Last spring, Sam Noel slept very little the night before his SAT. The senior at Massachusetts‘ Melrose High School was nervous not only about the test itself but also about getting there. Every test center in his city and at his own high school was already booked when he looked for one online. The nearest available seat was forty-five minutes away by car. Just one test. One morning. Even before he had sharpened a single pencil, the challenges were mounting.
Even though it sounds modest and unglamorous, that experience accurately depicts the current state of college admissions in the United States. Some of the nation’s most prestigious universities, including Harvard, Yale, Brown, and Dartmouth, have quietly reversed course and made standardized test scores mandatory once more after years of pandemic disruptions forced hundreds of schools to drop SAT and ACT requirements. Dartmouth even carried out an internal study and came to the conclusion that it would be better able to attract diverse, high-potential students if testing requirements were reinstated. Not everyone agrees with this startling assertion.
It is difficult to ignore the data at the heart of this controversy. Roughly one-third of children from the wealthiest families scored 1300 or higher on the SAT, compared to less than 5% of middle-class students, according to research from Opportunity Insights, a Harvard-based team of economists and policy analysts. Children from the poorest homes performed even worse, and many did not take the test at all. Those figures are like a punch. Contrary to popular belief, some researchers contend that this does not justify doing away with the SAT. They serve as justification for fixing the underlying issues.
One of the study’s authors, Harvard professor Raj Chetty, has taken care to present the score disparity as a symptom rather than the root of educational inequality. He makes a strong case that, provided colleges know how to use the data appropriately, a well-designed standardized test can still identify academically prepared students from all socioeconomic backgrounds. Due in large part to preferences for legacy students and students with expensive extracurricular portfolios, Ivy Plus schools currently admit students from high-income families at a rate that is more than twice that of similarly scored students from low- and middle-income backgrounds. In this case, the SAT is not the bad guy. It’s admissions culture.
However, many people would find it tone deaf to make that argument aloud in a public high school in Chicago. High school counselor Clara Yom, who works with mostly Black and Latino students, is candid about what she witnesses on a daily basis. The majority of her pupils want to go to college. The majority of them are unable to pay for SAT preparation. Before changing careers, she was a SAT tutor. Almost all of her clients were from wealthy families, and after weeks of organized drilling, their scores increased by 200 to 300 points. “It’s not like you get straight A’s in AP English and you’re guaranteed a high score,” she said. The test rewards preparation, and preparation is expensive. You can be aware of this and still think the SAT is useful. It’s simply uncomfortable.
From the perspective of selective admissions, Jamiere Abney, director of admissions at Western Oregon University, has a different perspective. Almost half of his students are first-generation college graduates. He contends that a test score requirement is just one more obstacle preventing those students from obtaining a degree, which is still one of the most dependable paths to economic mobility in the United States. Seeing a low score relative to a school’s average can be quietly devastating for students who are already unsure if they belong in a college classroom. “If testing is what’s turning people away,” he states, “then we have to ask ourselves, is it really worth it?”
Observing this debate, it seems as though both sides are talking over one another because they are actually addressing different issues. Regional public university admissions officers are considering representation and access. Scholars who are researching Ivy League pipelines are considering ways to find talent that elite universities are currently lacking. Both worries are valid. Neither completely eliminates the other.
The SAT, as revitalized and redesigned as it is now in digital form, doesn’t appear to be going away quietly. Depending on who is using it, how honestly, and whether the colleges on the other end are genuinely willing to alter how they interpret the results, it may be a lifeline for overlooked students or a gatekeeping tool disguised in meritocratic language.
