By: Brennan LaBrie
Students applying for admission to Pacific Lutheran University (PLU) for the 2019-2020 school year will be the first in history to decide whether or not to submit SAT or ACT scores along with their application. This past July, PLU Provost Dr. Joanna Gregson announced PLU’s decision to go “test optional,” joining over one thousand colleges nationwide who have made similar decisions.
Dr. Gregson received a letter of recommendation to adopt the policy in late May from the Admission and Retention of Students (ARTS) Committee. This followed months of discussion within the committee beginning in February. The recommendation cites studies that show “overwhelming evidence” that standardized tests fail to predict academic success at the college level. Instead, the studies indicated that high school GPAs and course loads serve as better predictors. In addition, the recommendation argued that standardized tests “reinforce inequities in college admission,” especially among students of historically underrepresented groups.
The letter cites a variety of costs, including the initial test cost, sending scores to colleges, retaking the tests to achieve higher scores, and the increasingly common preparatory courses offered, as being hindrances to students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. The studies mentioned by the committee found a high correlation between test scores and the income of families and school districts.
Data also showed a racial gap in test scores, reflecting how African-American and Latino students are impacted the most by the financial burdens of standardized tests. PLU Director of Admission, Melody Ferguson, added that students who speak English as a second language have an even harder time with these tests, and are therefore more likely to be rejected by colleges and more reluctant to apply due to insecurity over test scores.
Reports from various institutions such as Bates, one of the first colleges to adopt the test optional policy, show increases in overall applicants and in the representation of underrepresented minority students in the student population after going test-optional.
Dr. Gregson was impressed by the findings of the report, and felt
moved to act.
“It was compelling to me to get rid of that barrier, to try to minimize that difference in opportunity,” she said. “Some of the groups that we hope to serve best are students who haven’t been provided opportunities historically.”
Dr. Ferguson also concurred with the findings of the committee, noting the “cost of being a great test taker” and adding the stress her office places on students’ high school grades and course load.
“It’s how they did over four years of high school versus how they did on one random Saturday,” Ferguson said. “Some people are not great test takers, so how much does it really define them?”
PLU joins over 1,000 colleges nationwide who have adopted test-optional policies, including six of the nine universities in the Northwest Conference. Each university has their own variation on the policy, but Gregson prefers the simple “test-optional” model.
“If that’s the way you want to show us what you can bring to our community, do it,” She said. “If this doesn’t allow you to present the self that you want us to see, don’t include it.”
Education writers have warned that sending in test scores at some test-optional colleges greatly helps a student’s chance of admission and receiving merit aid. Ferguson says that this is not the case for PLU, adding that the Presidential Scholarship, for one, has always given applicants the option of submitting either test scores or GPA. However, the schools of Nursing and Education still strongly encourage test scores for admission into their programs. Despite the increasing popularity of this policy, there are critics within the education world. One primary argument is that adopting the policy is a way for colleges to increase their applicant pool, allowing them to reject more students and appear more selective, and perhaps even profit off of the increase in enrollment fees.
Gregson dispelled these notions, noting that PLU is part of the “Common Application,” which doesn’t charge a fee to apply to colleges, and as far as the desire for recognition: “Nowhere in our mission statement does it say that we have to be the most selective.” To her, this decision was about “equity and inclusion” above all else.
