In April, the State University of New York (SUNY) announced that students applying to its four-year undergraduate colleges would no longer be required to submit their SAT or ACT scores. Vassar College, an elite liberal arts school in Poughkeepsie, dropped its standardized testing requirement for admission around the same time. And in March, Columbia University became the first in the Ivy League to go permanently test-optional.
These New York schools lead the nation in making their pandemic-era test suspensions indefinite, but others are likely to follow. Cornell has extended its test-optional policy through 2024, while Harvard has done so through 2026. A recent study by the National Center for Fair and Open Testing found that more than 80% of US colleges and universities didn’t require applicants seeking admission in fall 2023 to report SAT or ACT scores. This is in stark contrast to 2019 when more than half required standardized test scores to be submitted as part of their application process, according to Common App data.
Continue reading the entire piece here the New York Post
______________________
Renu Mukherjee is a Paulson Policy Analyst at the Manhattan Institute.
Photo by smolaw11/iStock