Janice R. Andrews
The Ivy League school Dartmouth College has formally announced the return of standardized test score requirements for applicants, reversing the test-optional policy put in place in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 epidemic. The incoming class of 2029 will be subject to the renewed requirement.
The move was made in response to a thorough investigation carried out by Dartmouth that revealed standardized test results might help underprivileged students—such as those from low-income households and first-generation students—by giving them more access to the esteemed university.
The study’s principal investigators, academics at Dartmouth, found that test scores were a major factor in drawing applicants from high schools that had no track record of graduating students to Dartmouth, refuting the long-standing claim that standardized testing has a negative effect on admissions for underrepresented applicants.
The study disproved popular assumptions by showing a positive association between test scores with admission of students from a variety of backgrounds. Standardized tests like the SAT and ACT, according to critics, unfairly harm kids from underprivileged backgrounds.
Claims that there is a relationship between greater test scores and higher income are supported by national data. For instance, a Brookings Institution study on the 2020 high school class revealed that Black and Latino pupils performed worse than their white and Asian peers on the SAT’s arithmetic portion.
The decision by Dartmouth to bring back exam requirements runs counter to a more general trend in the educational field. The pandemic gave the test-optional movement a big boost, and more than 1,900 American colleges and institutions adopted this policy, giving candidates the choice of whether or not to submit their results from standardized tests.
Notably, one of the biggest public university systems in the nation, the California State University system, removed standardized testing from its admissions criteria in 2022, which helped spur a national trend toward test-optional policies. The trend of universities shifting away from traditional testing requirements is being referred to as a “tsunami” by Harry Feder, Executive Director of FairTest, an organization that tracks such policies.
