. Everything we do in our process is grounded by our goal to find and admit students who will succeed at MIT and serve the world afterward .

After careful consideration, we have decided to reinstate our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles. Our research shows standardized tests help us better assess the academic preparedness of all applicants, and also help us identify socioeconomically disadvantaged students who lack access to advanced coursework or other enrichment opportunities that would otherwise demonstrate their readiness for MIT. We believe a requirement is more equitable and transparent than a test-optional policy.

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This was not a decision we made lightly. Our reliance on these tests is outcome-driven and applicant-oriented: we don’t value scores for their own sake , but only to the extent that they help us make better decisions for our students, which they do. We regularly research the outcomes of MIT students and our own admissions criteria to ensure we make good decisions for the right reasons, and we consistently find that considering performance on the SAT/ACT, particularly the math section, substantially improves the predictive validity of our decisions with respect to subsequent student success at the Institute.

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At the same time, standardized tests also help us identify academically prepared, socioeconomically disadvantaged students who could not otherwise demonstrate readiness ⁠ because they do not attend schools that offer advanced coursework, cannot afford expensive enrichment opportunities, cannot expect lengthy letters of recommendation from their overburdened teachers, or are otherwise hampered by educational inequalities. ⁠ By using the tests as a tool ⁠ in the service of our mission, we have helped improve the diversity of our undergraduate population ⁠ while student academic outcomes at MIT have gotten better, ⁠ too; our strategic and purposeful use of testing has been crucial to doing both simultaneously.

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To those of you who feel this way I say: you are not your test scores, and for that matter, you are also not your MIT application, either . You are infinitely more than either of these narrow constructs could ever capture. When we talk about evaluating academic readiness for MIT, that doesn’t mean we are measuring your academic potential, or intrinsic worth as a human. It only means that we are confident you, at this specific moment in your educational trajectory, can do well in the kind of hard math and science tests demanded by our unusual education. Every year, we turn down ⁠ many outstanding applicants — people we think are truly awesome — who go on to thrive elsewhere . Remember: your MIT decision is never about us passing judgment on you as a person , just about us contingently selecting a particular team of people , at a particular point in time, to take on the challenge of MIT, together.

FairTest (National Center for Fair & Open Testing). "Overwhelming Majority of U.S. Colleges and Universities Remain ACT/SAT-Optional or Test-Blind/Score-Free for Fall 2025." Press release, 21 Feb. 2024, fairtest.org/overwhelming-majority-of-u-s-colleges-and-universities-remain-act-sat-optional-or-test-blind-score-free-for-fall-2025/.

Churchill, Mary L. "POV: The Decision to Reinstate Mandatory Standardized Tests for College Admissions Is a Mistake." BU Today, Boston University, 25 Mar. 2024, www.bu.edu/articles/2024/standardized-tests-for-college-admissions-is-a-mistake/.

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the use of standardized test scores, like the SAT, as a component of undergraduate admissions. The majority of colleges and universities took advantage of this disruption to eliminate the use of standardized test scores. Even before the pandemic, more than 1,000 colleges and universities had either test-optional or test-blind policies. As the pandemic unfolded, hundreds of additional institutions followed suit. However, Dartmouth, Brown, Yale, and MIT recently announced they were reinstating mandatory standardized testing and, suddenly, SATs are in the news cycle again.

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Scholars such as Leigh Patel have argued against the use of standardized tests for college admissions, pointing to the fact that Carl Brigham, the creator of the SAT, was a member of the American Eugenics Society and that the use of standardized tests in higher education came out of the eugenics movement . According to Ibram X. Kendi, founding director of BU’s Center for Antiracist Research and author of the best-selling How to Be an Antiracist , “Standardized tests have become the most effective racist weapon ever devised to objectively degrade Black and Brown minds and legally exclude their bodies from prestigious schools.”

Given this context, what is the reasoning behind bringing back a required standardized test score? Dartmouth’s argument is that this will increase equity in the admissions process: “SAT/ACTs can be especially helpful in identifying students from less-resourced backgrounds who would succeed at Dartmouth but might otherwise be missed in a test-optional environment.” For an elite and highly selective institution like Dartmouth, an SAT score may seem less biased and may actually be less biased than an interview, essay, review of extracurriculars, and/or rank and status of the applicant’s high school. This begs the question that if a standardized test that has links to a eugenics movement is less biased than all of these other more biased measures, isn’t it time to rethink the way colleges select members of their incoming classes?

Unfortunately, the primary goal of an elite college is not to undo the privilege that comes with elitism. Within a prestige economy, elite institutions are in the business of selling prestige. In The Path to Free College , Michelle Miller-Adams raises this point in relation to the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal, stating that “the layers of privilege laid bare by the college admissions scandal begin at birth.” She reminds us that students from “less-resourced backgrounds” face opportunity gaps from prekindergarten through college.

A privileged birth prepares you for a life of privilege, and as my colleague Tony Jack , a Wheelock associate professor of higher education leadership and faculty director of BU’s Newbury Center, points out in his book The Privileged Poor , an explicit goal of an elite high school life of privilege is to prepare students for a college life of privilege at an elite college or university. I believe that the hardworking, creative, and equity-minded staff and leaders at our colleges and universities can create better ways to determine if an applicant from a less privileged background has what it takes to be successful at an elite institution. In addition to removing the barrier of a required SAT test score, we must also have the will and tenacity to do the work to close our society’s opportunity and equity gaps, to not just talk the talk, but to also walk the walk.

