After another year where selective colleges saw record-breaking application numbers, test-optional policies are becoming the “new normal.”
With the notable exceptions of Georgetown and MIT (and a few others), nearly all selective colleges are continuing to maintain their test-optional or test-blind policies moving into the next admissions cycle.
An article published in The Hill last week reports that the share of applicants who are submitting test scores has plunged, with fewer than half of Early applicants this fall submitting SAT or ACT scores. Yet, the Wall Street Journal reports that more students than ever are taking the optional SAT and ACT in an effort to stand out in a crowded field.
What’s more, the SAT is becoming fully digital.
The digital (and 45 minutes shorter) SAT begins internationally this spring and across the US in 2024. While testing changes are never easy to navigate, they also function as a bit of a gatekeeping tactic; by making it more challenging for companies to replicate the practice testing experience, students become that much more dependent on the material the College Board chooses to release. (We do have a digital SAT simulation in the works, however!)
We’ve been thinking about this topic a lot, and so have our families. The #1 question I’ve been asked over the past two years is “What is the value of testing?” In this spirit, we created a useful explainer on this topic.
Chapman University is one of over 900 US colleges and universities that are permanently test-optional. Another 230 or so colleges maintained test-optional policies through at least the 2022-23 application cycle.
How has the college admissions process changed?
What I want to make sure comes across loud and clear is this: The balance of factors that comprise admissions decisions may have shifted, but fundamentally—despite all the changes the last few years have introduced—the college admissions process has remained the same. While there is more uncertainty now around testing and score submission, the college admissions process has always been opaque and multifaceted.
Here’s where things start to get more complex:
The decisions around test preparation and score submission have become more nuanced.
Whether or not to take the SAT or ACT is now part of a multi-stage decision-making process that should begin as early as sophomore year—when students first start diagnostic testing. We advise students to embrace the possibility of testing being additive to their application, and to view test scores as one more potentially impactful data point. Then, when the time comes to apply, students can decide whether to submit—a choice that may, and often does, vary on a school-by-school basis.
The decision about whether to submit scores to individual colleges involves analysis of whether or not the scores will be ‘additive.’ As a rule of thumb, if the applicant’s scores fall within or above the middle 50% range for accepted students, then probably submit them. If their scores fall below the institution’s middle 50% range, then don’t submit. Though, in many cases, there is more to it than that.
LogicPrep is uniquely positioned to help families navigate these testing decisions because our Test Prep Tutors and College Advisors have frequent and robust conversations about how testing will (or will not) play into each student’s overall game plan.
In the end, you will probably never know why you were or weren’t accepted at a particular school—that fact hasn’t changed. But with more options of where to apply and how to put your best foot forward, you can increase your odds of success not just at the end, but at each juncture of the application process.