Dartmouth College To Require ACT And SAT Scores Again

Dartmouth College has announced that they will require to submit their ACT scores and SAT scores of applicants again. From the next application cycle, the class of 2029 will be submitting their standardised test scores. 

As the COVID-19 pandemic had hit the world, this Ivy League college chose to make test scores optional in 2020. Dartmouth College had conducted a study where they discovered that test scores could have helped the less advantaged students. This includes students from low-income families where they will gain access to the school. 

Bruce Sacerdote, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College and also the co-author of the study, said that “We find ourselves missing out on some great students,". He also added that students from disadvantaged backgrounds submitted their scores at lower rates. However, their scores were high, which would have helped them get into Dartmouth College. 

Bruce also said, "We can see in the data: Oh wow, that student, boy, they had a 1450 ... or a 1500 ... We didn't even know that. And they were not admitted to Dartmouth," he says. "That is a really outstanding score. And, it would have been a great piece of information to have."

This study, conducted by Bruce Sacerdote, also made the college discover that  testing scores helped students from high schools join Dartmouth, which already didn't have a track record of sending students to this Ivy League school. 

The Dartmouth study also challenges the criticism that standardised testing methods and exams like the ACT and SAT exams tend to hurt students from disadvantaged backgrounds when it comes to admissions. 

Many studies have found a relationship between high standardized testing scores and high income. According to the Brookings Institution, In the high school class of 2020, Black and Latino students scored quite less than that of white and Asian students on the math section of the SAT exam. 

According to FairTest, more than 1900 colleges and universities in the US have a “test optional” feature, where students can decide if they want to submit their standardized test scores or not with their applications. California State University, which is one of the largest public systems in the country, removed standardised testing from its admission requirements in the year of 2022. 

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