Colleges that don’t use the ACT or SAT scores in admissions will no longer find themselves exiled to the lonely margins of the world’s most-loved-and-hated rankings.
U.S. News & World Report announced on Wednesday that it will now rank test-blind colleges in its controversial but closely watched Best Colleges guide. Previously, test-blind institutions were excluded from the rankings and categorized as “Unranked.”
In a blog post, two U.S. News officials acknowledged that many colleges have changed their testing requirements in recent years:
“Prospective students and their families want to know the academic quality of all schools, including ones that do not make use of standardized-test scores.”
The authors also noted that several ACT and SAT testing dates were canceled this year because of the pandemic. “U.S. News believes now is the right time,” they wrote, “to end the use of standardized tests in admissions decisions as a requirement for inclusion in the rankings.”
The magazine has long factored incoming students’ ACT and SAT scores into its measure of “student excellence” at each college. Last year, standardized-test scores were weighted at 7.75 percent of an institution’s overall ranking.
Important fact: The 2021 Best Colleges rankings, which will be published in September, are based on fall-2019 admissions data and will not reflect testing-policy changes made as a result of Covid-19. So, for instance, Loyola University New Orleans, which announced its new test-blind policy in May, wasn’t destined for the “unranked” category in this year’s guide.
But future editions would have to account for the fact that several prominent institutions have removed the ACT and SAT from their admissions evaluations. This year, more than two-dozen institutions, including the California Institute of Technology,have adopted test-blind policies at least temporarily because of disruptions caused by Covid-19. In May, the University of California system announced that it would stop using the ACT and SAT in admissions in 2023.
Go on, close your eyes. Can you imagine U.S. News leaving UC-Berkeley out of its ranking of top national universities in the 2025 edition of Best Colleges? Nah.
The change U.S. News announced on Wednesday would increase the number of ranked colleges by approximately 200, or by 14 percent, U.S. News said. But, no, it’s not going to shake up the top-most tiers that many families breathlessly scour for meaning when deciding where to apply.
Still, the change is noteworthy for anyone fascinated by sudden shifts in admissions. Not long ago, going test blind was a lonely exercise — and uncommon. Sarah Lawrence College did so in 2005. Then, in 2008, U.S. News decided to boot the college from its rankings, all but burying it in a then-new “unranked” category. The college finally switched to a test-optional policy in 2012, rejoining the rankings party.
Hampshire College became the only test-blind institution in 2014. Northern Illinois University joined it this year.
Despite the rise in test-blind policies, there are far more colleges with test-optional ones, allowing applicants to submit scores, or not. In 2019, 51 colleges dropped their ACT and SAT requirements, pushing the total to 1,040, according to a list compiled by the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, known as FairTest. Nearly two-dozen colleges went test-optional by mid-March. Since then, nearly 200 institutions have joined the bandwagon — at least for 2021 — after Covid-19 shut down testing centers worldwide.
‘U.S. News’ believes now is the right time to end the use of standardized tests in admissions decisions as a requirement for inclusion in the rankings.
U.S. News has always ranked colleges with various kinds of test-optional policies, and that isn’t changing. But one wrinkle in its methodology almost certainly will. Call it the 75-percent rule.
As Robert Morse, chief data strategist, explained in this 2016 blog post, Best Colleges reduces the weight of the ACT and SAT for test-optional institutions where fewer than three-quarters of incoming students submit scores. “The lack of data, for 25 percent of students or more, likely means the ACT or SAT score is not representative of the entire class,” he wrote.
One possible effect of that policy: A college’s ranking is lower than it would have been otherwise. Some enrollment officials call that a penalty for not requiring ACT and SAT scores.
In a tweet on Wednesday, Meredith Twombly, vice president for admissions and financial aid at Clark University, in Massachusetts, who previously worked at Hampshire, called the announcement “a good baby step,” but asked whether U.S. News would also change the 75-percent policy.
“If not,” she wrote in another tweet, “this will have a small impact on role of testing.”
Many expect that U.S. News will adjust — or suspend — the policy because of widespread testing cancellations and the surge in test-optional polices for 2021 applicants. Many applicants might not even take the ACT or SAT. And plenty of colleges probably will see fewer than 75 percent submit scores.
In an email, Madeline Smanik, a spokeswoman for U.S. News, declined to say how, or if, the policy would change. “We’re currently reviewing our strategies for future U.S. News education rankings where Covid-19 may have had an impact.” The publication’s staff was still working on the next edition of Best Colleges, she wrote in another email, and would answer questions about its methodology upon its publication.
The U.S. News officials who oversee the rankings methodology wrote in their blog post that though they expect most colleges to “continue to make significant use” of standardized-test scores in the future, “there no doubt will be lasting changes.”
