Dartmouth will again require SAT and ACT scores, after a pandemic pause

Dartmouth College has announced it will once again require applicants to submit standardized test scores, beginning with the next application cycle, for the class of 2029.

This comes after the Ivy League college, located in New Hampshire, opted to make test scores optional in 2020, citing the COVID-19 pandemic.

A new study conducted by the college found test scores could have helped less advantaged students, including first-generation students and students from low-income families, gain access to the school.

"We find ourselves missing out on some great students," says Bruce Sacerdote, a Dartmouth economics professor and co-author of that study.

He says students from disadvantaged backgrounds submitted their test scores at far lower rates, but their scores were high enough that they might have helped the students get in.

"We can see in the data: Oh wow, that student, boy, they had a 1450 ... or a 1500 ... We didn't even know that. And they were not admitted to Dartmouth," he says. "That is a really outstanding score. And, it would have been a great piece [of information] to have."

The study also found that test scores helped bring in students from high schools that didn't already have a track record of sending students to Dartmouth.

The Dartmouth study challenges the long-standing criticism that standardized tests, like the ACT and the College Board's SAT, hurt students from marginalized backgrounds when it comes to admissions.

Multiple studies have found a correlation between higher test scores and higher income. And in the high school class of 2020, Black and Latino students scored lower than white and Asian students on the math section of the SAT, according to the Brookings Institution.

A years-long movement to get rid of test requirements gained critical momentum when the pandemic hit and complicated students' ability to take the exams.

"The wave of test optional becomes a kind of tsunami," says Harry Feder, executive director of FairTest, an advocacy organization that tracks test optional policies at colleges.

According to FairTest, more than 1,900 U.S. colleges and universities are currently "test optional," meaning students can decide whether they want to submit their standardized test scores with their applications. One of the largest public systems in the country, California State University, removed standardized testing from their admissions requirements in 2022.

Sacerdote, at Dartmouth, says students are disadvantaged by inequities in the education system – not tests.

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