Covid-19 shredded the standardized-testing process. Colleges are still adjusting to the implications.
Here’s a big one: An unprecedented number of applicants probably won’t submit an ACT or SAT score this year. And “unprecedented” could end up meaning “most.”
That’s one takeaway from new findings by EAB, a Washington, D.C., consulting firm that works with colleges. Recently, it analyzed nearly 42,000 applications at 57 test-optional institutions: Just 45 percent of students had sent a test score.
That surprised Michael Koppenheffer, vice president for marketing programs at EAB. Sure, he knew that more than two-thirds of four-year colleges have suspended their ACT and SAT requirements (at least for this admissions cycle), and that many high-school seniors, including his daughter, still haven’t taken an exam because of cancellations caused by Covid-19.
Some of this lack of clarity is a reflection of the ambivalence of the admissions field toward test-optional.
But as Koppenheffer wrote in a recent blog post, he and his colleagues, as well as some enrollment leaders, weren’t expecting the extent to which students so far have opted against sending scores. (In the 2019-20 admissions cycle, about two-thirds of students sent scores to test-optional colleges in the company’s network.) The pandemic, of course, has turned many things upside down: A handful of prominent selective colleges tell The Chronicle that nearly two-thirds of their applicants haven’t sent scores this fall. It’s early, but those percentages are staggering.
As always in admissions, you’ve got to look at the numbers inside the numbers. EAB found that submission rates varied by race, gender, and income. Women were 15 percent less likely than men to send scores. Black and Hispanic students were 25 percent less likely than white students to submit. And students with lower median family incomes were less likely than more-affluent students to do the same.
Those findings should raise concerns in a world where a) many colleges are for the first time evaluating applicants sans test scores, and b) some institutions that no longer require scores for admission continue to require them for at least some institutional scholarships. “Merit policies that heavily rely on test scores,” Koppenheffer wrote, “will only exacerbate issues of equity further.”
There’s something else to consider: The wording of your college’s testing policy. Is it clear? Clear, that is, to folks who haven’t spent years inhaling higher-ed jargon?
EAB has heard from a slew of prospective students who were confused by colleges’ explanations of test-optional plans, Koppenheffer said. He and his colleagues found considerable variance when they reviewed the terminology colleges are using to describe those policies.
“There are a number of colleges out there where it’s not simple and not clear,” he said in an interview with The Chronicle. “There’s confusing fine print.”
This past summer, several high-school counselors and students complained that the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor’s “test flexible” policy was convoluted. As The Chronicle reported in July, the policy, as worded at the time, said that ACT or SAT scores were “required” … but that students unable to submit one of those could send the score from one of several other standardized tests (PSAT, AP, etc.) instead. Those not submitting ACT or SAT scores were instructed to “share specific information regarding how the pandemic impacted your ability to sit for a standardized test.”
“This is a lot to unpack for a high-school student getting a whole lot of info at once,” one high-school counselor told The Chronicle.
Michigan later reworded its policy, clarifying that it will not penalize students who don’t send standardized-test scores of any kind.
Nationally, there are many flavors of test-optional, which helps explain why even clear, concise policies might cause confusion.
Koppenheffer said EAB recently looked at three moderately selective private colleges. At the one with a straight-up test-optional policy — any prospective student may choose to send scores or not — 76 percent of applicants so far hadn’t submitted them.
Another college had what EAB called a test-conditional policy: It waives test requirements for only those students with a minimum grade-point average or class ranking. Fifty-nine percent of applicants to that college hadn’t sent scores.
A third college had a test-flexible policy, which, generally, allows applicants to substitute a score from another standardized test, or to submit an essay or recommendation letter in lieu of a score. Just 33 percent of applicants hadn’t sent ACT or SAT scores to that college.
“The nuances of the policy and the articulation of the policy have this huge impact on student behavior,” Koppenheffer said.
He, for one, believes that, this year at least, colleges with test-optional policies should avoid substituting score requirements with “other barriers” to applying.
EAB has tested variations of test-optional language to determine what phrases seem clearest to students. “Test scores not required,” it found, is a good bet.
Still, it’s not hard to find dense, long-winded explanations of test-optional polices, some of which read as if college officials were holding their noses when they wrote them. That has led some college counselors to wonder if some institutions are being intentionally vague, implicitly encouraging applicants to send ACT or SAT scores despite test-optional policies.
Koppenheffer doesn’t think any colleges are trying to confuse applicants. “It’s more that the institution isn’t prepared operationally,” he said. “Some of this lack of clarity is a reflection of the ambivalence of the admissions field toward test-optional. What we’re seeing is that some colleges cannot get all the way to a clear and unfettered expression saying that test scores will not affect your application one way or the other. Some of them don’t feel comfortable saying that.”
And that’s making some applicants uncomfortable.
