Good option for bad standardized test-takers

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Good news for high school student-athletes who bombed out on the college entrance exams or are scared to death to take them.

While attending a two-day college fair this week, I discovered more and more colleges and universities – including some of the most prestigious private schools in the country – have become test-optional.

Hundreds of colleges and universities no longer require applicants to submit SAT or ACT scores. While that doesn’t mean high school student-athletes shouldn’t take them — National Scouting Report recommends they take both — it does mean that many schools will accept students who don’t reveal their scores.

Why, you ask?

Perhaps the biggest reason is diversity. Many colleges would like to increase their number of minority students, who traditionally have struggled with college entrance exams. There’s also a correlation between family income and standardized test performance: The higher the income, the higher the score.

“The test-optional policy should strengthen and diversify an already outstanding pool and will broaden access for those high-achieving students who have historically been underrepresented at selective colleges and universities, including students of color, first-generation students and students from low-income households,” Laurie Kohler, an admissions representative from George Washington University, said in a story published by NPR.org.

But those aren’t the only reasons.

Test-optional schools likely will increase their number of applicants, which will allow them to reject more students. That, according to a story in The Hechinger Report, makes those schools look more selective in the annual college rankings released by U.S. News and World Report.

Of course, many applicants still submit SAT and ACT scores to test-optional schools. However, those students are usually the ones who score high. That could artificially inflate a school’s average test scores, which again could help that school in the college rankings.

A study of 180 liberal arts schools by former University of Georgia doctoral student Andrew Belasco — “The Test-Optional Movement at America’s Selective Liberal Arts Colleges: A Boon for Equity or Something Else?” — found there was no significant evidence suggesting the slightest bump in diversity.

However, others disagree.

Bill Hiss, former head of admissions at prestigious Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, said his school’s test-optional policy has had a major impact on diversity. But it took time, he added.

“Bates has had an optional testing policy for 30 years, and we’ve seen the changes,” Hiss said in the NPR.org story. “They’re dramatic, but they happened on a kind of long, steady uphill slope rather than some dramatic change in two or three years.”

Despite the rise of test-optional schools, NSR encourages high student-athletes to take the SAT and ACT at least twice each.

For one thing, most colleges and universities still require applicants to submit standardized test scores, so college prospects shouldn’t limit themselves only to the smaller percentage that don’t.

For another, most colleges don’t require both standardized test scores. If a student-athlete does well in both, he/she can submit both scores. If that prospect only does well in one, he/she can submit only that score.

Either way, student-athletes only need to submit their highest SAT or ACT score. Therefore, it’s to their advantage to keep taking the exams.

However, if they don’t well on either, they still have the option of applying to test-optional schools.

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