After the pandemic, many thought that higher education was finally taking the ax to standardized testing, long derided for its excessive influence in the admissions process and the seemingly unbalanced playing field it created. SAT tests, it was felt, gave an advantage to wealthier students and limited poorer ones.
“It’s not a test for how good of a student you are; it’s a test of how well you prepared for the test itself,” said Rishi Kawediya, then a sophomore from Vista del Lago High School, last year. At the time, standardized tests seemed to be going extinct in the face of popular opinion – Columbia University, an Ivy League college located in New York City, had opted to go test-optional permanently.
A little less than a year later, the tune has changed. Three of the most prestigious schools in the nation – MIT, Dartmouth University, and earlier this week, Yale University – have made testing mandatory for admissions again. They had initially lifted the requirement in response to the pandemic.
Why? Because the colleges found that losing the SAT had hurt diversity. Dartmouth found that students from poorer backgrounds would be less likely to submit even very solid SAT scores for fear that they would hurt their chances, not help them.
Still, student opinion of the SAT remains chilly at best.
“I think it’s not a good method of testing,” said Trinity Dey, a junior at Vista, “what if you have a bad day?”
Regardless of student opinion, the question of the SAT has returned from the dead. Will others follow Yale’s example? Or will these prestigious colleges remain in the minority, keeping the bar raised for the truly exceptional?