Dynarski, Susan. "ACT/SAT for All: A Cheap, Effective Way to Narrow Income Gaps in College." Brookings Institution, Evidence Speaks Reports, 8 Feb. 2018, www.brookings.edu/articles/act-sat-for-all-a-cheap-effective-way-to-narrow-income-gaps-in-college/.

These seemingly minor obstacles put many low-income students off the path to college. A study of high school seniors in Boston found that few low-income youth “decide” against college. Rather, they miss a key deadline, or incorrectly fill out a form, or fail to take a required class, and thereby fall off the path to college.

Consider the ACT and SAT. These entrance exams are required for admission to virtually all selective colleges in the US. Students have to register and pay for these tests, and then travel to a testing center on a weekend to take them. This is straightforward, if you have internet access, a computer, a credit card, and a car. If you are missing any of these resources, it’s a lot more challenging. The nearest testing center may be in a suburb that is unreachable by public transportation early on a Saturday morning.

But, in a dozen states, the ACT or SAT is now given in school, for free, on a school day during school hours. In most cases, the ACT or SAT replaces the standardized test that students would otherwise take in high school, so there is no additional time spent testing. This is an attractive feature, given the widespread backlash against perceived over-testing in schools. Sitting for the test is also required , which means that students can’t opt out because of low expectations – whether theirs or those of the adults around them.

In Michigan, in 2007, the ACT became part of the test required of juniors in the public schools. As a result of this shift in policy, the share of Michigan’s high school students taking a college entrance exam rose from 54 percent to nearly 99 percent. The growth was even sharper among low-income students, of whom only 35 percent were previously taking the test.

Joshua Hyman, an assistant professor at University of Connecticut, studied the effects of this new policy while he was a graduate student at the University of Michigan. Hyman analyzed the test scores and college attendance of all public, high school students in Michigan, before and after the ACT was made universal. This research was made possible by an ongoing partnership with the state of Michigan, which was launched with funding from the Institute of Education Sciences.

The results were surprising. Thousands of academically talented students in Michigan had not been taking the ACT (or the SAT, which Hyman also tracked). For every 1,000 students who scored high enough to attend a selective college before testing was universal, another 230 high scorers were revealed by the new policy. Among low-income students, the effect was even more dramatic: for every 1,000 low-income students who had taken the test before 2007 and scored well, another 480 college-ready, low-income students were uncovered by the universal test.

As a result of this policy, more low-income students went to and graduated from four-year colleges.

Cornell University, Office of Institutional Research & Planning. "The Use of Standardized Testing in Admissions: Summary of Key Findings." Table 1, Apr. 2024, irp.dpb.cornell.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Test-Score-Task-Force-update-release.pdf.

Harper, Shaun. "Eliminating Standardized Tests To Achieve Racial Equity In Post-Affirmative Action College Admissions." Forbes, 9 July 2023, www.forbes.com/sites/shaunharper/2023/07/09/eliminating-standardized-tests-to-achieve-racial-equity-in-post-affirmative-action-college-admissions/.

College and university leaders say they’re committed to finding legally defensible ways to maintain racial diversity in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in a pair of lawsuits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina that ended race-conscious admissions practices. Some institutions have taken one specific action in recent years that’s worthy of widespread replication and will help ensure that talented students of color have access to highly-selective undergraduate, graduate, and professional degree programs: they eliminated standardized entrance exam requirements.

Eight weeks before the consideration of race as a factor in admissions became unlawful, presidents of highly-selective liberal arts colleges wrote a statement in which they vowed to sustain their institutions’ racial equity efforts, regardless of the then-impending Affirmative Action lawsuits. Immediately after the SCOTUS ruling was released, dozens of colleges and universities posted diversity-affirming statements to their websites and social media accounts. But they didn’t say how they’d achieve and sustain their unspecified racial equity goals. Because new evidence shows that legacy admissions overwhelmingly advantage white applicants, discontinuing those policies and practices is one clear way. Suspending or permanently abandoning use of the SAT, ACT, GMAT, GRE, LSAT, and other entrance exams is another lever institutions have pulled.

The University of California, our nation’s most-selective public higher education system, stopped requiring the SAT and ACT for admission to its nine undergraduate campuses in 2021. The consequences: more highly-qualified students of color are being selected; Berkeley and UCLA are still tied for the #1 spot among public universities in the annual U.S. News & World Report rankings; and the UC System maintains its stellar reputation, its desirability and accessibility to white applicants, and its research prowess and funding. In other words, the negative effects of scrapping the standardized testing requirement, if there are any, are neither well documented nor pervasive in the system that received 884,655 applications last undergraduate admissions cycle, a significant increase over prior years.

UCLA Professor Sylvia Hurtado, an Association for the Study of Higher Education past president whose research has been extensively cited in U.S. Supreme Court Affirmative Action cases over the past two decades, says that eliminating the standardized testing requirement helped the UC System get a better sense of public demand for higher education. “All racial and ethnic groups benefited with increases in admissions. Not only were more eligible students identified, campuses also became more selective by using a wide range of criteria to identify talent in holistic review processes.”

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“Research shows that standardized tests are far from objective measures of academic merit, potential, or talent, and are instead better proxies of family wealth and resources,” adds Liliana Garces, a University of Texas at Austin professor who holds appointments in education, law, and the Center for Mexican American Studies. “By discontinuing them, colleges and universities can have a fairer system for admitting qualified and talented students, particularly in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision, which severely restricts institutions’ abilities to admit racially and ethnically diverse student bodies and meet their educational missions.”