June 11 — Some college-bound high schoolers may not have to worry about waking up early on a Saturday morning to take the SAT, as a growing number of universities moves to cut standardized test scores from application requirements.
As of fall 2009, Smith College and Wake Forest University will no longer require prospective students to submit SAT or ACT scores, joining an expanding list of liberal arts colleges that do not accept the test scores or leave them as optional. However, experts say large universities are unlikely to follow the lead of these schools.
Audrey Smith, dean of enrollment at Smith College, said she is “much more comfortable looking at long-term trends . . . than the results of [a student's] work on one particular Saturday morning” when evaluating applicants.
Smith College has an “intensive process” for assessing applicants, in which faculty members are “professionally trained” to research applications and look carefully into school profiles, Smith said. The school encourages potential students to submit any work, essays, recommendations and art work if they feel it will “enhance their application.”
“This process does not allow for formulaic approaches, so standardized tests started to be treated with skepticism,” Smith said. “By making the SAT/ACT scores optional parts of the application, the school hopes to lend itself to a wider pool of applicants.”
Smith College’s admissions process is extensive and time consuming, and would be a difficult undertaking for large universities whose incoming classes are larger than Smith’s — of roughly 640 students, she said.
However, BU spokesman Colin Riley said despite the size of BU’s classes, hovering around 4,000 students, the university’s process for reviewing applicants is individualized, and each application receives thorough attention.
“The people reviewing have years of expertise and they dig deep into the information to make assessments based on experience with the high school of the applicant,” Riley said.
Test scores are important components of an application, he said, but added that applicant reviewers give more consideration to a student’s essays, transcripts and other information than to test results.
“There are five basic components of an application: the student’s transcript, which is the most important part of the application, the student’s activities and course load, the student’s essay, teacher recommendations and lastly the student’s standardized test scores,” Riley said. “The test scores are valued because they provide additional information, but they are mostly meant to the support the rest of the application which is weighted much more heavily.”
Though faced with a growing number of small colleges and universities dropping standardized testing requirements, ACT spokesman Ed Colby said the company does not expect many large colleges to follow suit.
“There have been a number of smaller schools that have become test optional, and we respect their decision to conduct their admissions processes the way that is best for them, but I don’t think that we will see this as a national trend because for larger schools standardized tests provide what the colleges can’t get anywhere else: standardized measures that compare students from different states, cities and schools on equal basis,” Colby said.
Because the University of Massachusetts-Boston is a public university, the state Department of Education requires the school to include standardized test scores in its application process, Lisa Johnson, UMass-Boston associate vice chancellor of university enrollment, said.
SAT and ACT scores are more often used to “compensate for a poor GPA,” Johnson said. However, even then, the university has a “special admit program” for students who performed poorly on a standardized test, but have a GPA above 2.8.
“The SAT of today is not what it was 10 years ago,” Johnson said. “The new essay — first administered in 2006 — gives colleges insight into students’ writing skills and other changes showcase additional skills that colleges are more interested in seeing.”
“I think the bottom line is that we all understand the value of an education and we want to help anyone who wants [an education] to get one,” Johnson said.
