SAT Optional Policy
Introduction:
Serving as a strategy to improve the equality of college access and the selectivity, SAT optional policy has been accepted by more than 850 colleges and universities among the U.S. (College Board, 2015). Although rigorous studies have demonstrated that SAT/ACT optional policy has successfully achieved these two goals (Coleman, 2011; Epstein, 2009), the comprehensive impacts of SAT Optional can be complex. This literature review shows the story of SAT Optional and the logic behind this policy, aiming at exploring the impacts of SAT Optional on both applicants and institutions. This paper is mainly constituted by four parts:
• Criticisms of SAT and the logic of SAT Optional policy;
• The impacts of SAT Optional …show more content…
The trend of the adoption of SAT Optional might have complex and unpredicted influences on students, institutions, exam industry and even the whole society. Official saying suggests that SAT/ACT optional policies would likely better serve traditionally underprivileged students. Although it’s still impossible to accurately evaluate the effects of SAT/ACT optional policies, it is widely accepted that SAT/ACT optional policy can lead the change of application pool and influence the college admission decision. Soares (2011) found that test-optional policies result in increased student diversity and encourage greater emphasis on the rigor of the high school curriculum and alternative measurements of …show more content…
From a positive perspective, eliminating the requirement of SAT, SAT Optional policy might help schools receive more applications. Since most schools admit a stable number of students each year, more applications mean that schools can reject more students and their rejection rate will increase, which indicates the increasing of selectivity. Besides, SAT optional policy allows students to choose submitting their scores or not, therefore, students who choose to submit their SAT scores are usually confident with their scores, suggesting that the average SAT scores school received would increase after adopting the SAT optional. The improvement of test scores and selectivity might contribute to the increasing of college
Serving as a strategy to improve the equality of college access and the selectivity, SAT optional policy has been accepted by more than 850 colleges and universities among the U.S. (College Board, 2015). Although rigorous studies have demonstrated that SAT/ACT optional policy has successfully achieved these two goals (Coleman, 2011; Epstein, 2009), the comprehensive impacts of SAT Optional can be complex. This literature review shows the story of SAT Optional and the logic behind this policy, aiming at exploring the impacts of SAT Optional on both applicants and institutions. This paper is mainly constituted by four parts:
• Criticisms of SAT and the logic of SAT Optional policy;
• The impacts of SAT Optional …show more content…
The trend of the adoption of SAT Optional might have complex and unpredicted influences on students, institutions, exam industry and even the whole society. Official saying suggests that SAT/ACT optional policies would likely better serve traditionally underprivileged students. Although it’s still impossible to accurately evaluate the effects of SAT/ACT optional policies, it is widely accepted that SAT/ACT optional policy can lead the change of application pool and influence the college admission decision. Soares (2011) found that test-optional policies result in increased student diversity and encourage greater emphasis on the rigor of the high school curriculum and alternative measurements of …show more content…
From a positive perspective, eliminating the requirement of SAT, SAT Optional policy might help schools receive more applications. Since most schools admit a stable number of students each year, more applications mean that schools can reject more students and their rejection rate will increase, which indicates the increasing of selectivity. Besides, SAT optional policy allows students to choose submitting their scores or not, therefore, students who choose to submit their SAT scores are usually confident with their scores, suggesting that the average SAT scores school received would increase after adopting the SAT optional. The improvement of test scores and selectivity might contribute to the increasing of college