The SAT again?

As blog readers will know, the Regents initially commissioned an Academic Senate report on the use of the SAT and other tests for admission. When the report indicated that the SAT contained useful information and, given the way UC used it in conjunction with other considerations, did not harm - in fact promoted - diversity, the Regents nonetheless dropped the test. Other high-profile made the same move in and around the pandemic. 

But some have retained the SAT, e.g., MIT. Now Dartmouth is planning to resume its use.

Nowadays, as blog readers will know, Dartmouth seems to be a leader in academic trends. It early on created a dialogue series to ease tensions over the Israel-Gaza War. As we noted earlier this week, it has been told that its basketball players are, in fact, "employees" subject to collective bargaining protections by the NLRB. We'll see if other schools come back to the SAT. Maybe even the Regents will reconsider if the trend persists.

From the NY Times:

Last summer, Sian Beilock — a cognitive scientist who had previously run Barnard College in New York — became the president of Dartmouth. After arriving, she asked a few Dartmouth professors to do an internal study on standardized tests. Like many other colleges during the Covid pandemic, Dartmouth dropped its requirement that applicants submit an SAT or ACT score. With the pandemic over and students again able to take the tests, Dartmouth’s admissions team was thinking about reinstating the requirement. Beilock wanted to know what the evidence showed...

Three Dartmouth economists and a sociologist then dug into the numbers. One of their main findings did not surprise them: Test scores were a better predictor than high school grades — or student essays and teacher recommendations — of how well students would fare at Dartmouth. The evidence of this relationship is large and growing...

A second finding was more surprising. During the pandemic, Dartmouth switched to a test-optional policy, in which applicants could choose whether to submit their SAT and ACT scores. And this policy was harming lower-income applicants in a specific way.

The researchers were able to analyze the test scores even of students who had not submitted them to Dartmouth. (Colleges can see the scores after the admissions process is finished.) Many lower-income students, it turned out, had made a strategic mistake.

They withheld test scores that would have helped them get into Dartmouth. They wrongly believed that their scores were too low, when in truth the admissions office would have judged the scores to be a sign that students had overcome a difficult environment and could thrive at Dartmouth.

As the four professors — Elizabeth Cascio, Bruce Sacerdote, Doug Staiger and Michele Tine — wrote in a memo, referring to the SAT’s 1,600-point scale, “There are hundreds of less-advantaged applicants with scores in the 1,400 range who should be submitting scores to identify themselves to admissions, but do not under test-optional policies.” Some of these applicants were rejected because the admissions office could not be confident about their academic qualifications. The students would have probably been accepted had they submitted their test scores...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/05/briefing/dartmouth-sat.html.

These finding from Dartmouth are in line with those of the Academic Senate report ignored by the Regents.

===

Note: See also https://www.insidehighered.com/news/admissions/traditional-age/2024/02/07/dartmouth-admissions-dean-reinstating-test-requirements.