An increasing number of colleges and universities are considering the option of no longer requiring applicants to submit results from standardized tests. A distinguished panel of experts including Jack Buckley of the College Board, Steve Kappler of ACT, and Robert Schaeffer of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing,discussed this movement at yesterday’s session Test Optional Admissions Trends and Perspectives at AACRAO’s Annual Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona.
Several factors underlie the trend toward test optional admissions. First, the policy expands access to those groups that tend to have overall weaker performance on standardized tests, such as minorities, first generation students, and lower income students. Second, some institutional leaders feel that mandatory submission of test scores limit their application pool because students whose test scores did not reflect their high school performance were discouraged from applying. Third, studies have shown that standardized testing favors, and tends to correlate with the higher test scores of students who benefit from intense test prep activities. Such students overwhelmingly come from higher socioeconomic backgrounds.
Standardized tests offer a way for institutions to measure student preparedness among widely differing high school curricula. But the importance of test scores varies from institution to institution. One implication of this variety is that a test optional admissions policy may not make sense for all institutions. Put differently, there are no silver bullets to resolve all enrollment management problems. Student success and institutional satisfaction with a test optional policy at one institution does not validate going test optional at another institution. The panelists agreed that you have to do the research and investigate patterns at your own institution before adopting test optional admissions. The determining factors should be mission, vision and evidence based.
"I appreciated listening to the varying perspectives in one presentation," said attendee Cindy Lambert, Director of Undergraduate Admissions at University of St. Francis. "It helped me to think critically whether our institution would move in the test optional direction.”
Handouts from the presentation are available here.