By: Jessica A. Dennehy
This February, Dartmouth College, an Ivy-League school located in Hannover, New Hampshire, announced the requirement of all further applicants to submit SAT or ACT scores for consideration of admission. The practice of mandating standardized testing was removed at Dartmouth and hundreds of other institutions during the COVID-19 Pandemic. This was due to difficulties finding testing facilities that would properly abide by federal health regulations. This announcement comes after two other prestigious institutions, Georgetown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), also announced their reinstatement of mandatory testing.
The reason provided by Dartmouth for restoring mandatory standardized testing was that an internal study showed that mandating tests improved the overall caliber of the chosen incoming class. In a statement given in regards to this new development, Dartmouth remarked, “In particular, 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.” However, many are incredibly skeptical of this study, claiming that it provides an unfair advantage to those who can afford to repeatedly take these tests and access tutoring services.
Many expert critics are rising up against this new action, including Josef Durand, an expert admissions consultant from Quad Education Group. He argues that SAT scores “are a notoriously poor predictor of student success and student potential in college” and that “It is well known by this point that GPA is a five times better…predictor of student success and student potential in terms of college and post-collegiate success.”
However, there is growing support of Dartmouth’s decision, with many saying the mandatory testing restores the balance of the skewed admissions of the past few years. Allen Koh, founder and CEO of Cardinal Education, is confident that more and more schools, especially of a certain caliber, will gradually transition back into having mandatory standardized testing for admission. He defends his position, saying that although tests were technically “optional,” those who submitted scores were given an unfair advantage to those who were unable to during the pandemic. In a rebuttal to those claiming this decision is unfair, Koh states, “…when kids opt out of the test, they are at a disadvantage against their peers who are in similar situations. And so that is the greater injustice.”
Regardless of the debates surrounding the fairness of this decision, Dartmouth is implementing it… and let’s be real, the applicants aren’t going to revolt and demand that optional-testing be restored. The greater question is, now that Dartmouth has jumped onto the trend, what other institutions will follow? Harry Feder, the executive director of Fairtest and an individual unhappy with Dartmouth’s decision, says, “I hope that others don’t follow [Dartmouth] but, you know, there is a chance that other institutions that fancy themselves elite institutions might.”
Regardless of one’s position on the “fairness” of the decision implemented, nobody can deny that the times are changing. Although not yet definite, there’s now an established trend of restoring the mandatory status of standardized testing, whether it be SAT, ACT, or both. So, to all the Sophomores and Juniors reading this, (and maybe even the Freshmen too) here’s hoping you’ve already taken a standardized test or are planning to take it soon. No one knows which college will announce the requirement of taking the SAT/ACT next…
(As of April 15, 2024, Brown University, Harvard University, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), and Yale University have also announced their reinstatement of mandatory standardized testing).
