Free Republic

Should colleges and universities—especially those regarded as elite—use the scores students earned on standardized tests in making admissions decisions? That has been a heated subject of debate for several decades. Opponents of testing claim that the tests are unfair to minority students and help perpetuate the socioeconomic supremacy of affluent whites, while defenders argue that standardized tests help schools distinguish between students who are capable of doing the level of work required and those who aren’t. Which side is right? Does it really matter? In his new book, Higher Admissions: The Rise, Decline, and Return of Standardized Testing, Nicholas Lemann...

The University of Pennsylvania announced it would require standardized test scores for undergraduates in the upcoming admissions cycle. The school says the change will bring 'clarity and transparency to the application process.' Another Ivy League institution has elected to reinstate mandatory standardized testing after making it optional for undergraduate applicants since the COVID-19 pandemic. On Friday, the University of Pennsylvania announced it would require SAT or ACT scores in the upcoming admissions cycle in order to bring “clarity and transparency to the application process.” ... ”Beginning with the 2025-2026 undergraduate admissions cycle, Penn is reinstating a standardized testing requirement for...

Former vice president Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff were spotted at a Los Angeles Lakers game Thursday night — with many quick to boast that “nobody even cared” she was there. Footage circulating on social media showed the ex-veep showing up to the arena with very little fanfare as she and her hubby hiked up the stairs to their non-courtside seats. “Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff arrive at the Lakers game. Pretty much nobody cared,” one person howled on X. “Just goes to show you how unpopular Kamala really is and how all the hoopla while she campaigned...

Harvard has finally changed course and reinstated standardized testing for admissions after several other Ivy League schools led the way.Students applying to enter Harvard in fall 2025 and beyond will be required to submit SAT or ACT scores, though the university said a few other test scores will be accepted in “exceptional cases,” including Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate tests. The university had previously said it was going to keep its test-optional policy through the entering class of fall 2026...In explaining its decision to accelerate the return to testing, Harvard cited a study by Opportunity Insights, which found that test...

Harvard College will require applicants to submit standardized test scores once again, becoming the latest Ivy League school to reinstate the requirement after making the choice optional during the pandemic. The university had previously said it would remain test-optional through the 2025-2026 application cycle.... Harvard becomes the latest Ivy League school to reinstate the requirement after making the choice optional during the pandemic. Dartmouth College, Yale and Brown universities announced similar changes in recent weeks, after officials cited data suggesting that SAT and ACT scores were the best predictors of students’ academic performance at their schools — and that making...

The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) and Brown University are the latest schools to reinstate SAT or ACT score requirements in their admissions process. UT Austin announced Monday that standardized test scores will be required again, starting with applicants for the fall of 2025. “Our goals are to attract the best and brightest students and to make sure every student is successful once they are here. Standardized scores combined with high school GPA support this goal by improving early identification of students who demonstrated the greatest academic achievement, the most potential, and those who can most benefit from...

Yale University will once again require standardized testing for students applying for admission in the fall of 2025. The decision, announced today, ends the test-optional undergraduate admissions process that had been in place at Yale since the pandemic. According to the announcement, the past four years of test-optional admissions had given Yale what it described as “an invaluable opportunity to think deeply about testing policy and to generate new data and analyses. With testing availability now fully restored for prospective applicants around the world, we have reevaluated our policy with the benefit of fresh insights.” Yale is describing its new...

Nearly four years after announcing it would temporarily remove the testing requirement for applicants, Dartmouth has announced it is reinstating the SAT.When Dartmouth suspended its standardized testing requirement for undergraduate applicants in June 2020, it was a pragmatic pause taken by most colleges and universities in response to an unprecedented global pandemic. At the time, we imagined the resulting "test-optional" policy as a short-term practice rather than an informed commentary on the role of testing in our holistic evaluation process. Nearly four years later, having studied the role of testing in our admissions process as well as its value as...

Dartmouth will reinstate the standardized test requirement for applicants to the Class of 2029 and beyond, according to a campus-wide email from President Sian Leah Beilock. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Dartmouth adopted a test-optional policy for applicants to the Classes of 2025, 2026 and 2027 and a test-recommended policy for applicants to the Class of 2028, according to Lee Coffin, Vice President and Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid. “The reactivation [of the test-required policy] has been modeled on a very comprehensive research study by a group of faculty,” Coffin said in an interview with The Dartmouth. According...

