College admissions post pandemic

As colleges and universities continue to be test optional in the wake of COVID-19, a question arises for prospective college students: will schools continue to be test optional, or is this only a reactive, short term change?

Casey said that most schools see the pandemic as an opportunity for reevaluating the value of standardized tests.

“A lot of (colleges) are pledging to stay that way, at least for this year, and some for next year too. I think some of them are seeing it as a pilot program to see if they’ll go test optional permanently, and then others have only committed to doing it for this year,” Casey said. “I think the test optional is here to stay. And so I think more and more schools will be test optional, and they’ll have the test-optional options permanent for the future.”

According to Wilshusen, colleges will have to consider many factors when deciding whether or not to remain test optional permanently. Changes to a college’s acceptance rate, yield rate (the percentage of admitted students who choose to commit to the college), and retention rate are all factors that will be closely monitored in the coming years, Wilshusen said. It will take time for any changes to become evident, so it will be difficult to know if going test optional has had any tangible impact on colleges in the near future.

Additionally, Mason said that colleges will have to rely more heavily on what they know about individual high schools when evaluating GPAs.

“They’re going to rely more on the reputation that schools have, based on the experience they have with students from that school,” Mason said.

Test blind schools, like MassArt where Wilshusen is the Dean of Admissions and Enrollment, do not factor in test scores at all when reviewing applications. Prior to that shift, they used standardized test scores along with a student’s GPA in their admissions process.

When converting to their current policy, Wilshusen said that those in admissions at MassArt had found that no longer including standardized test scores as a required component of applications did not cause a huge shift in how they viewed applicants. Wilshusen said one of the most interesting changes in admissions will be how the more selective universities will evaluate applicants if they don’t require standardized test scores.

“We thought that we’d really have to change how we evaluated students without having standardized test scores as one of the criteria. But we really didn’t,” Wilshusen said. “It was the same process. We took one of those criteria out, and it was something that was less important to us anyway, so we really didn’t have to change the way we made decisions. Our acceptance rate didn’t decline, our yield rate didn’t decline.”

An already visible impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the college admissions process is the large increase in the number of applications schools are receiving. In a letter sent out on March 9, the Common App said that applications have increased 11 percent from the 2019-2020 school year, with over 6 million individual applications having been submitted through March 1.

Because more qualified candidates are now applying for the same number of spots, there has been a clear uptick in the use of waitlists and deferrals by colleges, college and guidance counselor Lenny Libenzon said.

“Schools are using the waitlist and deferrals a lot more than before,” Libenzon said. “They’re used to having 10,000 applicants (and) now it’s 20,000, so they’ll admit the same number as before and then they’ll place the remainder of the kids on the waitlist to see how many actually come.”

Libenzon also said that as more schools have gone test optional, guidance counselors have been able to advise students not to send scores if they are on the lower side, making it so that colleges will only be evaluating them on their grades.

A big reason many students choose not to submit test scores is because they feel as though their learning styles don’t necessarily lend themselves to the specific skills that standardized tests are designed to evaluate. For senior Niovi Rahme, it was reassuring when her guidance counselor said she could opt out of submitting test scores.

“I remember (talking to my guidance counselor),” Rahme said, “and I said, ‘I don’t think I can take (the SAT) and none of the schools I’m applying to are requiring it,’ and he said, ‘So why take it? There’s no reason to.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, but-’ and he said ‘No. There’s no but. It’s going to put you through a ton of stress that you don’t need to go through unless you enjoy taking standardized tests, which you definitely don’t.’”

For guidance counselor Ellen Herz, the unpredictability caused by COVID-19 has led her to suggest that her students apply to more schools that they feel are less competitive and where students like them have historically gotten in.

“It’s just safer to make sure students have schools that they feel are not as competitive,” Herz said. “They have schools that they are happy with, but they just may not be as competitive. I always have done that in the past, but I’ve been much more vocal about it in the last year or so. I’ve been very pushy for students to get more on their lists.”

Regardless of whether colleges choose to remain test optional, the fate of standardized testing and the value that is placed on it remains in the hands of the consumers. While Bayer is doubtful that such a drastic shift in thinking is imminent in Brookline due to the immense pressure that is put upon students to do well on these tests, she hopes that the test optional shift due to COVID-19 will not be the end of the questioning of these exams.

“I just hope that this isn’t the end of the public, the consumers, wising up to it and questioning (standardized tests) more. (The end of them) looking at some of the inherent bias and racism in these tests and understanding how limited they are and how damaging they can be,” Bayer said.

Wilshusen echoed this sentiment, and hopes that colleges find that loosening the requirements of these tests open their communities to a wider range of students.

“I hope that institutions, even the really selective institutions, continue with being test optional,” Wilshusen said. “Schools like MassArt and other institutions that are test optional or test blind will tell you that you can evaluate students without it. You don’t need it to make a decision, and not requiring them and not looking at them in the process isn’t excluding anyone. It’s actually being more inclusive.”

Casey said that rethinking standardized testing in college admissions is a good start, but the inequalities in education run deeper than a biased test.

“I don’t think test optional alone is going to be the great equalizer to address inequities in our society about college access. I think it’s a little bit helpful, but I think we have a lot of work to do that would go way beyond test optional,” Casey said.