Drake's Cautious Answer on SAT/ACT

Incoming UC prez Michael Drake was cautious about answering a question on the use of the SAT or ACT for admissions on "Face the Nation" yesterday:

...MARGARET BRENNAN: Now that you're at UC, they have taken some high profile steps to attempt to increase diversity within the school system. One of the more controversial ones was this decision to do away with the requirement of SAT or ACT tests in the future, despite some arguments within the university that that doing so would result in lower grade averages or lower graduation rates. And I wonder how you think about addressing these concerns that- that eliminating the standard somehow lowers them?

DR. DRAKE: Well, we are in no way attempting to lower standards at all. We have a variety of things that we consider in admissions. I was admissions- in charge of admissions for the UCSF Medical School for many years and in the past. And we used a variety of things to determine the qualifications for students who are going to be admitted to our university. We're very proud that we have so many students interested in attending and we have to judge between them. And what we found is that standardized tests provide marginal information. They- they can help, but they don't tell the whole picture. And particularly in this time of COVID, when the- the opportunity to study and prepare for a test is quite uneven between those students who might be applying for us, we wanted to remove any potential barriers for students who might not have access to all the support that they need during this time to prepare for taking the test and therefore artificially score lower than they might. So the- the plan is to retreat from those standardized tests now and to think about other ways that we might gather that information as we look forward in the future. It's an ongoing discussion for us.

Full interview at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/transcript-dr-michael-drake-on-face-the-nation-july-19-2020/.

Note that Ohio State does require the SAT or ACT, although it has made the tests optional for this year due to the coronavirus sitution. See below from the Ohio State website:

Source: http://undergrad.osu.edu/covid-19-response/students-applying-for-autumn-2021#test-optional-faqs