February 23, 2024 - 8:00pm
Elite universities in the United States are starting to wind down their pandemic-era experiments with test-optional admissions policies. The verdict? Standardised tests are not so bad after all.
On Thursday Yale University announced it would reinstate standardised testing requirements in the autumn of 2025. Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeremiah Quinlan stated that Yale’s test-optional policies hurt the disadvantaged students it was trying to help:
“Our analyses have found that applicants without test scores have been less likely to be admitted; concerningly, this was especially true for applicants from lower-income backgrounds and those attending high schools with fewer college-preparatory courses.”
Yale’s decision makes it the third elite American university to reverse course after Dartmouth College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Does this mean that the tide could be turning?
The switch to test-optional policies follows a decades-long battle over the utility of standardised testing requirements in college admissions. Many earlier criticisms debated whether tests like the SAT and ACT were good enough predictors of student success in college. If the tests were insufficiently useful, then their perceived harms of being too reductive or contributing to a stressful testing culture might not be justified.
But as higher education’s obsession with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) reached its peak in 2020, criticisms of standardised tests became more racially-driven, with critics painting the tests as “racist”. The coronavirus pandemic and its associated lockdowns finally gave elite universities the excuse they needed to implement test-optional policies: many students couldn’t take the tests at a physical location with a proctor so a change was required.
Now, as the progressive haze has begun to clear, universities such as Yale and Dartmouth have come to their senses. But their susceptibility to cultural trends should still be concerning, as these decisions should be based on quality evidence. So there is still a way to go before anti-meritocratic DEI policies are fully removed from college admissions.
These elite institutions act as if they’ve discovered brand new information about standardised tests, when the arguments they make have been around for decades. Dartmouth, which released its report on the value of standardised tests in January 2024, called the findings “unexpected, thought-provoking, and encouraging”.
Yet proponents of standardised tests have argued for decades that the SAT and ACT give low-income students the opportunity to demonstrate their academic qualifications. Either university leaders have had their heads buried in the sand for years, or they actively chose to ignore this information to follow the lead of progressive zealots.
The tendency of elite universities to blindly follow the latest whims of activists is a good reason for scepticism about the future of college admissions. While it’s encouraging that some universities have reversed test-optional policies, a 2023 survey of more than 200 college admissions officers found that 73% wanted to keep test-optional policies permanently. And at least some of this devotion to test-optional policies is a reaction to the 2023 Supreme Court ruling that ended racial considerations in college admissions.
Test-optional policies are only one of the many anti-meritocratic distortions admissions officers have introduced in recent years to “racially balance” the admissions pool. Universities have created essay questions which ask students to discuss their racial and ethnic backgrounds. Some public universities have introduced policies to automatically accept the top 10% of students at each high school in the state, subtly favouring students at less competitive schools that they hope are more diverse.
All of these policies need to be overturned in favour of colour-blind meritocratic admissions if American universities wish to return to their former values of excellence and equality of opportunity. But only time will tell if institutions can completely shake off the “anti-racist” delirium of 2020. For now, bringing back standardised tests is a good start.
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SubscribeAccepting the top 10% of students at each high school in the state is less objectionable than explicit racial profiling, as it at least avoids disproportionately favouring the offspring of rich members of preferred racial groups. And it encourages smart kids from poor backgrounds to stay in their local high schools – raising standards there – rather than moving to fee paying or more upmarket schools.
I agree that actually sounds a rather sensible policy of offering the top students at poorly performing schools a chance to escape their background.
I’d wager a student with 5 A grades from poor school is probably more gifted and has worked much harder for them than one who has 6 A grades from a top private school.
“I’d wager a student with 5 A grades from poor school is probably more gifted and has worked much harder…” I’ll take that wager. How much are you offering?
They may not have worked harder, but the student at the poor school will have put up with much more disruption and lower level of teaching than the student from private school.
In other words, if the private school student had gone to the poor school they’d have likely got less than 5 A grades.
It’s far easier to get A’s from a poor school that just pushes students along than from a top private school where parents actually value education. If kids with A’s in poor schools were really that smart they would be able to show it on an apples-to-apples basis from their test scores. Instead Yale is going to set the bar lower for them and accept the same unprepared kids that were the basis for the USSC’s ruling. BTW, and they truly are unprepared. So much so in fact that Yale actually has remedial math and English programs for them during the Summer before they matriculate–and they receive credit towards graduation for taking them!
