Why the SAT/ACT Should Remain Optional for College Admissions

A pandemic-era experiment—making the SAT/ACT optional for college admission—is now being rolled back at colleges and universities across the country. And this reversal is going to come at a big cost to underserved students.

Standardized testing has become less reliable for determining student success in college, as the correlation between test scores and socioeconomic factors has increased over time. This correlation makes it difficult to justify the continued reliance on standardized tests as a determining factor for identifying prospective students.

Even before the pandemic, socioeconomic factors—such as family income, parents’ education, and race/ethnicity—accounted for 25 percent of the variance in test scores of University of California applicants, according to a 2017 study by the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley. High-achieving underserved students often score lower on these tests than their peers, not due to a lack of ability, but because of socioeconomic factors that affect their test performance.

The primary motivation for reinstating standardized tests seems to be administrative convenience. As applications to top-ranked institutions surge, admissions offices struggle to manage the volume. 

Standardized tests provide a quick filter to assist in winnowing the applicant pool, saving time and labor. However, the expediency comes at the cost of equity, inclusivity, and access. 

The SAT-optional approach introduced during the pandemic recognized the disparities in access and preparation that influence standardized test scores, allowing students to determine whether their scores were an accurate reflection of their academic performance.

Still, as the impact of the pandemic fades, top universities across the nation are now rescinding the SAT-optional admission policies.

Brown University: A case for maintaining SAT-optional admissions

To grasp the implications of SAT-optional policies, it’s essential to look at historical data.

Admissions data from Brown University’s 2019 admissions cycle—the last before the pandemic and the implementation of SAT-optional policies—shows the breakdown for the incoming class: 7.6 percent Black, 9.8 percent Hispanic/Latinx, 0.2 percent Native Hawaiian, and 0.2 percent Native American. 

These figures are significantly lower than national averages for the young adult population (ages 18 to 24), as estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau and analyzed by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Fast-forward to 2021. Data from Brown University’s admissions cycle that year reveal demographics that are more representative of the national averages. Brown’s incoming class that year was 9.6 percent Black, 13.1 percent Hispanic/Latinx, 0.1 percent Native Hawaiian, and 0.4 percent Native American. 

As a student at Brown in 2019 and as a member of Students for Educational Equity, I experienced firsthand the efforts of student-led organizations—such as Students for Educational Equity, Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere, Afro–Latinx Alliance, the League of United Black Women, Latinas at Brown, Decolonization at Brown, and the African Students Association—to advocate for SAT-optional admissions policies. We did so through discussions with admissions staff and committee members, peaceful protests, and a student referendum in which 73.65 percent of participants voted in favor of the test-optional policy.

Despite the engagement from organizations across campus and student demographics moving toward a more representative national average, Brown recently announced that it would reinstate the SAT/ACT requirement for the 2025 admission cycle. 

The decision, influenced by recommendations from an ad hoc committee on admissions policies, cited the need for standardized test scores to help differentiate among applicants with strong high school records and to contextualize the performance of students from schools that have sent relatively few students to Brown. 

Based on the committee’s recommendations, Brown’s president maintained all but one of the admissions policies under review: optional standardized testing. 

Why is it that some admissions policies at Brown, such as legacy admissions and early decision, have remained unchanged despite their known impact on diversity, yet the test-optional policy—a transitory policy lacking enough data for researchers to understand its impact on student body demographics—has been hastily reversed? 

The concern now is whether other academic institutions will follow the trend started by top undergraduate universities, replicating the conventional standard they set for admission policy, instead of designing admissions policies that best reflect their values when evaluating prospective students. 

Revisiting and potentially repealing SAT/ACT-optional policies should be approached with caution and a commitment to equity. The decisions made today will shape the academic landscape for years to come, affecting the opportunities available to future generations of students. 

To foster a more equitable admissions process, universities should continue to invest in holistic review practices that consider the whole student, not just their test scores. A comprehensive review requires considering an applicant’s experiences along with traditional metrics of academic achievement, such as grades and course difficulty.

Additionally, need-blind admissions policies, with applicants being accepted based solely on merit regardless of their ability to pay tuition, can help ensure that financial considerations do not disadvantage talented applicants from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

Reaching an exact nationally representative sample may not be the ultimate goal, but moving toward a nationally representative student body captures the full spectrum of talented applicants from diverse backgrounds—a shared incentive among colleges and universities. A belief in the importance of diversity aligns with the primary mission of higher education institutions: providing high-quality education and fostering inclusive, equitable learning spaces that prepare students for a complex, pluralistic society and a competitive global economy.