The recent Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action forbids the use of race in college admissions. Yet North Carolina public universities are already finding ways to circumvent the spirit of the ruling, such as by using essay questions that ask students about challenges they have faced or to reflect on their identity. These prompts allow students to say, for example, “As a Black student … ,” which is indeed permissible under Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard; students are not forbidden from bringing up their race in their applications. These essay responses, as well as the personal interviews that are...

Ask Asian children who their harshest critics are, and you will invariably get some answer involving mom, dad, or both. Bad news for Asian-Americans across the United States — they won’t be finding much reprieve from school administrators and staff at the university level. Look no further than the curious case of 18-year-old Jon Wang, a Florida native sporting some impressive academic marks. According to Fox News, Wang scored a sterling 1590 out of 1600 on his SAT exam (many Asian parents would probably be mad about him being 10 points short of a perfect score) and earned an eye-popping...

In 2021, the Equal Justice Institute celebrated a settlement with the University of California in which the system agreed to stop using SAT and ACT test scores, objective merit-based metrics, in college admissions, until 2025. The racialist lawsuit claimed that test scores violate the California Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause as “indicators” of race. The “SAT is a barrier to equal opportunity”, Lisa Holder, a counsel with the Equal Opportunity Institute, claimed. Like a lot of destructive leftist activists, Lisa Holder received a Soros Justice Fellowship from the radical billionaire’s Open Society Foundation.

States are realizing there is a much-needed alternative to today’s watered-down, useless standardized tests: the Classic Learning Test.The days of needing flashcards to study SAT vocabulary words to get into college are over — but not just because more and more schools have decided to jettison standardized testing entirely. Today’s SAT is a shadow of its former self, having been dumbed down and manipulated over the past several decades to serve political ends. In its current form, the test has outlived its usefulness.In fact, Florida lawmakers have affirmed as much in a recent education bill that passed the Florida House...

So if you have kids in college or heading to college sometime soon then you’re probably already aware that many schools have abandoned the SAT as a requirement for applicants. Forbes reported last fall that the SAT is now optional at a majority of schools.As the college application process picks up steam for the upcoming academic year, a new survey shows that more than 80% of U.S. bachelor-degree granting institutions will not require students seeking fall 2023 admission to submit either ACT or SAT standardized exam scores…“An overwhelming majority of undergraduate admissions offices now make selection decisions without relying on...

Many high school students are pushing back against the importance of test scores. Awaiting responses from colleges on whether you were accepted or rejected can be quite stressful. That stress can quickly turn to disappointment when having been rejected from colleges that were high on your priority list. For one high schooler, despite her high overall average when she sent out college applications, she was shocked to receive more rejections in the mail than she hadn't been anticipating. In a TikTok video, the teenage girl, C'Lette, filmed all of the rejection letters she had received in the mail from schools...

Suppose you’re a poor teenager in a dysfunctional environment. You have to work a part time job to help make ends meet. Your parents are absent or completely checked out. So you have to help take care of your younger siblings. You’re smart, but you’re not in a position to devote much time to homework; to getting top grades in every class. But you set a few hours aside in an afternoon, and receive an outstanding score on the SAT. Suddenly, options become available to you. Our ruling class is doing all they can to prevent this possibility. Remember: If...

In the midst of the Covid pandemic, the UNC Board of Governors made the decision to take some pressure off potential applicants by implementing an emergency waiver for the System’s standardized testing requirement. Voting in July of 2020, the UNC Board of Governors temporarily waived the testing requirement for 2021’s spring, summer, and fall terms at all UNC-System schools. Neatly disguised as necessary (since testing centers were closed or canceling tests) and practical (since no at-home testing option was available at the time), this waiver opened the door for future “emergencies” to further diminish standards. As many expected, in May...

This coming January, the NCAA will convene in Texas to decide the future of standardized testing requirements for student-athletes. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the NCAA and universities nationwide have taken steps to waive or modify admissions and eligibility criteria. With the pandemic coming to an end, it is yet to be determined which policies and requirements will be reimplemented by these institutions and which may be scrapped entirely. Division I and Division II college athletes are held to a specific set of academic eligibility requirements by the NCAA. These include a minimum GPA (2.3 for Division I...

Standardized educational tests do not perfectly measure student aptitude or achievement, and no one argues that they do. But they can differ from all other available measures in two respects: their standardization and their independence of education insider control. To be truly standardized, the same content must be administered in the same manner to all students. To be independent of educator influence, they must be “externally” administered—that is test materials must be managed and tests administered by non-school personnel. External administration of a test systemwide to just one grade level of students requires both intensive and extensive logistical management. That...

After careful consideration, we have decided to reinstate our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles. Our research shows standardized tests help us better assess the academic preparedness of all applicants.