Harvard Outreach Newsletter

Standardized tests (the SAT or ACT) were made optional at Harvard and most other US colleges during the Covid pandemic when test centres were closed, and the College originally said they would remain optional until the admissions cycle starting in 2026.  But research published last year has encouraged them to bring forward the re-introduction of compulsory standardized testing by two years.  They will now recommence from the next admissions cycle, starting in the autumn of 2024. As reported in the Harvard Gazette, the authors of the research, Harvard Professors Raj Chetty and David J. Deming and co-author John N. Friedman used data from more than 400 institutions and about 3.5 million undergrads per year to better understand socioeconomic diversity and admissions.  Standardized tests emerged as an important tool to identify promising students at less-well-resourced high schools, particularly when paired with other academic credentials. The research showed that the admissions advantage of students from high-income families to private colleges is driven by three factors:

1. preferences for children of alumni
2. weight placed on non-academic credentials, which tend to be stronger for students applying from private high schools that have affluent student bodies
3. recruitment of athletes, who tend to come from high income families.

The authors conclude:

“Adjusting for the value-added of the colleges that students attend, the three key factors that give children from high-income families an admissions advantage are uncorrelated or negatively correlated with post-college outcomes, whereas SAT/ACT scores and academic credentials are highly predictive of post-college success.  We conclude that highly selective private colleges currently amplify the persistence of privilege across generations, but could diversify the socioeconomic backgrounds of America’s leaders by changing their admissions practices.”

While standardized tests are not an unbiased measure of student performance, other measures, such as recommendation letters, extracurriculars and student essays are even more prone to bias, so the Harvard College Admissions Office felt that the reintroduction of compulsory standardized testing, alongside other factors considered by the Admissions Committee as part of the whole person review, will help to create a more balanced applicant pool and increase socioeconomic diversity. David Deming, the report’s co-author and a Professor of Education and Economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, commented:

“The virtue of standardized tests is their universality. Not everyone can hire an expensive college coach to help them craft a personal essay.  But everyone has the chance to ace the SAT or the ACT.  While some barriers do exist, the widespread availability of the test provides, in my view, the fairest admissions policy for disadvantaged applicants.”

The Harvard Gazette reports that in a message to the FAS community in April, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Hopi Hoekstra outlined “a number of factors” that underscored the decision.

“Standardized tests are a means for all students, regardless of their background and life experience, to provide information that is predictive of success in college and beyond.  Indeed, when students have the option of not submitting their test scores, they may choose to withhold information that, when interpreted by the admissions committee in the context of the local norms of their school, could have potentially helped their application.  In short, more information, especially such strongly predictive information, is valuable for identifying talent from across the socioeconomic range.”

If you don’t like tests, remember there are still over 1,950 four-year colleges that will not require standardized test scores for those applying this autumn, according to FairTest.  Of those, over 1,870 are test optional, and over 80 are test free.  For a full list of test optional and test free colleges, see the FairTest website.