Yale Weighs Reversing SAT Testing After Dartmouth, MIT Shift

Janet Lorin
·5 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- Yale University is considering reinstating standardized testing and join Ivy League peer Dartmouth College in a policy shift that reflects a broad reevaluation within higher education admissions.

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Jeremiah Quinlan, Yale’s dean of undergraduate admissions, said in an email that the university is “closely considering” its policy, adding that he expects to make an announcement in the coming weeks about the school’s plans for next year and beyond. Dartmouth said earlier this month that it will once again require applicants to submit scores starting in the fall.

Selective colleges ditched exams such as the SAT and ACT early in the pandemic as test centers closed. But they’re revisiting that decision and considering whether the assessments can help identify promising applicants. In a podcast hosted by Dartmouth’s dean of admissions, Quinlan dropped a hint, saying testing is “an incredibly valuable part” of Yale’s assessment.

“The SAT or the ACT is the single best predictor of a student’s academic performance at Yale,” Quinlan said on the Admissions Beat podcast in October, challenging a widely held belief that high-school grade point average is often a better indicator of future academic outcomes. The SAT’s math section in particular helps predict which students will persist as science majors, he said.

Read More: Dartmouth Follows MIT With Return to Standardized Testing

Lee Coffin, Dartmouth’s dean of admissions, agreed with Quinlan on the podcast, which occurred three months before the school’s policy change. Dartmouth’s switch, which followed a similar announcement by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2022, has cast a spotlight on colleges’ attempts to assess applications from students from diverse backgrounds and historically underrepresented regions.

Restoring the testing mandate will help attract “the most promising and diverse students to our campus,” Dartmouth said in its statement. It was accompanied by research that found test scores “represent an especially valuable tool to identify high-achieving applicants from low and middle-income backgrounds; who are first-generation college-bound; as well as students from urban and rural backgrounds.”

“Clearly, this is a sign there could be more change,” said Matthew DeGreeff, dean of college counseling at Middlesex, a boarding school in Concord, Massachusetts, and a former admissions officer at Harvard University. “We just don’t know what it is yet in a season of so much change.”

SAT, ACT

The standardized tests themselves are undergoing significant changes. Starting next month, the SAT is transitioning to a digital format that adapts to each test taker — based on how the student performs on the first module of questions, the second will either be more or less difficult. In addition, the duration of the SAT is being reduced to two hours and 14 minutes from three hours.

Meanwhile, the ACT is expanding the number of computer-based testing sites while maintaining the exam’s almost three-hour length.

The recruiting effort at elite colleges is taking on added significance in the wake of a Supreme Court decision in June that eliminated race as a consideration in the admissions process, prompting schools to seek alternative ways to maintain diversity and evaluate applicants based on merit.

Schools including the University of Chicago remain committed to keeping the tests optional. Harvard and Cornell University have announced extensions on their optional standardized testing policy.

According to a recent survey of about 200 colleges by Kaplan, a test-prep company, only 1% of test-optional colleges plan to reinstate testing requirements while 14% are considering it. The other 85% plan on maintaining testing as optional.

Testing Debate

The pandemic’s disruptions led to a halt in the exams and a subsequent surge in college applications. Dartmouth’s decision to require them again, influenced by research initiated by its new president, Sian Beilock, reignited the debate over the impact of test scores on low-income students.

While critics say standardized tests favor wealthy students who can pay for expensive prep programs, Dartmouth and MIT argue that the exams are a useful tool in identifying talented students from less advantaged upbringings.

For instance, Dartmouth aims to contextualize test results by looking at how applicants perform relative to peers at the same high school, even if the scores are in some cases lower than the average of admitted students.

That’s a useful tool in assessing many applicants, said Dustin Langley, a social studies teacher who helps primarily low-income, high-achieving Hispanic students prepare for the tests at North Houston Early College High School in Texas.

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“They are doing the best with what they’ve been given, and given the disproportion of resources, that’s a meaningful data point,” said Langley, who helps students through a nonprofit program that comes to schools called CollegeSpring.

In a further effort to find new prospective students who can help diversify their student bodies, colleges including Yale, MIT, and the University of Chicago are driving recruitment through a program known as Stars, which aims to identify high-performing students in rural Texas, Tennessee and New Mexico, among other states.

Dartmouth is making its own push in areas such as Upstate New York, central Pennsylvania and Kentucky. This year 65% of Dartmouth’s applicants hailed from the US Southeast, Southwest and foreign countries, Coffin said.

“One of the big changes I’ve witnessed in last 20 years is our geography has shifted pretty dramatically,” Coffin said. “Only 10% are from New England.”

--With assistance from Dan Wilchins.

(Updates with Dartmouth statement in sixth paragraph.)

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