Yale is the latest school to reinstate its standardized testing requirements, reversing a pandemic-era policy that previously made submission of such scores optional.
The decision, conveyed Thursday by the Ivy League university’s dean of undergraduate admissions, comes amid a heated debate over how to screen aspiring students.
Some admissions officers have claimed that long-standing tests are not necessarily the best measure of an applicant’s potential performance, and many claim that their high school GPA would be more accurate.
Others agreed and criticized the policy as unfair to disadvantaged students.
Based on these beliefs, the policy has persisted at countless institutions across the country, including schools like Harvard. Meanwhile, rival Yale is the latest to pull the plug, following the examples set by MIT and Dartmouth.
Yale is the latest school to reinstate its standardized testing requirements, reversing a pandemic-era policy that previously made submission of such scores optional.
Standardized tests remain a good indicator of student performance in college, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeremiah Quinlan said Thursday.
“Standardized tests are imperfect and incomplete on their own, but I also believe that scores can help establish a student’s academic readiness for college-level work,” Jeremiah Quinlan said of the school’s decision, which is final and comes into effect immediately.
“When used in conjunction with other elements in an application, especially a high school transcript, test results help establish the academic foundation for any case we consider,” he continued, some four years after the policy.
He went on to quell criticism that tests like the SAT and ACT serve as yet another barrier to disenfranchised students, stating that he and other school officials “found standardized tests to be especially valuable for students attending high schools.” with fewer academic resources.
They reached that conclusion after analyzing the applicant pool from admissions cycles in recent years and found that test scores have continued to predict students’ academic performance at the University of Connecticut.
“Test scores convey a relatively small amount of information compared to the rich collection of knowledge and evidence found in a complete application,” he explained.
“Simply put, students with higher scores are more likely to have higher GPAs at Yale, and test scores are the largest predictor of a student’s performance in Yale courses in all the models we have built” .
The dean went on to admit that he and other staff members discovered that some students who had been admitted to Yale in recent years without submitting their transcripts “have done relatively well in their Yale courses.”
“However,” he added, “we also found a statistically significant difference in average GPA between those who applied with and without test scores.”
Some admissions officials at schools such as Harvard and Columbia have asserted that full-length tests are not necessarily the best measure of an applicant’s potential performance, and many claim that their high school GPA would be more accurate.
The New Haven, Connecticut, school now claims that is not the case, and Quinlan said Thursday: “Standardized tests are imperfect and incomplete on their own, but I also believe that scores can help establish a student’s academic readiness.” student for college-level work.”
The decision follows the lead of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) back in 2022, after the school became the first to withdraw the pandemic-era policy.
Earlier this month, officials at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire also rescinded the rule, as backlash has forced other schools to say it is only temporary.
Stuart Schmill, MIT’s dean of admissions (pictured), said the reintroduction of standardized testing led the university to accept its most diverse intake of students last year.
Without specifying that difference, he proceeded to point out how the schools’ analyzes found that applicants without test scores were less likely to be admitted.
He continued: “It is concerning that this was especially true for applicants from low-income backgrounds.”
The dean then revealed how the lack of a rule requiring applicants to submit at least one standardized test score caused the school’s applicant pool to increase by 166 percent in a matter of years.
It said more than 57,000 students applied for first-year admission this year, up from 35,000 before the flexible exam policy.
“The pool has gotten larger,” he continued, “but we haven’t seen it grow to include many more applicants with strong academic backgrounds.”
Similar sentiments were expressed by Stuart Schmill, dean of admissions at MIT, last month, when he told her The New York Times that the reintroduction of standardized testing at his school in 2022 led to the university accepting the most diverse intake of students last year.
“Simply getting great grades is not enough information for us to know whether students will be successful or not,” he said of the university’s decision to eliminate counseling, a decision echoed by Dartmouth College officials last month.
Previously, students had to submit at least one score from a standardized SAT or ACT to be considered for most colleges, public and private.
This is becoming less and less the case, especially after Thursday’s maneuver by the prestigious institution. Meanwhile, other schools have claimed that the guidelines are only temporary.
“Once we brought back the testing requirement, we admitted the most diverse class we’ve ever had in our history,” he explained.
A few days later, in New Hampshire, Dartmouth staff followed suit: The school cited a research study commissioned by President Sian Beilock that “confirms that standardized testing, when assessed using local norms at the high school in a student,” are valuable for undergraduate applications. .
Quinlan admitted Thursday: ‘I think standardized tests are imperfect and incomplete on their own, but I also think scores can help establish a student’s academic readiness for college-level work.
“When used in conjunction with other elements in an application, especially a high school transcript, test scores help establish the academic foundation for any case we consider.”