How the ACT and SAT Help Disadvantaged Students Get Into College

Randy Lyhus for The Chronicle

Admissions officers and college counselors across the country hailed the University of Chicago’s decision this month to make the ACT and SAT optional for admission, part of its laudable broader effort to increase the number of “first-generation and rural students” on campus. Supporters of the decision note that students from high-income families benefit from tutors and the ability to take tests multiple times in their high-school careers. Making test scores optional is supposed to be a way to level the playing field and increase socioeconomic diversity on college campuses.

As a tenure-track professor in the humanities from a low-income background, I want nothing more than for students from similar walks of life to be able to attend colleges that fit their needs. I want elite colleges to open their doors wide to the less fortunate, and I applaud Chicago for its effort to do just that.

But if not for the ACT, I might not have attended college at all.

I grew up in a lower-middle-class white family in rural Mississippi. My hometown has slightly more than 400 souls. It doesn’t have a single traffic light, and the Christmas parade is just a few guys on ATVs pulling trailers full of kids. Gun ownership is a matter of course, for both hunting and home security. The nearest grocery store, restaurant, or pharmacy is eight miles away, so even minor errands require a 15-minute drive down a two-lane country highway. For the people who live there, choosing between Ole Miss and Mississippi State isn’t about picking a college; it’s just who you pull for during football season.

Roughly three-quarters of students at my high school qualified for free or reduced-price meals. Because my mother worked as a teacher and my father as a school-bus driver, I was one of the lucky ones with a stable home life, parents with college degrees, and no worries about whether food would be on the table. Still, money was never abundant. We couldn’t swing much in the way of travel or extracurricular experiences, and I spent most of my free time reading library books. I never went on a college tour, and I’m still surprised when I hear about high-school students being driven or flown across the country just to compare the feel of Bard to Bates. Stories like mine abound across the nation, and I’m glad that higher education is beginning to listen to them.

Yet a bright student at my high school might still fall through the cracks. Chicago’s vice president for enrollment, James G. Nondorf, told The Chronicle that transcripts tell “such a powerful story for us,” but what story would my transcript have told? An A student, sure, but my school produced lots of those. Doing well in a given course mostly meant that you showed up regularly, didn’t bother the teacher, and turned in your homework on time.

Academic standards were a little lax: my eighth-grade science teacher, who was also a preacher, refused to teach the theory of evolution, preferring instead to teach creationism. It was easy to study for his tests, since all the answers were in Scripture. It was so uncool to be noticeably intelligent that even the principal made fun of me as being “too smart for his own good.” And my high school did not, and to my knowledge still does not, offer any AP courses, which might offer gifted students a chance to show that they’re ready for a rigorous college education.

How could I have distinguished myself in the eyes of an elite college’s admissions officer? With an optional two-minute video, as suggested on the Chicago application site, filmed on a device my family could not have afforded? I have no idea. What I do know is that my parents told me that unless I got a full scholarship, I would have to take out loans for college. At the time, because all I knew about student-loan debt was that it was terrifying, I resolved to either attend college debt-free or join the military, the path my male relatives had taken.

So I did what lots of high-achieving, low-income students do to prove their merit: I took the ACT. The test cost about $25. I had heard somewhere that a score of 33 earned a full-ride scholarship at Mississippi State, so that was my goal. I got a 32.

Took it again. 32.

Took it again. 34.

My mother was so proud when that letter arrived that she immediately drove me to our church, which my father was renovating, to share the good news. He was so proud, and remained so proud, that he shared my score as part of his toast at my wedding.

They celebrated because they knew that even though richer kids, kids from better school districts, might have had AP courses, tutors, and other privileges of the well-off, the ACT had put me on a level playing field with the best of them in at least one respect.

I ended up attending Mississippi State with room, board, and everything else paid for. Courses I took in its Shackouls Honors College gave me an education I’m proud of, and I was able to focus on my studies without having to worry about money. I like the football team, too. Eventually, I earned a master’s degree and a doctorate, and I was lucky enough to grasp the brass ring of the tenure track. That chain of opportunities began with the ACT.

Chicago is only making the ACT and SAT optional; it’s not refusing to look at scores. Yet I am concerned that the broader move toward admissions strategies like Chicago’s “holistic review process” might inadvertently put low-income students at a disadvantage. The admissions website asks applicants to consider questions surely more answerable by wealthy students: “Why did you choose to pursue certain opportunities? What activities are most meaningful to you?” But not every student has equal access to “opportunities” and “activities.” Will a wealthy student with a less-than-stellar SAT make the cut over a brainy kid from the sticks because his summers doing voluntourism in a far-flung corner of the world make him seem more well-rounded, more interesting?

What Chicago is doing to increase socioeconomic diversity, especially offering families making less than $60,000 enough financial aid to cover the total cost of attendance, is exemplary. But I do hope the university keeps in mind how meaningful a high score on those tests can be for a kid from a few steps down the socioeconomic ladder. Those numbers tell their own stories.

Rich Saunders is the pseudonym of an assistant professor at Spring Hill College, in Mobile, Ala.