Featured Article: The Reality of the Test-Optional Universe

So much has been seen, heard and written when it comes to the topic of colleges and universities moving to test-optional policies when it comes to the SAT and ACT in just the past two months. Some schools have moved to this stance permanently, while others have moved to a one-year, two-year, or three-year hiatus on the exams for the specific reason we all know about: COVID-19 getting in the way of offering these exams in the Spring (and possibly the Summer). Schools are using this testing interruption to figure out if the exams are really a necessary and beneficial part of the application review and for the short-term goal of removing barriers to applying, when so many schools are hurting financially and are growing more and more desperate to hang on to their market share moving forward.

I wrote this article because our California-centric perspective on testing has given us a case of the rose-colored glasses when the reality for the high-achieving students we usually see at PCG is not as relaxed as many of the schools in our home state have become. Yes, the University of California recently announced that they have moved to a system that is test-optional for the next two years, then drops the tests completely for two years, and will assess if a new test they create on their own should be brought to bear (or not). The California State University system is also on a two-year hiatus. Private California schools like USC, California Lutheran University, Chapman University, Claremont McKenna College (and all of the Claremont Consortium schools), Loyola Marymount University, Mills College, Santa Clara University, University of Redlands, University of San Diego, Azusa Pacific University, University of San Francisco, Whittier College, and Woodbury University all have a current test-optional policy in place for the 2020-21 application year.

So, what am I getting at? Just looking at the obnoxiously-arrived at U.S. News & World Report top 90 schools list, we find that 57 of them, as of mid-May, still REQUIRE either the SAT or ACT as part of the admission dossier. Do not sleep on this people! This includes all of the Ivy League schools, (minus Cornell University) MIT, Stanford, Northwestern, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Caltech, University of Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Rice, Washington University in St. Louis and so many more. If you have your eyes on a highly ranked (and lowly admitted) prize, you need to prepare yourself, if you have not already taken either the SAT or ACT (and crushed it), to take an available exam in August, September, or October. I would also strongly recommend taking an on-ground test (as opposed to an online version of one of these tests), as you might be looking at a school that will not accept one of these new online versions of the tests (Claremont McKenna College is the first, to my knowledge, to publicly state that they will not accept the new online versions of either test, until verification of their security and efficacy can be proven).

Yes, this is a moving target, especially with the recent UC announcement, which will likely trigger more moves by larger public entities to drop standardized testing from the requirement list, so we will keep you up to date on this in the next edition of the CKQ.