The SAT and the ACT Will Probably Survive the Pandemic—Thanks to Students
Updated at 12:43 p.m. ET on September 16, 2020.
Over the summer, more than 400 colleges decided to stop requiring the SAT or the ACT for admissions, because the pandemic had made taking the tests (or even finding a location to take them) so difficult. Some institutions, such as Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, said their test-optional policy applied only to the high-school graduating class of 2021. Others, including Tufts University and the College of William & Mary, announced a three-year pause. A few jettisoned the tests permanently.
Whether standardized admissions tests will become yet another casualty of the pandemic is unclear. But even if the tests survive, the crisis is transforming their role for millions of anxious teenagers. Some elite colleges went test-optional begrudgingly and expect to return to their pre-pandemic requirements; for other top-ranked schools, there is no going back.
Being test-optional, though, is far different from not taking the scores into consideration at all. In making this move, colleges have created a muddled middle ground that confuses applicants and makes some distrustful of the whole process.
[David Coleman: There’s more to college than getting into college]
Indeed, even as the test-optional announcements were rolling out from universities this summer, something strange happened: Teenagers continued to for the exams. One of them was Julia Peldunas. The Connecticut high-school senior’s first attempt at the SAT was canceled in mid-March, when who, like Peldunas, planned to take the exam for the first time.
