Takeaways: Test Optional is Real
Getting admitted to college without a test score (and getting scholarships) is a realistic possiblility. There are colleges at every selectivity level, in every state, that have enrolleda significant portion of their class without test scores having been submitted. This means that for each family, you have a choice whether to participate in the testing and test prep rat race . . . or not.
Whether you(or your child/student/friend) should test or not is an individual decisions based on a several factors.
- Institutional Policy
You should consider the policies of the schools in which you are most interested (CalTech is test free – don’t test. Georgetown is test required – you have to test if you want to apply). - History
You should also consider the percent of students enrolling with and without scores in the past few years (we’ll be adding the percents toour listin the next few weeks.) - Access to and Energy for Prep
Consider how much time and energy it might take you to get a competitive score. If you’re 300 SAT points or 12 ACT pointsfrom the 25th percentile of the college you’re interested in, that will likely require a lot of prep (maybe 60 total prep hours over 6 months) to get the score you’re looking for. What will it cost? Is it worth it?
Digging into the Data
A key question in examining the impact of test optional policies is how many students are actually ending up in college having not submitted scores. We’ve endeavored to answer that question by looking at the data colleges have submitted to the federal government (for college data nerds – IPEDs).
There are 6,500+ institutions that the federal government considers colleges, but for our purposes we only downloaded information on U. S. institutions that have first-time full-time students, award at least a bachelor’s degree (so this excludes many great community colleges), have an enrollment of more than 100 students, accepted at least 1 student in the last reporting cycle, and are not entirely online. Because of these parameters we ended up with data for 2,156 colleges (FYI this number varies a little year to year but this is typically the pool of colleges that FairTest uses as the universe of “colleges”).
Here are some important points about the data:
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Until the 2022 reporting period, federal categories for reporting test policies created some confusion. Colleges had to select their test policies from “required,” “neither required nor recommended,” “considered if submitted,” and “recommended.” Some colleges interpreted “neither required nor recommended” as test free (does not consider scores at all) while some didn’t. So the 2021 analysis might actually undercount the number of test free and test optional colleges. In 2022, those categories were changed to “required to be considered for admission,” “not required for admission, but considered if submitted (aka “Test Optional”), “not considered for admission, even if submitted (Test Blind).” This simplified and clarified the categories (and aligned them with how FairTest reports policies in our database).
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Prior to 2021, schools indicating that scores were neither required nor recommended were not allowed to report the percent of enrolled students submitting scores. Of the 2,274 colleges we evaluated, only 1017 colleges reported the percent of enrolled first year students submitting test scores. This is almost half the total, thus constituting a significant significant sample.
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Not all colleges report testing policies (open admission colleges do not report testing policies). In 2021, of 2,274 colleges we evaluated, 1683 colleges reported test score policies to the Federal Government. In 2022, of the 2,156 colleges we evaluated 1,628 reported their testing policies.
Number of Institutions by Percent of Scores Submitted
Since 2018 the percent of enrolled students submitting scores has been dropping everywhere. At the vast majority of colleges in 2018 all students submitted the ACT, the SAT, or both. In 2022 at less than 10% of colleges did all enrolled students submit scores. At about half of colleges in 2022 less than half of all enrolled students submitted any test score at all.
% of SAT + ACT scores submitted by enrolled students | Number of institutions in 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
100% and above | 66 | 69 | 627 | 872 | 868 | |
75 - 99% | 170 | 211 | 357 | 291 | 305 | |
50 - 74% | 294 | 282 | 93 | 49 | 53 | |
25 - 49% | 319 | 305 | 25 | 18 | 15 | |
0 - 24% | 737 | 144 | 9 | 5 | 7 |
Percent of Scores Submitted by Selectivity
On average, more selective schools have a higher rate of scores submission. While we cannot be certain of causation, a likely hypothesis is that more selective schools attract a socio-economically advantaged pool of applicants more likely to be able to afford test prep and are counseled to submit scores. This statistic does not mean that the most selective schools prefer scores (although vested interests like the testing agencies and tutoring companies push that narrative). It also doesn’t mean scores make it easier to get in or that scores must be submitted. For example, only 51% of enrolled students submitted scores to Barnard and only 48% to Babson.
Another caveat to this data is that not all schools are required to report scores depending on their policies. Some colleges entered 0% test scores submitted when they weren’t required to submit data while others left the field blank; our analysis didn’t try to sort out the meanings behind these entries. For our analysis we just calculated the average across all colleges.
Here are our finding by selectivity:
Average percent of SAT + ACT submitted in 2022 | 2021 | |
|---|---|---|
All colleges | 34% | 56% |
Colleges admitting less than 50% of applicants | 44% | 64% |
200 colleges with the lowest percent of admitted students | 45% | 65% |
100 colleges . . . | 52% | 65% |
50 colleges . . . | 57% | 70% |
25 colleges . . . | 64% | 75% |
Selected Schools
A few interesting things we noticed:
- In 2018, if you added the submitted SAT scores and submitted ACT scores for each college and then averaged that across all colleges the average was 104%. Meaning on average colleges got scores for 104% of enrolled students in 2018. In 2021, that average was 56%.
- – At University of Florida (a state that required test scores), scores are reported for 125% of enrolling students. At the military academies scores are also reported for more than 100% of students (meaning that some students are submitting both).
- – Required doesn’t mean required (or there are data errors). At Georgia Tech in 2021, where scores were/are required only 89% of enrolling students submitted scores. This might be a result of the change in policy happening in the middle of the admission cycle.