We used to have S Levels – Scholarship Papers which were Oxbridge Exam Standards. One sat two subjects and if passed was awarded scholarships by county. However most comprehensive lack teachers of high enough ability. B.Ed in General science of Maths is not good enough to teach Entrance Exam/ Scholarship to Imperial/Cambridge. Most grammar and public school had scholarship sets where students were taught to first degree standards but this requires teachers with masters or doctorates from top universities.
Bring back O Levels and allow pupils to take maths a year early. Teachers with B.Ed can cope with this exam and then send to Sixth Form College and undertake three year Scholarship training. Then increases standard of degrees and reduce from 4 to 3 years. In other words return to pre 1980s when Oxbridge Exams were stopped. a friend who went o King Edward Sixth sat a levels at 15 years of of age , matriculated to Cambridge at 17 years of age, did three years of physics and two years and then one year of electrical engineering. Some people obtained degrees at 20 years of age and doctorates at 22 years – William Penney, Rector of IC.
S level paper from 1970.
Mathematics examination paper from 1970 – The Student Room
In boxing they say train hard fight easy and I say start the training early.
I managed a 1st class degree (microbiology) in 1967 when only 1% of the population had one. I recently discovered that my local university gives 40% of their students firsts. And 40% of a huge intake…… I couldn’t apply to Cambridge because my small grammar school hadn’t been able to offer me 2 languages at “O” level. And having taught on and off for 50 years I can vouch for the extreme dumbing down of A level biology over that time….sad really and glad that my not-very-academic grandson has gone and got a job rather than going to a not-very-good university which would have accepted his not-very-good grades to incur huge amounts of debt!
You have hit the nail on the head.Many grammar schools and most comprehensives lacked the ability to teach to Oxbridge/Imperial Standards. The person who went to Kind Edward VIth was taught maths by a Cambridge Wrangler. Anthony Sampson in his Anatomy of Britain Books has explained the problem very well. 2% went to Direct Grmmar Schools such as Manchester and King Edward VIth but 16% of Oxbridge went to them and some 25 schools accounted fro most scholarships.
The only solution are scholarships to public and grammar schools and VIth colleges.Until the mid1960s pupils could leave school at 15 without taking CSEs/O Levels and a B.Ed or Cert.Ed was good enought to teach to those standards.
Switzerland has a very good system , it supports ETH Zurich and spends three years training a lorry driver who is practically a diesel mechanic. I would combine pre WW2 Britain, Switzerland and Singapore to create the best education and training system in the World. Scientists of the calibre of Clerk Maxwell; Engineers as good as B Wallis and watch makers as good as the Swiss
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholarship_Level
Scholarship Level
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The GCE S-level, Scholarship level, or Special paper[1] was a British public examination taken by the most able A-level students. The S-level was typically used to support UK university entrance applications, though in practice it was directed almost exclusively to Oxford or Cambridge applications. Results were graded ‘Distinction’ (1), ‘Merit’ (2) or ‘Unclassified’ (U).
Up until and including 1960, the actual mark in steps of 5 was provided to candidates. The S level Higher Maths papers were not marked unless at least 75 (Distinction) was secured in the A level Pure and/or Applied mathematics papers. The marks were normalised, but usually completion of 2 or 3 questions of the 10 was stated by the examiners on the paper to be sufficient to secure a distinction (75). The highest possible score was 90 for ten excellent answers, due to normalisation. The subject matter was identical to the A level syllabus, but the questions very considerably harder.
Up to 1962, the main objective of the S levels was to permit the Ministry of Education to allocate 400 State Scholarships for the best performance of all those examined at A (and of course S) level in that specific year.
Although it was a separate paper, marked and graded in isolation from the A-level, it was not commonly a standalone qualification and was usually attempted only by candidates who were also sitting an A-level in the same subject at the same time and who were likely to obtain an “A” grade (the top grade) in that examination (and results only given to candidates who had actually achieved an “A” or a “B”). Given the very small, selective entry for the papers, the S-level was only offered in a small number of mainstream subjects.
