Chalkbeat Ideas is a section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.
Debating the value of the SAT is something of an American pastime.
The latest kerfuffle is happening at the University of California, a massive system that no longer considers test scores in college admissions after critics raised concerns that tests limit opportunities for disadvantaged students. Now, though, some UC professors and others contend that external testing is needed to maintain academic standards.
Many test supporters have also advanced a more surprising argument: The SAT and ACT actually help disadvantaged students get a leg up in admissions. “Administrators say the test scores are especially useful at identifying strong students from low-income communities,” opined the New York Times editorial board in July.
Today, the vast majority of colleges remain test optional, but some elite Ivy League schools have reinstated testing requirements. Amid concerns about student performance, officials at the University of California are reexamining its policy of test-blind admissions.
It can be hard to separate fact from rhetoric in this debate, so I wanted to take a careful look at the evidence to answer two key questions: Do admissions tests tend to help or harm lower-income students? And has de-emphasizing tests resulted in more students struggling in college?
Two detailed studies in the last few years have looked at the effects of test-optional admissions. Both papers found roughly the same result: The share of students from lower-income families ticked up after schools adopted this approach. So did the number of Black and Hispanic students, who are typically underrepresented at selective colleges.
These effects were quite small. Test-optional policies seemed to raise the proportion of lower-income students by about 1 percentage point, according to both studies.
These detectable but modest results make sense in many ways. Test scores are more closely correlated with family background than high school GPA, another key academic indicator, so downweighting tests could help disadvantaged students. At the same time, colleges have a great deal of other information correlated with SAT scores, such as where they attended high school or how they performed on AP exams. Many students submit scores even when it’s optional. Universities also have strong financial and institutional incentives to admit students from affluent families, making big shifts unlikely.
Neither researcher found any meaningful change in college graduation rates after adopting test-optional admissions.
A key caveat is that these policies were adopted by a select group of colleges prior to the pandemic. It’s unclear whether the findings would hold in a different, post-pandemic context.
A more recent study examined the consequences of Dartmouth College’s move to test-optional admissions in 2020. Many lower-income students with decent SAT scores opted not to submit them, the researchers found. Yet that actually hurt their chances of getting in. Why? Admissions officers seemed to judge disadvantaged students’ scores more generously. “Dartmouth is hunting for these students, and it turns out that a great way to identify them is to have test scores,” says study author and Dartmouth professor Bruce Sacerdote.
This research has been widely cited. Dartmouth administrators pointed to it as a key reason for bringing test mandates back in 2024.
The paper, however, does not quite answer a key question: the overall effect on disadvantaged students. It looks at students who might have been left out under the test-optional policy but doesn’t quantify those who were admitted because of the shift. “They only count one side of the equation,” says Jesse Rothstein, a UC Berkeley economist who recently published a detailed analysis of the testing debate.
Another recent study found that lower-income students with high grades were slightly more likely to enroll in elite schools under test-optional admissions.
Much of the debate also centers on whether dropping testing requirements has brought in students unprepared for rigorous courses. Here’s what we know: Test scores do predict college performance, particularly at more selective schools. To the extent those schools admit students with lower test scores, they might struggle more. Yet test-optional policies lead to only modest changes in who is admitted, so are unlikely to cause big swings in student readiness.
Keep in mind that broadly reinstating testing requirements would not, by itself, address the challenge of preparing students for college. Instead, students with lower test scores, who often are from lower-income families, might be bumped down to less selective, less resourced universities. It’s not obvious that that’s a good thing.
Spokespeople for the ACT and College Board, which runs the SAT, both emphasized that their tests can play a valuable role as one factor in admissions decisions.
So where does this leave us?
The studies we have are imperfect and, in some cases, dated. They only look at test-optional policies, not the test-free approach being debated in California, an important distinction. That said, the weight of the evidence suggests that when colleges de-emphasize test scores, they enroll a few more lower-income students — but only a few.
For all the intense debate over the policy, the stakes may be lower than either side realizes.
Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.
