Access to college admissions tests — and lucrative scholarships — imperiled by the pandemic

The pandemic has laid bare inequities in education across the country, and access to college admissions tests is one of the latest examples.

Even though many colleges scrapped SAT or ACT requirements this year because of the pandemic, students are scrambling to take the exams anyway — including the PSAT — as they chase lucrative scholarships and attention from some selective colleges that still require test scores.

Finding a safe, open testing site has become an obstacle because a swath of America's high schools, where most standardized tests are administered, remain shuttered. Other testing centers have had to cut down on how many students they can accommodate with coronavirus cases surging.

Some students have gone as far as flying to another state to take a test at a site with an opening. That’s not an option for students from low-income families, for whom scholarships tied to test scores are only more in demand given the pandemic’s gut punch to the economy.

“More than 1,450 US colleges and universities announced they are moving to a test-optional policy, and more will surely follow,” the National Association for College Admission Counseling said earlier this year. “By going test-optional, institutions are making a definitive statement that they will not need test scores to make admission decisions this year.”

Yet colleges and universities including Loyola University Chicago, Clemson University and the University of Oklahoma, among those that made scores optional, continue to require test results for their most prestigious merit scholarships.

At the University of Oklahoma, students who are among the top PSAT scorers could earn $68,500, which would cover a full ride for an in-state student. Some state-run scholarship programs, including in Idaho and Florida, also continue to require students to have an SAT or ACT score to be considered.

PSAT takers down by more than 2 million students

But the decline in the number of students who have taken the PSAT this school year illustrates the hurdles to test access: Some 1.4 million students took the test this school year, traditionally given to high school juniors on a school day in October. That compares with nearly 3.8 million students who took the exam in the 2019-20 academic year. In an unprecedented move, the College Board is offering a second chance to take the test, later this month, though the virus may block students yet again.

In addition, the College Board, which administers the PSAT and SAT, reported that as of December, the number of rising high school seniors in the United States who have taken the SAT this year has dropped. Some 1.4 million students in the class of 2021 have taken the SAT at some point during their high school career, a College Board spokesperson said. That compares with nearly 2.2 million students in the class of 2020 who took the SAT at least once.

The SAT and ACT are offered several times throughout the year, but counselors are advising students not to risk their health to take the exams and pleading with scholarship authorities to drop test score requirements, especially as coronavirus cases spike. But students and their parents are skeptical of colleges’ test-optional admissions announcements, and many say they believe they could have a leg up in admissions with a score. On top of that, the need for financial aid has only intensified with the pandemic savaging the economy.

“We have created a college advising process where all of us, especially these children today that are college bound, they grow up knowing I'm going to have to take this ACT or SAT,” said Carmen Lopez, executive director of College Horizons, a college access group that works with several hundred Native American, Alaskan Native and Native Hawaiian high school students from across the nation each year.

“It's like a rite of passage to college,” she added.

Finding a testing site: ‘Difficult, if not impossible’

Testing center access for the SAT and ACT this year was “very location dependent,” said Bob Schaeffer, interim director of FairTest, an organization that advocates against high-stakes testing, including college admissions tests. “In parts of the country, like California and the Northeast, it was difficult, if not impossible, to find a nearby testing center,” he said.

ACT’s website crashed over the summer as students rushed to sign up after a number of canceled exam dates in the spring. Students also took road trips and hopped on flights to other states to take the exams. At least one student caught Covid-19 from a testing center.

The testing rush highlights the divide between students of means and students from low-income families, Schaeffer said. The former always have been able to try to boost scores by paying for tutors and taking the exams multiple times. But having the means to fly to a different state lays bare the divide in a new way, he said.

“When you rely on test scores to award scholarship aid, you're giving the most money to the highest scorers who are from families who least need the money,” he added.

The College Board said it expects several hundred thousand more students to take the PSAT on the second testing date — Jan. 26. Schools had to order exams by Dec. 4, but it’s not clear how many ultimately will be open and able to administer the test.

While viewed as practice for the SAT, the PSAT is the qualifying test for entry to the National Merit Scholarship Program. Each year, students have the opportunity to earn thousands of dollars for college if they land among the top scorers.

Advocates say the nation’s most vulnerable students, including low-income and minority students and students with disabilities, struggle the most with access to the exams. Indigenous students, already underrepresented on college campuses, even strained to sign up, Lopez said, because of technology issues and location.

This fall, Navajo students reached out to Lopez concerned that they could not apply to the Chief Manuelito Scholarship, one of the Navajo nation’s top scholarship prizes, because it still requires an SAT or ACT score to apply.

When students apply for the scholarship, they’ve typically already been admitted to a college, Lopez said. “Why would we all of a sudden have our seniors, you know, take this exam when they've already been admitted to college, just to satisfy the requirement?” she said. But the tribe’s scholarship evaluation is based entirely on a quantitative scale.

Students told Lopez they were concerned about their health and their families’ health if they took the exam, Lopez said. “But they also said ‘I'm on my portal to login, I cannot find a testing center. It's not letting me register,’” she said. “They were trying to find a test site, but couldn't get in the queue, or sites weren’t opening up.”

Students with disabilities had a similar concern, struggling to find test centers that could accommodate their needs, according to legal documents. In September, a California judge ordered the University of California to temporarily stop using SAT and ACT test results for admission and scholarship decisions, arguing that the exams are a "plus factor" that could harm prospective students with disabilities.

Some schools tried to open their doors just for the exams. In Illinois, where taking the SAT is a graduation requirement, high schools largely closed because of the pandemic were forced to reopen their classrooms to allow their seniors to take the tests.

Illinois State Board of Education spokesperson Jackie Matthews told The Chicago Tribune that while no student would be prevented from graduating if they were unable to take the SAT, “the opportunity to take a free college entrance exam is a matter of equity.”

Some colleges have said they won’t look at scores for their scholarships, including Baylor University. Advocates are urging all scholarship programs to follow suit and drop the requirements, but scholarship policies aren't as flexible.

“Admissions policies are much easier to change,” Schaeffer said. “But many colleges have multiple scholarship programs with different criteria for financial aid that involve test scores. It's a longer, more complex process to root out each of those scholarship programs and change the requirements because they are apparently specified in grants and endowments.”