History[edit]
The State Scholarships were abolished in 1962 and the exams were then renamed Special Papers. These were last set in 2001 and then superseded by the Advanced Extension Awards[1] and to some extent by Sixth Term Examination Papers.
Check out James Lindsay’s New Discourse 20 min podcast on “Stochastic Entryism.” Everything progressives do is to increase the probability of Activist takeover. DEI is not really about race, gender, sexuality or etc. It’s just based on a progressive belief that so called “minority groups” can more probabilistically be radicalized into Redistribution Ideologues.
I agree with you that the 10% of all schools is less objectionable but it’s almost certainly just a backup plan.
(DEI + ESG)^n = Captured by DESIGN
Where n = self-declared virtue.
That plan may have the advantage of avoiding racial profiling. There are questions, though:
wouldn’t it deny places to better students (that is, those at 11% down) who have the ‘misfortune’ to go to good schools?won’t parents game this by securing a good education for their children and then placing them in poorer schools at selection time so that they easily get into the top 10%?what about students in poorer schools who have help from well-educated parents, or where the parents can afford private tuition?where do home-schooled students fit into this model?
Sorry, paragraph formatting did not come through.
Have I got a paper for you. Parents DID in fact game this by moving to less competitive school districts! See from economics institute IZA: https://docs.iza.org/dp5026.pdf
This is so very unlogical! Top 10 per cent from certain schools could be illiterate.
This problem is as nothing compared with the foreign student admissions racket. Top 3 UK university on a flagship UG programme has 10 Brits out of cohort of 125. British kids with world class grades are now regularly rejected from elite UK universities, yet don’t have the cash to become part of the international foreign student merry-go-round. Now that’s what I call exclusionary.
To rub salt into the wound, have just completed.marking first assignment. Grade average upper range 2.2. Told to apply an uplift factor into 2.1 grade band to stop complaints. Many of these “profit margin” foreign students are not up to the task. At this institution firsts represented approximately 10% of all degrees as recently as 2010. Today that figure is over 40%.
The “standardised.testing” is now being regularly done by employers who no longer trust a degree result.
A farce if it wasn’t already a tragedy.
It is just as bad at the UK’s lower quality Unis. A market for foreign students has emerged. A group of high school graduates club together to hire a middleman. The middleman asks universities to bid for the students (discounting the fees to compete). The bid has to be submitted very quickly (about a day) otherwise a competing university will get its bid accepted.
This market is very similar to the American sub-prime mortgage market, with dud students mixed in with adequate ones.
I know about this racket because I had a contract to fix an IT problem with the student database of one of the “competing” universities.
I hope this will discourage British students from full time university.
I think there is much more hope for most in following models like Birkbeck College and the Open University; combining study with work.
Of course, it depends on the subject; engineers need to have pretty intense training. However, someone studying Mathematics could be taking modules for years, gradually building up their understanding.
Most British uni students juggle work with full time study these days & have for years. This has become a financial necessity for them & also massively affects the amount they’re able to study for the degree for which they’re paying so dearly.
The international student racket is thoroughly embedded. Each uni has a marketing department with bases in places like India, Pakistan & Nigeria, where they actively recruit students for a British uni degree. The quality of basic language skills leaves a lot to be desired. But then Higher Ed has become a business don’t you know?
The simple solution is to return to the time when people left school at 16 or 18 years of age and entered an apprenticeship or became articled. During the day they trained as apprentices and the attended night school. The qualifications were set by the Institutions of Engineering of which Civil, Mechnanical and electrical were the main three. Part 1 was HND level and Part 2 was degree level. The Mechanicals Part 2 was considered harder than a degree. After passing Part 1 one was promoted to Draftsman. This meant the standard ws the same across the country or one could sit the U of London External degree. One could sit professional exams chemistry, in law, banking, accountancy, surveying art/design. Up to a certain period all poly education was via night school. Proof of effectiveness- JR Mitchell- Spitfire, Camm- Hurricane, Chadwick -Lancaster, De Havilland – Mosquito- B Wallis – Wellington Bomber, Bouncing Bomb, etc.
The present term times date from agricultural period- students do not return home to work on farm. Say 46 weeks, 12 hours per week, 552 hours per year. The practical work is largely done during day and tutorials conducted via Zoom. Meet once a month and/or for using specialised equipment.