- – Admission rate only loosely correlates to submission rates. At NYU only 37% submitted scores, but at Haverford (which is less highly selective), 62% submitted. There is a lot of variance among colleges in each of the “selectivity” categories.
| School | 2022 Admissions rate | Sum of SAT/ACT submitted | 2022 Policy | Percent of SAT submitted 2022 enrolled class | Percent of ACT submitted 2022 enrolled class |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dartmouth College | 6% | 66% | Not required for admission, but considered if submitted (Test Optional) | 42% | 24% |
| Princeton University | 6% | 84% | Not required for admission, but considered if submitted (Test Optional) | 59% | 25% |
| Northeastern University | 7% | 44% | Not required for admission, but considered if submitted (Test Optional) | 33% | 11% |
| Swarthmore College | 7% | 61% | Not required for admission, but considered if submitted (Test Optional) | 42% | 19% |
| Northwestern University | 7% | 78% | Not required for admission, but considered if submitted (Test Optional) | 47% | 31% |
| Williams College | 8% | 62% | Not required for admission, but considered if submitted (Test Optional) | 41% | 21% |
| Barnard College | 9% | 50% | Not required for admission, but considered if submitted (Test Optional) | 30% | 20% |
| Emory University | 11% | 65% | Not required for admission, but considered if submitted (Test Optional) | 41% | 24% |
| United States Naval Academy | 11% | 120% | Required to be considered for admission | 74% | 46% |
| New York University | 12% | 37% | Not required for admission, but considered if submitted (Test Optional) | 26% | 11% |
| University of Southern California | 12% | 50% | Not required for admission, but considered if submitted (Test Optional) | 34% | 16% |
| Georgetown University | 12% | 108% | Required to be considered for admission | 72% | 36% |
| Boston University | 14% | 35% | Not required for admission, but considered if submitted (Test Optional) | 23% | 12% |
| Haverford College | 14% | 62% | Not required for admission, but considered if submitted (Test Optional) | 43% | 19% |
| Washington and Lee University | 17% | 54% | Not required for admission, but considered if submitted (Test Optional) | 28% | 26% |
| Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus | 17% | 112% | Required to be considered for admission | 74% | 38% |
| Vassar College | 19% | 51% | Not required for admission, but considered if submitted (Test Optional) | 33% | 18% |
| Franklin W Olin College of Engineering | 19% | 72% | Not required for admission, but considered if submitted (Test Optional) | 48% | 24% |
| University of California-Irvine | 21% | 0% | Not considered for admission, even if submitted (Test Blind) | 0% | 0% |
| Babson College | 22% | 40% | Not required for admission, but considered if submitted (Test Optional) | 32% | 8% |
| University of Florida | 23% | 122% | Required to be considered for admission | 81% | 41% |
| United States Coast Guard Academy | 24% | 106% | Not required for admission, but considered if submitted (Test Optional) | 68% | 38% |
| The University of Texas at Austin | 31% | 85% | Not required for admission, but considered if submitted (Test Optional) | 63% | 22% |
| Trinity College | 36% | 19% | Not required for admission, but considered if submitted (Test Optional) | 14% | 5% |
| University of Rochester | 39% | 39% | Not required for admission, but considered if submitted (Test Optional) | 28% | 11% |
| Binghamton University | 42% | 66% | Not required for admission, but considered if submitted (Test Optional) | 54% | 12% |
| University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign | 45% | 64% | Not required for admission, but considered if submitted (Test Optional) | 44% | 20% |
| Sarah Lawrence College | 50% | 21% | Not required for admission, but considered if submitted (Test Optional) | 15% | 6% |
| Howard University | 53% | 44% | Not required for admission, but considered if submitted (Test Optional) | 31% | 13% |
| Ohio State University-Main Campus | 53% | 55% | Not required for admission, but considered if submitted (Test Optional) | 15% | 40% |
| Rhodes College | 54% | 42% | Not required for admission, but considered if submitted (Test Optional) | 11% | 31% |
| Texas Christian University | 56% | 38% | Not required for admission, but considered if submitted (Test Optional) | 18% | 20% |
| Tennessee Wesleyan University | 61% | 86% | Not required for admission, but considered if submitted (Test Optional) | 10% | 76% |
| Marist College | 63% | 22% | Not required for admission, but considered if submitted (Test Optional) | 18% | 4% |
| Norfolk State University | 89% | 21% | Not required for admission, but considered if submitted (Test Optional) | 16% | 5% |
What about merit aid?
This past spring FairTest issued a report on how frequently the SAT and ACT play a role in merit scholarship programs. The findings were pretty surprising. Tests don’t play as big a role in scholarships as most people believe.
You can read the full report,“Merit” Awards: Myths, Realities, & Barriers to Access, yourself for details, but until you do here are some highlights.
State-funded Merit Scholarships
First, we looked at state-funded scholarship programs.
Most state-funded programs were “specific purprose,” meaning they were only open to specific groups like children of veterans, children in foster care, or students pursuing particular majors. These didn’t require tests scores and often didn’t have GPA requirements.
Of the scholarships that required scores or GPA the vast majority had a GPA requirement.The key finding was thatonly 16% of the 353 state-funded scholarshipswe looked at required a test scores.
Merit Scholarships at Flagship Universities.
We also evaluated merit aid at 51″flagship” colleges. Again, our findings were pretty surprising to us. Tests didn’t play a big role in flagship merit scholarships.
As you can see from Table 2 in the “Merit” Awards: Myths, Realities, & Barriers to Access report, less than 1 in 3 scholarships required a test score in order to apply for that award.