Don’t Send ACT/SAT Scores to Northern Illinois U. It Just Went ‘Test-Blind.’

Northern Illinois University on Wednesday announced that it would stop using standardized-test scores in all general-admission and merit-scholarship decisions.

Many colleges have adopted test-optional policies, which allow applicants to decide whether to submit ACT or SAT scores. But Northern Illinois has gone a step further. Starting in the fall of 2021, the university’s new “test-blind” policy will cut tests out of the picture on the Dekalb, Ill., campus.

If an applicant sends scores, “we’re not even going to review them,” Quinton Clay, the university’s director of admissions, told The Chronicle.

Starting in 2021, Northern Illinois will guarantee admission to any applicant with a 3.0 grade-point average. Freshman applicants will be automatically considered for institutional merit scholarships based on their high-school grades. The university will no longer require students applying to the honors program to submit test scores. (Applicants to the nursing program will still be required to send them.)

In an interview with The Chronicle, Clay described the thinking behind the new policy — and why he believes it’s more honest than the alternatives.

Why adopt a test-blind policy instead of a test-optional one?

Test-blind is our way to translate to students that we are going to take action on very compelling national and institutional research. We know what the greatest predictor for success is, in terms of a strong academic performance, persistence, and graduating in a timely manner. We know the correlations point back to the GPA, not to the standardized tests. That’s the predictor that we need to build our policies on.

This really reflects the values of this institution and our compelling desire to do the right thing. When we’re shaping our institutional policy, it’s important to be honest. Our institutional policy is that a standardized-test score is not predictive of success. In that sense we felt that it would be disingenuous to make test scores optional.

After a while, you find yourself in a position of trying to make the test score predictive of something. For so long we’ve been conditioned to believe that it does something that our own institutional analysis finds that it doesn’t do. So we stopped trying to find a reason to include test scores in our process.

That’s a key point. If a test score isn’t helping predict success on a given campus beyond what grades are telling you, then its value comes into question.

We launched a strategic enrollment-management plan a year ago, and that really helped galvanize us to look deeply and critically at our practices. We started looking at reducing equity gaps. We looked at scholarship practices that are predicated on standardized-test scores. We looked at admission requirements. We looked at admission to the honors program. Then we looked at the common denominator: We were factoring test scores in ways that data tell us are inappropriate.

I’m very slow to call a tool a bad tool. It’s the application of the tool that’s good or bad.

What kinds of applicants might this new policy help get admitted who weren’t being admitted before?

This isn’t some kind of tactic to target a specific market. We are thinking about what is right for all students. Some students had a 4.0, but, previously, their test score prevented them from getting that merit scholarship that they had earned, in my opinion, based on sweat equity. The right thing to do is to give them access to those scholarships.

We also know that some students from underrepresented and underresourced communities can be deterred by testing requirements.

What other changes are you making to your admissions process? What about applicants who don’t have a 3.0 GPA?

We’ve instituted a holistic admissions review that will be a way for us to evaluate students who don’t have that 3.0 or higher. We will put in the effort and labor to learn their story, to uncover the elements that are crucial.

For select applicants, we’ll take in additional qualitative information. We can require a personal statement. We can require an admissions interview. Whatever we think we can use to get a complete picture of those academic achievements.

This will give us valuable information to help students once they’re here. Many students have struggles that extend far beyond the admissions process. We want to make sure we’re engaging with that and thinking about that in every way possible.

It’s going to be a highly individualized process. The power in holistic review is to not overly prescribe it. When you remove a barrier, the last thing you want to do is introduce a ton of unnecessary hoops. You don’t want to create a holistic review process that encumbers a student.

Last fall Northern Illinois saw its enrollment fall to the lowest point in a half-century. Did that factor into this decision or its timing at all?

Any institution facing those kinds of challenges thinks deeply and broadly about anything that can be done. We have developed a comprehensive strategic enrollment-management plan. One of those great opportunities for us is to think about affirming continuity, from the point of admission through all of our persistence efforts, that supports students.

How do you feel, personally, about this decision and what it might mean for your work in admissions?

I was a first-generation college student. We found a structural opportunity to make a difference. This is just one of the proudest moments of my life.