During the COVID-19 pandemic scores of colleges began shifting to test-optional admissions—and stayed that way, even after pandemic restrictions no longer affected students' ability to take college entrance exams like the SAT and ACT. As of March 2024, the majority of U.S. colleges are test-optional, and more than 80 will refuse to consider student test scores at all.
However, there has recently been a resurgence for standardized tests. New studies showed that the tests were a better predictor of student achievement than their high school GPA, disproving the longstanding theory that standardized tests are biased and don't accurately capture student ability. Over the past few months, elite college trendsetters like Yale University, Dartmouth College, and Brown University have begun requiring applicants to submit standardized test scores again.
