By Reinesse Wong
On January 19th, College Board, the nonprofit in America responsible for administering standardized tests announced its decision to drop SAT Subject Tests and the Essay portion of the SAT. This decision comes in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it seems to be a permanent change for coming years. It seems that the COVID-19 was the catalyst that caused the demise of these two testing requirements.
Why has the College Board decided to make this change now? This decision was likely due to the increased indication that standardized testing hasn’t been a good indication of success for college and future career prospects. In addition, there is economic loss that comes with maintaining testing policies in which students are taking at a declining rate. The statistics support this, as since 2010, there has been a 45% decline in SAT subject tests administered.
Ivy League admissions officers have shown some agreement with the cancelling of the SAT essay portion. Jeremiah Quinlan, dean of undergraduate admissions and financial aid at Yale University stated, “The essay score never really became a part of our review process.”
Yale has also recently stopped considering SAT subject scores in their application process. College admission officers have shown favor to revising the current SAT and ACT tests to make them more flexible and available in digital format.
What does this mean for seniors and rising seniors applying to college? Many students think favorably towards the decreased standardized testing requirements. Katie LeBuhn, a rising senior at Irvington High School believes that decreasing standardized testing will help relieve some student stress.
“With the stress of school coupled with the public health crisis, having to worry about standardized testing is a level of complication that today’s students should not have to endure.”
In terms of college admissions for the 2021 and 2022 graduating class, LeBuhn also believes that this will increase college acceptance chances.
“The number of schools offering test-optional applications has greatly increased in recent years. I believe that, as has been seen in the most recent round of college applications, far greater numbers of people will apply to ivy-league-level/highly academic schools. Without the threshold of a certain test score, the application becomes far more subjective and may lead to higher application rates at schools across the nation, ” LeBuhn said.
