Breaking News: Dartmouth College Reinstates the SAT

This morning, Dartmouth College announced that they are reactivating the standardized testing requirement for undergraduate admission, effective with the Class of 2029.

This comes after months of public debate on the merits of testing, with some schools extending their “temporary” test-optional undergraduate admissions policy through the 2024 admissions cycle while others are actively reevaluating their stance for future years.

In the recent New York Times article, The Misguided War on the SAT, author David Leonhardt notes, “Now, though, a growing number of experts and university administrators wonder whether the switch has been a mistake. Research has increasingly shown that standardized test scores contain real information, helping to predict college grades, chances of graduation and post-college success. Test scores are more reliable than high school grades, partly because of grade inflation in recent years.”

In an email from Dartmouth alumni, Sian Beilock, the president of Dartmouth, explains the research guiding their decision:

Several key findings guided our decision: First, standardized test scores are an important predictor of a student’s success in Dartmouth’s curriculum, and this is true regardless of a student’s background or family income. Second, in a test-optional system, many applicants don’t submit test scores. This disadvantages applicants from less-resourced families because Dartmouth admissions considers applicants’ scores in relation to local norms of their high school (so, for example, a 1400 SAT score from an applicant whose high school has an SAT mean of 1000 gives us valuable information about that applicant’s ability to excel in their environment, at Dartmouth, and beyond). In a test-optional system, Dartmouth admissions often misses the opportunity to consider this information.

The president of Brown University, Christina Paxson, has yet to make a decision about the fate of standardized testing at Brown, but has shared similar reasoning for not making test-optional a permanent policy stating, “Standardized test scores are a much better predictor of academic success than high school grades.”

Now that Dartmouth, Georgetown, and MIT require all applicants to submit standardized test scores, who will follow?

DARTMOUTH REINSTATES THE SAT: THE TOP TIER TEAM WEIGHS IN

Maria Laskaris, TTA Senior Private Counselor and former Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Dartmouth College

Dartmouth has taken an important step in providing clarity around the role of SAT/ACT in admissions. This will be enormously helpful to students as they approach the application process. It has been clear to us that testing still matters at top schools and so we’re hoping that schools follow the lead of Dartmouth, MIT, and Georgetown about being unequivocal about its role.

Dartmouth and other top colleges have always known that SATs are an important predictor of first year college GPA. Especially now, with rampant grade inflation, high school GPA alone is not enough to identify students who will excel at schools like Dartmouth.

It’s interesting to note that the test optional admissions policy did not achieve the desired aim of a more diverse applicant pool. As Dartmouth points out, seeing which students are excelling in the context of their school environment will help them identify which students are likely to excel at Dartmouth. Test scores are a key piece of this puzzle. If your scores are 1400 and your high school’s average scores are 1100, that says a lot about your ability and potential.

As MIT’s experience has shown, when test scores are reinstated, application volume will drop — but that’s a good thing as these overinflated applicant pools have placed enormous pressure on the admissions process and students themselves.

Heidi Steinmetz Lovette: TTA Senior Private Counselor and former Assistant Director of Admissions at Cornell University’s College of Arts & Sciences

The clear message from Dartmouth is that they value testing – as one factor and with context – is welcomely unambiguous and not surprising. The surprise for me was Dean of Admissions Lee Coffin’s statement that Dartmouth’s test-optional policy had not led to a more diverse pool of applicants, as that has not been the case elsewhere. The majority of schools remain test optional and will continue to be. Navigating this increasingly complex admissions landscape will require more of students as they match their strengths to schools with differing requirements and priorities.

Dr. Michele Hernandez: TTA Co-Founder & CXO

I’m glad Dartmouth finally took the time to look at the data and make an informed decision rather than relying on emotions. It turned out that many disadvantaged students would have been helped by submitting their scores yet they chose to not report them. Scores have their place in admissions provided they are considered along with a multitude of other factors.

WHAT’S IN STORE FOR THE UCs?

Dr. Tina Brooks: TTA Senior Private Counselor and former Associate Dean of Admissions at Pomona College

We asked Dr. Tina Brooks to weigh in on how she believes the UC system will respond in defense of their test-blind policies.

I think the UCs are solidly in the test-optional lane. That said, they are surely amassing data on admission and retention pre- and post-policy. If you are immersed in the world of education in CA, you know that the main issues are learning loss (due to Covid), dropping attendance, dropping enrollments at CA community colleges (feeders for the UCs), unhoused students, food insecurity among students, etc. It’s not about reinstating test scores! The imperative is getting students to the educational pipeline and keeping them there. The [test blind] policy was adopted as part of a legal settlement concluding a 2019 lawsuit filed against the UCs due to concerns about the disproportionate disadvantage of standardized testing for students with disabilities and many low-income, Black and Latina/o students.