How colleges use SAT-optional applications to covertly impose affirmative action

The Wall Street Journal reports that 1.7 million students in the high-school class of 2022 took the SATs, up 200,000 from the previous year. The number taking the ACT went up, too. Yet almost three-quarters of colleges offering four-year-degrees have gone test-optional or test-blind. So fewer schools now require tests but more kids are taking them. What s going on?

The short answer: Test-optional schools have created a two-tier system to get around complaints about their affirmative-action preferences. They don t want scores that might screen out applicants they d otherwise like to accept. But they do want test results from wealthier white kids because the tests provide valuable info.

They re perpetuating an unfair system.

The percentage of kids taking these tests is still down from pre-pandemic levels, but the trend was clearly upward in the years beforehand from 48% for the class of 2017 to 58% for 2018 and 61% for 2019. And while the test-optional trend has accelerated, hundreds of schools had adopted the policy by 2019, including half of the top 100 liberal arts colleges.

via nypost.com