Guest column: Not so fast on reinstating SAT
While debate rages about whether the presidents of Ivy League universities were unfairly targeted by Congress or appropriately lost their jobs, another debate has emerged within higher education with far greater consequences for the nation’s students: whether to reinstate high-stakes tests like the SAT as an admission requirement.
A narrative is developing, fueled in part by a recent New York Times article, that suggests colleges should reinstate the requirement, which many dropped during the pandemic, because one recent study demonstrated that those scores are excellent predictors of student performance. I’m here to say: Not so fast!
This debate, too, has its roots with the Ivy League plus a few additional, highly selective universities, like MIT and Stanford. It is based on studies conducted by them and about them, rather than data from the thousands of other (non-Ivy League) colleges across the country.
Opportunity Insights, based at Harvard University, conducted one study, and the other was led by Raj Chetty, David J. Deming, and John N. Friedman, who are from Harvard and Brown. The findings were based on student data from Ivy League institutions plus Stanford, MIT, Duke University and the University of Chicago. There is no student data included from nonselective to moderately selective institutions. Worcester State University falls into that category, and, together, these schools enroll the other 90%-plus of the nation’s students.
Another reason less selective schools cannot rely upon the Ivy League-plus student data is because the SAT score scale used by the researchers was 1200 to 1600. By comparison, the average SAT score at WSU (before and after the pandemic) has been within 30 points of 1100, a little above the 2023 College Board-reported mean SAT score of 1028.
For the most selective schools, standardized test scores are undoubtedly better predictors of student success than the applicants’ GPAs, and their data back that up. Because their GPAs range from something like 3.9 to 4.5, SATs help them distinguish one A+ student from another.
For Worcester State, however, the GPA is the best predictor of student success. In 2017, we analyzed 81 factors affecting students’ persistence in college and found that SAT scores ranked 40th in predicting students’ success while GPA ranked first.
This holds true regardless of where a student comes from, what town they live in, or what privilege (or lack thereof) they have benefited from. Since going test-optional at WSU, we’ve experienced a 4.5-percentage-point increase in our overall four-year graduation rate. It’s clear we are on the right track in predicting student success.
There are other, serious downsides to relying heavily upon standardized test scores for admission. Over the past 20 years there has been a documented rise in mental health conditions among teens. Cheri Foster Triplett and Mary Alice Barksdale’s 2005 study found that some young students experience “anxiety, panic, irritability, frustration, boredom, crying, headaches and loss of sleep” while taking high-stakes tests. Worcester State believes that if a standardized test is something you don’t want to take for admission – for any reason, mental health or otherwise – you simply don’t need to.
Lastly, the biases inherent in the tests themselves, and the results of requiring them, have not disappeared, despite attention to these concerns for years now. Studies have shown that standardized test requirements serve as barriers to opportunity for students of color and first-generation-to-college students, among other groups.
One 2014 study by William C. Hiss and Valerie W. Franks analyzed 33 public and private colleges that adopted test-optional policies and found that those who were foregoing submission of test scores “are more likely to be first-generation-to-college students, minorities, Pell Grant recipients, women and students with Learning Differences.”
For many years at Worcester State, at least half of our incoming classes have been first-generation students, and we are attracting ever larger percentages of underrepresented groups, including the fall 2023 class of new students in which 44% identify as Black, Indigenous, or people of color. As noted earlier, our graduation rate has only improved. It’s clear our reliance on GPA for admissions is working and is providing us the many benefits of having a diverse student body.
Ivy League universities, which are sometimes referred to as “exclusive,” may well need to rely upon the SAT or ACT to retain that status. For the many inclusive colleges like mine, test-optional is a far better way to go.
Barry M. Maloney is president of Worcester State University.
This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Worcester State University Barry Mahoney on reinstating SAT test