If one passed a poly degree one could enter a university in second year when they had three year degrees. When it came to engineering the main difference was that polys had lower standard of maths entry. The advantage with poly/night school was on could the course at a speed one felt comfortable .
Once polys awarded their own degree rather than taking Institution/London exams, standards dropped.
Polytechnic (United Kingdom) – Wikipedia
19th century[edit]Some polytechnics trace their history back to the early 19th century. The first British institution to use the name “polytechnic” was the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society in 1832, which it still retains, together with the affectionate nickname “The Poly”.[citation needed]
The London Polytechnic (now the University of Westminster) emerged from the Royal Polytechnic Institution which was founded at Regent Street, London in 1838. The establishment of the polytechnic was a reaction to the rise of industrial power and technical education in France, Germany and the US.[2] Degrees at the London Polytechnic were validated by the University of London.
Woolwich Polytechnic (later Thames Polytechnic, now the University of Greenwich) in south-east London, emerged in the 1890s and is considered the second-oldest polytechnic in the UK.[citation needed]
The South-Western Polytechnic Institute (1895-1922) was founded for ‘the provision of education for the poorer inhabitants of London’. It offered practical training in STEM subjects for adult men, alongside a day school for 13-15-year-old boys and girls. The Institute evolved into Chelsea Polytechnic, eventually merging into King’s College in the University of London.[citation need
I was shouting about this for years in the UK and find it’s the same in the Canada. Grade inflation is such that we are no longer grading but certifying attendance – which BTW doesn’t mean physical presence but enrolment.
Who on earth voted you down?
Until I retired (mercifully) in 2017, I was in my second career as a business school senior lecturer at a middle-of-the-road UK university, itself one of the oldest English higher education establishments than most of the Russell Group institutions.
In my final years of work my university started to admit substantial numbers Chinese students (business studies is especially popular as a subject with this demographic), many of whom I taught and quite a few of whom were allocated to me as their personal tutor. In spite of the university having a published policy on required minimum standards of spoken and written English, the majority of these Chinese students were unable to have a meaningful conversation in English; and their written work was virtually unintelligible on the whole. In class, or in one-to-one tutorials with me, most of these students would hold up their smart phones as I spoke, using their translation apps to convert my English into Chinese. Their replies were formed in reverse, requiring me to listen to recorded translations from Chinese into English. These were not isolated incidents but occurred daily. Management imposed pressure on us academic staff to pass these students when they failed (which was regularly), or to enhance lower marks to higher grades. The system is morally bankrupt.
How come students who clearly fell far below the university’s published minimum admission standards for spoken and written English were nevertheless admitted onto these undergraduate programmes? Simple answer: Because they contributed huge overseas student fees. I cannot think of any other logical explanation. And many of these Chinese students did not want for finance. I clearly recall one of my Chinese students (who did not speak English) driving to lectures (when he was in the mood) in a new BMW sports car, that was probably worth three times my annual salary at the time! Ironically, a significant minority of my ‘home’ students themselves could not write competent English and were admitted onto programmes, in spite of not meeting entrance requirements.
In my university, the decisions to admit students were remotely taken by the administration; the academics running the programmes had zero involvement in assessment and selection of applicants. Those students selected were simply imposed on us without consultation or any form of engagement, and we were expected to pass each cohort regardless of individual capabilities (or, rather, incompetencies). Failures were blamed on poor teaching! I was ecstatic to retire at a time of my choosing and never missed that toxic environment for a second.
British universities have sold their souls to an array of devils: Woke politics and practices being one, funnelling ever larger numbers of UK school-leavers into meaningless degree programmes (e.g. gender, womens’, media, etc. studies) being another plus rampant managerialism driving the agenda; overseas student fees being the cash cow that funds enormous managerial salaries and administrative empires far removed from the business of teaching. Consequently, the quality and value and of UK university degree programmes has significantly declined. If my children were now at and age to attend first year at university, I would strongly advise them to pursue alternative routes for career development, even if they were offered places at Oxbridge colleges.
Move to Texas
Ending this toxic divisive DEI will help cohesion in our societies
‘Will’ or ‘would’?
More will to resist is and would be needed. It shall come if our spirits are willing and bodies not too weak.
“Will hopefully”?
