Standardized testing requirements reinstated by select colleges for 2025 application season

2–3 minutes

Research from Yale and Brown suggests test-optional policies may be harming students’ applications

Staff Writer

On February 22, Yale joined Dartmouth, Brown, and UT Austin in reinstating standardized testing requirements for the 2024-2025 application season abandoned during the COVID-19 pandemic. As schools like MIT and Georgetown brought these requirements back as early as 2022, experts studied how this change has affected the admissions process.

“When students attending these high schools include a score with their application—even a score below Yale’s median range—they give the committee greater confidence that they are likely to achieve academic success in college,” said Jeremiah Quinlan, the dean of undergraduate admissions at Yale in an interview with Yale News.

To strengthen the holistic review, colleges like UT Austin and Yale plan to modify the essay prompts, put emphasis on extracurriculars when a student’s scores are lacking, and narrow the scope of recommendation letters by encouraging students to get sources from outside of school.

“The question we’ve been getting all the time since [going test-optional] has been, ‘Should I send my score?’” Quinlan told Inside Higher Ed. “I’d rather have them think for themselves, ‘Which basket of scores do I have that reflects my strengths?’”

The anti-testing movement has long argued that standardized tests help fuel inequality because many students from affluent families use tutors and coaches to bolster their scores. Christina Paxson, President of Brown University said in a letter that going test-optional can “disadvantage students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds,” as less-resourced high schools “might not offer programs and activities that allow students to distinguish themselves.”

Experts predicted that some schools would use test-optional policies to protect themselves from potential lawsuits following the Supreme Court decision last year prohibiting race-conscious admissions. In the lawsuits against Harvard and UNC, standardized test scores were used to demonstrate disproportionate admissions treatment among particular ethnic and racial groups.

International students oppose the change as standardized testing is less accessible to them. When confronted with this issue, Bob Schaeffer, public education director of FairTest said, “Since an overwhelming percentage of future Yale applicants will have taken Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate exams, which have long been a factor in admissions at super-selective institutions, the impact will not be very significant.” Yale received over 57,000 applications last fall, an increase of 20,000 since 2019. “I think it’s safe to say we will see some decrease moving forward. We don’t want more applications. We want the right applications.” Quinlan told The New York Times.