Brown went SAT-Optional this year. Let's keep it that way.
By Students for Educational Equity
In early November, we at Students for Educational Equity (SEE) wrote an open letter calling for the end of mandatory SAT/ACT score submissions. In its place, we’re asking for a “test-optional policy,” wherein applicants can decide whether or not to provide an SAT/ACT score. The demand was made on the basis that standardized testing is inherently unfair: as you can read in the open letter below, the SAT/ACTs systematically disadvantage BIPOC, low-income, and first generation students.
This change would not require a difficult shift from Brown’s current admissions program – due to the Covid-19 pandemic and widespread closures of testing centers, Brown is test-optional for the 2020-21 cycle. What SEE is calling for, then, is no more than the continuation and improvement of policies already in place.
Already the letter has garnered significant support, with over 300 students, faculty, and alumni having signed it in the last month. Some, however, may be regretting their support, after seeing the demographics of Brown’s Early Decision admits. Rather than increase as a result of the new policy, the proportion of first generation students and students on financial aid has dropped by 1 and 3 percentage points respectively. Is this reason to believe that test-optional policy might not be a step in the right direction after all?
Absolutely not. We’ve always known that going “test-optional” alone isn’t enough. Indeed, in a 2018 study of 28 test-optional universities, a significant minority of institutions actually saw slower rises in “underrepresented minority” and Pell Grant recipient students than test-required institutions of similar caliber. What we’ve learned is that in order for test-optional policies to be effective, application readers must be consistently retrained in the way they evaluate applications. Without such retraining, students who submit SAT/ACT scores are inherently “given a leg up” over those who do not, inadvertently penalizing students who don’t submit scores and therefore perpetuating the very inequities a test-optional policy aims to resolve. But when done correctly, as the 2018 study shows, test-optional policy does lead to increases in underrepresented admits that go beyond those of test-required institutions.
Of course, this training takes deliberate, intentional planning and financial expenditure. Due to the rushed nature of 2020’s pandemic-induced admissions program, Brown simply didn’t have the necessary time, support, and resources to effectively implement it. But we’d be remiss to be dissuaded by such an outcome; rather, we should use this as an opportunity to learn and improve our policies for future years.
SEE has been (and is currently) working with legal and educational experts to develop detailed proposals for implementing effective test-optional policies. We know that it will take considerable work to create an effective plan, and maybe even more to hold Brown accountable to it. We write with love for this institution, and we are certain that our leaders will do the right thing to ensure equal and fair access for all.
For change to occur, however, it is our responsibility as Brown’s community (students, alumni, faculty) to engage with the process and hold the institution accountable. Please join our call for equity and sign the open letter below, asking Brown to:
Commit to implementing a test-optional policy for incoming applicants.
Develop a transparent selection process that ensures students are not penalized for choosing to not submit their test score.
An Open Letter to President Christina Paxson and Dean of Admissions Logan Powell
Dear President Christina Paxson and Dean of Admissions Logan Powell,
We, the undersigned, write to request the permanent end of Brown’s SAT/ACT admissions requirement and the implementation of a test-optional policy. While we acknowledge and appreciate the progress Brown has made to improve its student diversity, we believe that the SAT/ACT requirement persists as a harmful deterrent to potential first generation students, low-income students, and students of color. Moreover, its ability to predict college readiness is inaccurate at best, making its existence unjustifiable. The decision to reinstate the SAT/ACT requirement post-pandemic is in direct violation of Brown’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. By removing this self-defeating standard, Brown has the opportunity to become a trailblazer among the Ivy Leagues in recruiting unrecognized talent that are systematically filtered out or dissuaded from applying by these archaic tests.
New research has consistently found that standardized testing both exacerbates and contributes toward racial and economic academic disparities far more than high school GPA does. Speaking economically, the SATs and ACTs reward students who can afford expensive, out-of-school tuition; attend wealthier (i.e. better funded) school districts; and have parents who understand the loopholes within the standardized testing process, while punishing those who do not. Studies have found that each of these factors are effective in raising SAT/ACT scores regardless of students’ academic capability in school. In short, the SAT/ACT is more a measure of wealth and test-taking skills than it is of knowledge and academic capability.
