Colleges Loosen Up On Admission Tests | Central Mass. schools dump SAT and ACT as requirements for admission
The SAT is far from dead, but the standardized test — which colleges have long required for admission — is losing ground in Central Massachusetts. Four-year colleges that don’t require applicants to submit SAT scores are now as common as those that do.
Three local schools — Anna Maria College in Paxton, Clark University in Worcester and Nichols College in Dudley — now make scores on the SAT and ACT optional. They join Assumption College (2010), Worcester Polytechnic Institute (2008) and the College of the Holy Cross, which was the first in the area to make the switch in 2005.
Different schools, but similar reasons for dropping the requirement.
First, the business motivation: Schools want larger and more diverse applicant pools. And as more schools go SAT-optional in the area and across the country (860 and counting, according to Fairtest.org), those that don’t may get fewer applicants.
Then there are educational considerations: Studies have shown that standardized tests don’t always predict college success as well as grade-point averages and other data do. They’ve also shown a correlation between affluent students and higher SAT scores because their families or schools can afford to pay for SAT preparation instruction.
The growing number of schools without the requirement was one of a number of factors Anna Maria weighed, said Mary Lou Retelle, executive vice president at the 1,500-student college.
“You have to stay competitive,” Retelle said. “Students will always look to see what’s available to them in the sense of their opportunities to attend.”
Don Honeman, dean of admission and financial aid at Clark, called the SAT-optional movement “a mainstream phenomenon” but like Anna Maria, he said his school’s decision focused more on data culled from its own students’ performance.
“What convinced me was simply looking at the data,” he said. “Test scores tend to be least effective predictors of how a kid is going to do in college.”
Jack Maguire, a higher education consultant with Concord-based Maguire Associates, said schools are influenced by their peers, though the reasons for going SAT-optional can vary.
“The competitive environment is certainly one of them,” Maguire said.
A goal of the policy, he said, is to get applicants who otherwise might not apply but who have strengths and credentials not shown in their SAT scores.
That was the case for Nichols, which welcomes its first SAT-optional class next fall, said Paul Brower, director of admissions.
“A lot of indicators show that (making the test optional) has predominantly positive effects on your applicant pool,” Brower said.
Critics of the SAT-optional movement have charged that it can boost both applications and averages, which play into college-ranking formulas.
A 2009 paper by former Maguire Associates consultant Jonathan Epstein in the Journal of College Admission found that there may be some validity to that criticism. He used publicly available data to conclude that SAT scores for non-submitters averaged 100 to 150 points lower than submitters.
Epstein also found that 31 out of 32 top SAT-optional liberal arts colleges that year were not submitting true SAT averages to publications that rank colleges. That’s either because they chose not to or because they don’t collect scores after students enroll.
Retelle, of Anna Maria, said boosting scores for rankings is not her school’s intention. An asterisk denoting SAT-optional schools should be enough to warn consumers that a school may not be counting all scores, she said.
Brower agreed. “To us, it’s not necessarily about creating any different perception of the school,” he said. “It’s more about working with students who are interested in Nichols and providing them a better admissions experience.”
Honeman, of Clark, acknowledged applications may be up. “That may happen, but it’s not our motivation.”
From science-focused WPI to liberal arts-steeped Clark, schools with vastly different curricula are finding common ground on SATs.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few differences in their policies.
For Nichols, only students who earned a grade-point average of 3.0 or higher in high school can choose to not submit their SAT scores when they apply.
Brower said that for applicants who received poorer grades in high schools, the SATs are helpful.
“For borderline kids, SATs are a valuable evaluator,” he said.
A high GPA threshold will ensure that those who don’t submit SAT scores are strong students. “For me, I think that’s a good way for us to do that, with a quantifier,” Brower said.
But Anna Maria students applying to the college’s new paramedic program will still have to submit the test scores.
Retelle said administrators made that decision as faculty members were nervous about using the policy for a brand-new program. The school will analyze SAT scores and performance of those incoming students to determine if the SAT is a good indicator of success for that particular area of study.
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