Cohesion through exclusion and less diversity?
You mean just like the current US university model.
I’d like to think the DEI tide is turning, but, as the saying goes, one swallow doesn’t a summer make.
Allow yourself to recognize that it’s more than a ripple or a single bird now. We should all seek the sweet spot between complacency and despair.
Nothing to see here folks. Yale and other woke institutions will find another way to admit women and minorities at the expense of white men. This rot is deep and it’s too soon to celebrate. I am not optimistic. Hope I am wrong.
Much better to admit white men at the expense of women and minorities, right? Through it was actually Asians being harmed by affirmation action, not white men.
Stopping the practice of admitting unqualified minorities at the expense of qualified students of whatever color, mostly Asian, but also white, was the whole point of the USSC’s decision. P.S. Women being more than 50% of college admissions, it’s hard to see how admitting qualified white men hurts them in any case.
I don’t get the essays asking students to write about their race and/or ethnicity. What do I say? “ I am white. Anglo-Saxon. I am an oppressor who likes to kick smaller kids. I am a colonialist but from a distance. My ancestors came over on the Mayflower and killed the Indians who got in their way. Now I’m a middle class woman who lives in a very white town. All is good.”
Probably get a better reception than one saying I am a member of the human race people who share the same DNA as me have various different shades of colour and it’s not that important.
Is that a terrible thing?
There should be a way to acknowledge that historical legacy and baggage, however boiled down, in a way whereby you don’t paint yourself as being personally on the hook–nor as the heiress of some superior merit–due to the actions of those who shared your demographics or even family tree throughout history*. Yet I doubt that’s possible in most American universities right now, without really playing up your personal challenges or “lived experience” as a woman, to a degree that would probably not be honest.
The tide ain’t turned that far yet.
*Perhaps with an addendum stating that you’re opposed to bigotry, oppression, and being mean, especially when they “punch down” or derive from imbricated systems of hegemonic privilege, etc. (By the way, this footnote was meant in a mocking spirit).
It’s interesting that you present yourself as Anglo-Saxon. Isn’t this the ethnicity that, in your country, dare not speak its name?
As a Briton, I have the impression that an American who is (e.g.) fifteen sixteenths WASP and one sixteenth Greek will often present as “Greek American”. And we all know that “Irish” Joe Biden has just as much English heritage.
Is it simply that being Anglo-Saxon isn’t seen as cool? After all, we limeys aren’t all bad, and we did give you your Founding Fathers.
Can someone explain to me what the admission procedure has been until now? No standardised test, but what did they use, if anything, in its place?
Instead of standardized tests they use “holistic” appraisals. This is another way of saying that they give extra points to under- performing black students, transgender gypsies, or whatever identity group they want more of.
But if that were the case how can they be not increasing the number of disadvantaged students (using whatever metric you like)?
They have been. The problem is they aren’t allowed anymore to be so obvious, per the Supreme Court’s decision, so they’ve come up with a new gambit to accomplish the same thing.
You really have no idea what your talking about. One wonders, if Blacks had so many advantages for admission, why don’t we see their numbers attend at a rate comparable to Asians, who make up such a smaller proportion of the US population?
They still need to attain a minimum GPA. Moreover, even with scholarships there are certain costs surrounding college that many African-Americans simply can’t afford. Asian-Americans, typically those from the Far East, usually come from families with a strong work and study academic. Affirmative action plays a role, but needs to be used with care.
Yes!
This is all well and good, but what about faculty members that are DEI hires and don’t merit their positions? How can universities pull out these weeds?
Strong forthright leaders but that will never happen because they don’t get hired on merit.
Yale hasn’t abandoned DEI. It’s just adapting to the Supreme Court’s ruling. Now, it will be able to accept even lesser qualified “under-represented” students by lowering the required test scores for that group far below those required for whites and Asians. Instead of using skin color theyll simply use a factor which is indicative of color but isnt so obvious.
In 1968 I refused to take a job with VSO because it would have meant teaching English to rich students in Peru and giving them high pass marks irrespective of how they performed (or bothered to turn up). Typical third world corruption, I thought. Look at us now. The heart sinks.
Adding back in some testing doesn’t mean the are turning their backs on DEI…you would have to route out the Marxist faculty first