Even when controlling for economic differences, the SATs and ACTs have consistently widened gaps between races: White and Asian students tend to perform significantly better than their Black and Latinx peers (55% of Asian American test takers and 45% of white test takers score 1200 or higher, compared to 12% and 9% respectively for Hispanic and Black students). On average, difference in race alone (controlling for other socio-economic factors) creates a disparity of 55 points. This is partly due to the persistent racial segregation of American school districts and the consequent disparity in quality of education, which precludes any chance of fair comparison between districts. Moreover, the SAT/ACT content itself has been found to be more difficult for BIPOC students than it is for White students of otherwise equal academic performance and economic backgrounds. This has been explained by the inherently discriminatory process used to develop content, which aims to keep the distribution of scores consistent with previous exams (thus actively maintaining an unequal status quo): questions on which Black students outperform white students are inadvertently removed because such shifts in scores would disrupt the SAT’s normed bell curve. Consequently, Black and Latinx students have been found to do worse than their White peers of similar backgrounds on particular questions. Tellingly, Black and Latinx students make up 12% of the top high school GPA decile, but only 5% of the top SAT/ACT score decile.
On top of wealth and race, parents’ education also plays a significant role in students’ performances. Evidence shows that while 31% of first generation students are in the top 2 quintiles of high school GPA scores, only 14% of first generation students are in the top 2 quintiles of SAT/ACT scores. This shows that the SAT/ACT preparation relies heavily on out-of-school assistance (while GPA relies relatively more on in-class learning, thus providing an equalizer for students of different out-of-school opportunity for learning). Not only, then, do the SATs/ACTs penalize students whose schools don’t provide in-class SAT/ACT preparation, but they put first generation students at a major disadvantage.
Additionally, the “norm-referenced” nature of the SAT/ACT means that questions have to be carefully curated to create a bell-shaped curve. At an institution like Brown, where applicants are chosen only from the rightmost area of this bell curve (where the graph is steepest), the smallest increments in score can make a large difference to admissions. Thus, every small advantage – tuition, parents’ education, and quality of education – can have a disproportionately large impact. It is unsurprising, then, that the SAT/ACT requirement inevitably magnifies and exacerbates existing inequities.
Of course, one could argue that this inequity is a necessary price to pay to select a meritorious, high-performing group of students. Even if this argument were true, it would be fatally undermined by the evidence that shows SATs/ACTs are an unreliable predictor of college performance. When SAT/ACT scores are eliminated from the admissions process, first-year grades change by 2%, and graduation rates see no significant change at all. More than 1,000 colleges are currently test-optional, analysts have found no significant difference in cumulative GPA and graduation rates between those who submitted test scores and those who did not. This is despite the fact that the two groups have an average difference of 113 points in standardized test scores.
It appears, then, that standardized testing serves no other purpose than to exclude BIPOC, first-generation, and low-income students from Brown’s campus. In comparison, using a student’s high school grades has been found to minimize racial and economic disparities, while also serving as a more accurate predictor of college success. More than 1,000 colleges have switched to test-optional admissions, including the University of Chicago, Bowdoin College, Colby College, and Bryn Mawr College. These schools have seen a surge in BIPOC, low-income, and first generation students, with no discernible difference in academic achievement. By keeping with its standardized testing requirement, Brown University not only continues to deny opportunity to historically underrepresented students, but it denies itself the ability to consider and admit a plethora of unrecognized, talented applicants.
As last year’s SAT controversy magnified the ways in which standardized testing can be “gamed,” and this year’s pandemic-induced test-optional policies expose the arbitrariness of the SATs/ACTs, standardized testing is quickly growing archaic. This is reflected in the growing flood of colleges that have now dropped the standardized testing requirement. As standardized testing moves toward obsoletion, Brown has the chance to be at the forefront of progress among the Ivy Leagues and maintain its reputation as a leader in equity and inclusivity. Here is an opportunity to differentiate ourselves from our institutional peers in recruiting underrepresented, talented students who are otherwise deterred by unfair admission requirements.
Ultimately, it’s clear that a decision to reinstate the standardized test requirement post-pandemic would be a blatant contradiction of Brown’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. We write in the hope that the institution we love will live up to the values it claims to protect. In order to move toward a fully equitable, fair, and inclusive admissions process, we call on the university to:
Commit to implementing a test-optional policy for incoming applicants
Develop a transparent selection process that ensures students are not penalized for choosing to not submit their test scores
Image via SEE.