The Tartan

By Zachary Gelman

It’s important to remember that what you read in this article will be irrelevant to most people, most likely including you. Thanks to Carnegie Mellon’s draconian swipe-ID policies, I can be very confident that either you attend this school (be it as a student, custodial staff, Chartwells employee, tenured professor, or exploited professor), or that you’re part of a parent-child partnership on a campus visit. If you’re part of the first group, put this newspaper down and call your mother. I’m sure she’d love to hear from you. If you’re part of the second group, I’d recommend visiting Case Western. It’s not too far from here, the campus is beautiful, and the Cleveland Cavaliers have won 16 of their past 17 games.

Prior to the 2020 novel coronavirus pandemic, many American colleges had already begun adopting test- optional policies. This means that an SAT or ACT score is considered if submitted, but submission is not required. Most universities go beyond this to say that they don’t put students who choose not to submit their score at a disadvantage. This means a student with a 1200 SAT score might not submit it to a 1350-average school, but would submit it to an 1150 -average school. Despite claims that test- optional policies were more equitable for lower income students (colleges like to say that this is important to them), many of the more prestigious centers of higher learning remained SAT superfans. 

Of course, then some pretty big events happened and almost all colleges decided to go test optional, even Harvard! You’ll find that Harvard and the other Ivy League schools (even the bad ones like Dartmouth and Brown) are mentioned whenever anything college-related is brought up, much to my dismay. Parents and journalists are obsessed with every little goings on in these elite schools. They aren’t exactly representative of the average American college experience though, let alone the admissions experience, are they? According to the 2022-2023 Common Data Sets, around 61,000 high school students applied to Harvard. Over 84,289 applied to the University of Michigan. UMich is one of the best schools in the country, but you’ll only hear about them when they go undefeated in college football. I don’t like that discourse is implicitly centered on such a select few schools, and I certainly don’t like writing about it.

Dartmouth just announced it is re-requiring standardized test scores, beginning with applicants for the Class of 2029. My colleague Jimmy has written an excellent article appearing alongside this one about his belief that this is a bad idea. So do some Dartmouth students. The Dartmouth Chapter of the NAACP circulated an open letter written by “a coalition of Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latine, FG/LI, International, disabled, working-class organizations and students.” This letter expresses their “dissatisfaction towards the recent repeal of test-optional policy,” decries the closed door meetings that led to the change in policy, and claims that “divorcing [the] ‘evidence’ from the lived experiences of students advocating for their potential … is unreasonable.” Dartmouth ’25 student Alejandra Carrasco also wrote a letter to senior administration from an international student perspective, explaining the emotional and financial stress that taking the SAT imposes on international students.

I’m sure “The Dartmouth,” the appropriately (if boringly) named Dartmouth school newspaper, will write about this student discontent, but for the moment it appears that I scooped them.

In my opinion, the reasons Dartmouth gave seem sound, and can be found online in a report from four professors if you’re on our website or are wearing one of those fancy Google headsets. Basically, they think that they were missing out on great lower-income students that they would have admitted had their test scores been submitted, and they believe that “test scores represent an especially valuable tool to identify high-achieving applicants from low and middle-income backgrounds.”

But “missing out” is a strange way to put it. Afterall, colleges like Dartmouth accept very few people every year. For some, this adds to their appeal, but it also means that many very qualified students will seemingly do everything right, and still get rejected. Dartmouth College admitted 1,875 applicants in Fall 2019 (an 8 percent acceptance rate) and 1,797 applicants in Fall 2023 (a 6 percent acceptance rate). (In comparison, for Fall 2022 bastion-of-equity Carnegie Mellon University admitted 3,873 applicants for an 11 percent acceptance rate.) I bet there were 2,000 more applicants that would have done just as well had they also been admitted. Students are fighting over a small number of slots, and requiring tests or not doesn’t provide a Dartmouth, or Harvard, or Carnegie Mellon education to more people, it just changes who gets it. Dartmouth seems to believe that requiring test scores will let them accept more students from low-income households, but of course they could always do so. Using SAT scores may just allow admissions officers to use different rationales. Personally, I doubt that the demographics of elite colleges changed significantly when becoming test-optional, and I doubt that they’d change if tests were once more required.

Standardized testing (the SATs specifically, nobody cares about the ACT) is far from the most inequitable part of the elite college admissions process. The wealthy are already spending six figures on “College Consultants” to get an edge, partnering their children with researchers to get a paper published, and polishing their perfect child into a gem with varied interests that they excel in. The idea of Standardized Testing was that it offered an ideal way to get past all this garbage. Theoretically, a child with none of these opportunities could score even better than one with all these advantages and demonstrate that they would fit and flourish in the demanding college environment, opening themselves up for all the riches that we are assured come with an elite degree. Of course, it does not work like that, but it is the best form of comparison that universities have. Just an SAT score isn’t enough. Although just 7 percent of SAT-takers get a 1400, these people are all applying to the same selective schools. This is how the median SAT score at Carnegie Mellon becomes a 1540, a 99th percentile score.

But, wait, are Carnegie Mellon students really in the 99th percentile academically? Are we simply smarter and cooler than 99% of American high school graduates? Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. The SAT isn’t everything, as much as people crying over their rejection despite a 1580 may claim.

From my point of view, it seems like SAT scores, provide a good, if imperfect, way to assess a student’s performance, something Dartmouth agrees with. Without these scores, schools are left to look at GPAs to numerically compare students. Too many students are too smart though, so this doesn’t work. For instance, 49.7 percent of admitted Carnegie Mellon Students had a 4.0 highschool GPA. (I had a 3.4, which puts me in the bottom-third percentile. Lol.)

We want to break down the roots of the inequity in the admissions process, remove the barriers that prevent lower-income kids from reaching their full college-admissions potential. It is costly to apply to individual colleges. It is costly to send your SAT scores to college. Little things like these may seem trivial to some, but can be a huge deterrence for otherwise tremendous applicants. It is much easier to justify applying to a reach college (something these elite colleges are for practically everyone without their name on a building) when 50 bucks is just a drop in the bucket. These universities often offer great financial aid packages, even full rides, for the low-income students they accept, but those applying need to navigate the complex process of acquiring various fee waivers. 

I think the biggest barrier is knowledge. First generation college students, or students in low-income environments, will be in environments without the knowledge on how to game the system, or cool little test-taking techniques. I hope that colleges that return to test-necessary applications will take this into account. As for me, I’m never taking the SAT again.