How standardized tests can preserve equitable college admissions

What is the most compelling theme in a college application essay? 

Overcoming adversity. 

It is not enough for an applicant to say they have experienced adversity. To be persuasive, the applicant must demonstrate that they turned a challenge into an opportunity and became better from it.

The Supreme Court’s recent decision reversing affirmative action in college admissions presents a historic challenge to elite colleges: to maintain access for disadvantaged students while not running afoul of the court’s ruling.

Will colleges ethically overcome this adversity? Can they turn this challenge into an opportunity and become better from it?

There is a way.

With the demise of affirmative action, it is essential for colleges to return to the original intent of standardized testing, not to double down on test-optional and test-blind admissions that will only further exacerbate inequality and undermine one of our country’s greatest strengths: the quality of our exceptional higher education system.

The original intent of standardized exams was to break the stranglehold that elite high schools had on elite colleges. These elite high schools were conveyor belts of the American aristocracy: Attend the right high school, get into the right college, get the right job and ensure the same for your kids.

For the first time, standardized testing would allow disadvantaged students to join this conveyor belt by allowing elite colleges to identify talented students (the “diamonds in the rough”) from around the country and the world. The SAT and ACT would test students on foundational knowledge and skills that students need to succeed in college. Any students who proved that they were academically prepared for the rigors of an elite education would be considered.

And it worked.

The doors to these hallowed halls were opened. 

But, seeing measures of academic achievement as the new conveyor belt to success (as it should be), families invested heavily in academic preparation to teach students the foundational content tested on these exams.

While these tests stand as meritocratic barriers to all students (including the wealthy), the test preparation industry peddled the fraudulent claim that they could shortcut the conveyor belt of academic achievement to success with tips and tricks that would allow students to significantly improve on these exams. This lie (that wealth leads to test prep that leads to higher scores regardless of merit) is stuck in the imagination of many and has clouded the laudable mission of standardized testing. 

In reality, the only way to significantly improve on these exams is for a student to actually increase their knowledge and skills on foundational grammar, rhetorical skills, mathematics, reading comprehension and data analysis that they will need for high school and college — and there are ample free resources for any student to do so. 

But a simplistic lie is often more convincing than a more complex truth: the children of the wealthy do tend to score higher on the SAT and ACT because they have had a lifetime of access to better education, yet the SAT and ACT still retain their original ability to be able to identify academically prepared students — particularly those who would typically go unnoticed by elite colleges.

As a recent study has shown, colleges that use standardized criteria more heavily in admissions are less likely to give preference to wealthy applicants. It is the wealthy who can more easily game the subjective criteria (essays, teacher recommendations, niche and expensive sports for athletic recruitment, etc) in the college admissions process.

But let’s not stop at just returning to the original intent of standardized testing. Let’s make it better. We can use SAT and ACT scores in a much more effective way to identify exceptional students.

The organizations that make the SAT and ACT have the testing data of every high school in the country. When a student scores exceptionally well (technically three standard deviations above the high school’s average, which would put them in the top 1 percent of their school), their SAT and ACT scores should automatically be sent for free to colleges. Colleges can then reach out to these students to recruit them. This process of identifying exceptional students is easy to implement and inexpensive (relative to other proposals of every elite school going to disadvantaged high schools and encouraging students to apply).

As a tutor, I see firsthand that grades are incomplete measures of academic achievement. Every week, I teach straight A-students how to identify a sentence, complete basic algebraic operations and read simple graphs. Based on the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA’s 2022 survey of more than 33,000 freshmen in college, the vast majority (74.7 percent) of students going to Bachelor of Arts-granting colleges and universities had A-averages in high school. An “A-average” now actually means that the student is “average.” 

With grades alone, colleges could never see how brightly an exceptional yet disadvantaged student shines. At the same time that top colleges are encouraging disadvantaged students to apply without test scores, colleges actually need these test scores more than ever to identify those students who have most excelled in spite of their circumstances. We need the SAT and ACT to help colleges find these diamond scholars.

David Blobaum is the director of outreach for the National Test Prep Association, which works to support the appropriate use of testing in admissions. He co-founded the education company Summit Prep in 2013 with a classmate from college, Eva Addae.