As college admissions evolve, students are confronted with a game-changing choice: submit SAT/ACT scores or take the test-optional route. This decision can hold the key to unlocking, or limiting, a student’s chances at a spot at their dream college. With many colleges shifting their approach to testing, students are left wondering how their application will be impacted by the choice to submit standardized test scores or to apply test-optional.
History and Background
Across America, many juniors in high school take the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). This standardized test is supposed to assess a student’s readiness for college, by testing students’ capability in two sections: Reading/Writing (English) and Math. According to CollegeBoard, the SAT consists of a total of 98 questions, 54 of which are Reading and Writing and 44 of which are on the Math section. After 2 hours and 14 minutes of testing, a student is scored on a scale of 400-1600, by increments of 10, based on how many questions they answered correctly. Alternatively, a student may choose to take the American College Test (ACT), which is similar in nature; however, it also includes a Science section and is scored on a scale of 1-36.
According to PBS, the first SAT was administered beginning in 1926. Shortly after, Harvard University became the first school to require all applicants to take the SAT followed by many other schools requiring this. The first ACT was administered in 1959, introduced as an alternative to the SAT.
Throughout the history of the SAT and ACT, various colleges have offered a test-optional application, in which applicants could choose whether or not they wanted to submit their standardized test scores. However, the majority of colleges and universities still required test scores.
What is “Test Optional” and when did it become a thing?
In 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, it was not safe to have a mass number of students go to a facility to take the SAT or ACT. This caused many schools across the country to offer test-optional applications.
“We instituted the test optional policy in the fall of 2020 to accommodate for many students who were unexpectedly unable to submit test scores with their application due to various COVID-19 complications,” says Juliana Undseth, admissions counselor at Hillsdale College. “Since last year we have been ‘test preferred,’ meaning we like to see test scores from applicants, but we still do not require it.”
The majority of schools kept their test-optional policies, or some variation of them, through the pandemic years and through today. However, recently, many more elite schools are reinstating their test-required policy, as they feel that standardized test scores are crucial to college admissions.
The Value of Standardized Test Scores to Admissions
When applying to colleges, many factors help colleges decide whether someone is a good candidate: extracurricular activities, grades, course difficulty, recommendation letters.
“Students who submit test scores [at Wayne State University] are evaluated in the context of all the information they provide, including GPA, course rigor, essays, and extracurriculars,” says Ericka M. Jackson, Senior Director of Undergraduate Admissions at Wayne State University. “Those who choose not to submit test scores are assessed with equal weight placed on the other components of their application.” No one truly knows what one aspect of their application got them into a specific college.
All of this information calls into question whether choosing to either submit or not submit SAT/ACT scores will impact a student’s application.
According to David Blobaum at the Insight Higher Education, many colleges and universities value standardized test scores more than they may be willing to admit. In fact, a couple of the elite colleges that have reinstated their test-required policy have acknowledged this. For example Yale University and Cornell University have both come out saying that their admissions place strong value on the submission of test scores, and that the hyper majority of students admitted during this test-optional period were those who submitted either the SAT or ACT. In addition, Stanford University stated that they found test scores to be a very good predictor of a student’s academic performance.
Blobaum concedes that if schools did not care about standardized test scores they would be test-blind rather than test-optional. Test-optional just means that students are not required to submit their scores, not that colleges do not value these scores. Because there is no way to standardize a student’s GPA, or even meaningfully gauge the difficulty of a student’s courses, due to differences between teachers and high school policies, standardized test scores give admissions a true and definitive number that can hold value.
“[My] opinion is that test optional is not quite the right term for it,” says Carina Sietz, AP English Teacher at Skyline High School, who also tutors students for the SAT. “Tests aren’t required. However, if four students all have the same GPA, and if four students all have fantastic letters of recommendation, and only one of those four provides a test, even if it’s lower than what [a college would] normally accept, that student is often going to get in over the other three because [the college] has more information.”
Test scores can give a college good baseline information about applicants. “We find that standardized test scores are generally a good indicator of academic ability, and are a helpful standard for comparing schools and students nationwide,” says Undseth. Also, these test scores may be useful as a way to provide more information on someone’s GPA.“Standardized test scores can provide a consistent benchmark across different high schools and curricula, particularly in cases where a student’s GPA might not tell the full story,” says Jackson.
Downsides to and Biases in Standardized Tests
While test scores can give schools good information about applicants’ academic performances, there are also downsides to standardized tests such as the SAT or ACT. “Standardized tests don’t reflect the whole person,” says Jacinta Nafziger, Counselor at Skyline High School. “Test biases are part of standardized tests…. And so it’s important to really recognize that there’s limitations to the test. It is one day, how students are doing on [one] particular thing in a time setting, and it doesn’t really show [a student’s] full intelligence.”
An additional bias, according to The New York Times, is that the driving factor in getting a “high” SAT/ACT score (a 1300 on the SAT or a 29 on the ACT), is a family’s income. The higher the income the higher the student’s score is. In fact, many children from lower income families do not even have the opportunity to take the SAT/ACT let alone have all the test-prep. While this disparity begins far before high school, the scores of these standardized tests highlight the inequality within the US education system as well as in society as a whole.
While a student’s actual score on a standardized test score may not always tell the full story, the Insight Higher Education acknowledges that colleges are aware of this and that admissions take into account a students privileges and family’s income when viewing test scores, bringing the score into context. A student from a less privileged background that scores a lower score, may be evaluated the same as a more opportunistic student who receives a better score.
Many colleges take pride in evaluating a student’s whole application, rather than just simply their test scores, however. “We quickly recognized the broader value of a more holistic admissions approach—one that considers a student’s full academic potential, extracurricular involvement, and personal experiences, beyond a single test score,” says Jackson.
What This Means for the Skyline Community
For students who plan on applying to Michigan colleges and universities, tests are not required. “[In] January of 2025, [Oakland University] officially adopted test optional for admissions from here on out, so there are no plans to reinstate test scores being a requirement,” says Lauren Roy, an Admissions Adviser at Oakland University. In fact, every single college and university within the state has adopted a test-optional policy for the time being, and many plan to keep this for future years to come.
However, different programs within these colleges may have other policies. “I appreciate that students have lots of choices, but it’s important to check with the colleges to see what exactly their test-optional policies are,” says Nafziger.
Variety in schools’ policies, often containing confusing language, can make it hard for students to discern what a school’s policy actually means. “It can be really confusing for students to navigate,” says Nafziger, “because some schools say they’re test-optional, so you can either send your scores or not, and then other schools will say you can send your scores and we’ll look at them if they help you, and not look at them if they don’t help you.”
At Skyline in particular, with grade inflation and extensive resources available to students (such as many AP classes), there is a risk that students may present similar-looking college applications. “[Test scores] can help differentiate Skyline kids from others as well,” says Sietz. “To say, look no, my GPA is accurate. Not that an SAT really just looks at your intelligence, but [it does look at] your ability to do the content that can back up your GPA.”
