Loyola College latest to dump SAT

 

Loyola College in Baltimore is the latest of over 800 four-year institutions to make their admissions criteria SAT (and ACT) results optional. The change comes about six months after Monty Neill of Fair Test submitted invited testimony to the Maryland Board of Education on the “Limits and Dangers of High-Stakes Graduation Tests.”

Loyola joins five other Maryland schools already practicing forms of test-optional admissions. Officials from these schools, which include Goucher College, Salisbury University, Washington College, St. John's College, and McDaniel College, cite more applications and improved socioeconomic diversity of their student bodies as positive results of the switch. Ellen Neufeld, vice president of student affairs at Salisbury, told The Baltimore Sun, "we have a very strong retention rate, the students are performing well, our faculty is satisfied. My mind draws a blank when I try to think of anything negative associated with it."

Florence Hines, vice president of enrollment management at McDaniel, concurred, noting that test-optional policies might calm the widespread SAT anxiety felt by high school juniors and seniors. "We're telling them, 'If you're worried about being a poor test-taker, don't worry about the test,'" Hines said. "We want students to know that it was never a big enough factor that we couldn't just let it go. We can take away one of the things that freaks them out the most."

As expected, the College Board fired back. Brian O'Reilly, College Board spokesman for the SAT, said "there is ample evidence that the SAT does an excellent job of predicting college grades," He cited his own company’s study of 110 colleges and universities (for the record, there are over 4000 in the United States) that found that the test predicted college performance almost as well as high school GPAs, and for students of color it did a better job than grades of predicting college performance.

But those results don’t mesh with the high-profile study led by Harvard Dean of Admissions William Fitzsimmons. It recommended de-emphasizing test scores in the admissions process (although Fitzsimmons noted that Harvard itself would not “any time in the near future” become test-optional). He told the Boston Globe, “The Committee on Admissions has always taken into account the fact that test scores can be affected by such factors as schooling, intensive test preparation and socioeconomic background. We have long been aware that the test-taking experience of students may be affected by their financial and educational resources. In particular, we recognize that students from modest economic backgrounds have a limited number of fee waivers for tests and may not be able to take them as many times as affluent students.”

Harvard aside, the test-optional trend is taking hold. For a complete list of schools who’ve made the switch, check www.fairtest.org.