Colleges and universities, particularly elite institutions, are revising their admissions policies by reintroducing SAT and ACT scores, marking a significant shift in the post-pandemic college admissions landscape.
Dartmouth College recently announced it will reinstate the SAT requirement for incoming freshmen, becoming the first Ivy League institution to revert to pre-pandemic admissions criteria starting with next year’s applicants.
“We believe that assessment based on standardized test results is the best way to attract the most talented and diverse students to our campus,” the university said, noting that it is reinstating the SAT and ACT requirement after a four-year hiatus.
Dartmouth’s decision follows a study that found that a new system, which did not mandate SAT and ACT score submission but made it optional, actually disadvantaged low-income applicants. The report found that requiring SAT scores increased the rate at which low-income students were accepted to Dartmouth. However, after lifting the SAT and ACT score requirements, the acceptance rate for low-income students dropped.
Another reason is the uneven academic quality of incoming freshmen.
Colleges that relied on SAT scores to determine students’ academic quality have reached the limit of identifying students based on essays and high school grades alone, educators say.
“After universities eliminated the SAT, they had a hard time selecting freshmen because they had no objective standard to evaluate students’ skills,” said Young-Kwon Hong, a professor at the USC, Keck School of Medicine. “Some universities even had to put freshmen in basic classes because their academic level was too low,” he said.
Before Dartmouth, MIT and Georgetown reinstated the SAT requirement in 2022. “SAT scores help us better assess applicants’ skills,” MIT said at the time.
Not only universities but also military academies like West Point, the top-ranked liberal college are increasingly requiring SAT scores. West Point recently won a court ruling that allowed it should continue its minority preference policy.
“SAT scores are increasingly becoming an important selection factor, especially around engineering schools,” said Chungsok Lee, CEO of Ivy Dream, a college admissions consulting company, “and universities that want to find the best students will continue to reinstitute them, as they are no longer discriminatory.”
However, Lee added, citing UC as an example, “It may still be difficult for universities that want to pursue diversity to reinstate mandatory SAT scores after the end of minority affirmative action.”
In contrast to Dartmouth, Harvard and other prestigious private universities have opted to forgo SAT and ACT requirements since 2020, leaning on personal statements and high school achievements for admissions decisions.
BY NICOLE CHANG, HOONSIK WOO [chang.nicole@koreadaily.com]
