Over the course of the twenty-first century, colleges and universities that have eliminated standardized test score requirements for admissions have generally increased diversity in their student bodies, according to a new paper from scholars at the University of California, Davis and the University of Notre Dame. However, gains in student diversity were reduced if these institutions experienced recent financial or enrollment challenges and/or continued to prioritize quantitative academic criteria.
In an examination of data regarding more than 1,500 public and private, four-year colleges and universities in the United States between 2003 and 2019, the authors found more than 200 of those institutions eliminated standardized test requirements for their student applications. Some universities do not consider test scores at all, while others make them optional, leaving it up to the student to determine if including their test scores would help or hurt their application. During this time period, the share of White students applying to college dropped from 68 percent to 53 percent, while the share of Black, Hispanic, and Native American students increased from 19 percent to 28 percent. Asian students’ share of college applicants also increased slightly from 6 percent to 8 percent.
Among colleges that implemented an optional test score admissions policy but continued to prioritize test scores and other quantitative academic information, there were no significant increases in the enrollment of underrepresented students three years after the policy update. In contrast, colleges with optional test score requirements that give less weight to quantitative data showed a slight 2 percent increase in underrepresented student enrollment within three years. Furthermore, institutions facing financial or enrollment-related pressures that went test-optional in their admissions policies were less likely to see a significant increase in student diversity.
“For administrators and policymakers interested in broadening college and university access, our findings highlight the importance of attending to formal policy changes that remove barriers, as well as the critical task of reshaping the informal organization — its values, beliefs, and norms,” the authors write. “This takeaway echoes a guiding principle for leading organizational change; namely, that alterations to an organization’s formal policies and structures must be accompanied by concomitant shifts in the informal organization.”
