Illinois colleges — SIUE and McKendree included — drop ACT, SAT as admission standards
Neither Southern Illinois University–Edwardsville nor McKendree University will require SAT or ACT test scores for incoming freshmen and transfer students in 2021, the schools announced this week.
The two universities have joined scores of other campuses across the country by adopting test-optional or test-blind admissions processes in the wake of COVID-19, citing student access to standardized tests as a concern.
While the pandemic may have sparked the latest — and largest — round of schools dropping test scores out of their admissions equations, schools have been rethinking admissions stabdards for years. More than 1,000 colleges made test scores optional before the pandemic, according to the National Center for Fair and Open Testing.
Many of the schools who have announced the change for 2021 have hinted that it could be permanent — SIUE and McKendree, included.
Over the spring and summer, many testing sites for both the SAT and ACT canceled the in-person tests to avoid having to pack too many people into one room. Even when tests weren’t canceled, capacity was affected: To maintain safe social distancing between students, fewer test-takers were allowed in the same space, according to Inside Higher Ed, an information and news website for higher education professionals.
Robert, Schaeffer, the public education director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, or FairTest, said the pandemic has been a catalyst for encouraging colleges and universities to drop standardized test requirements.
“The reason schools were comfortable going test-optional in the face of a pandemic, was because so many of their peers are doing it,” he said.
FairTest is a nonprofit focused on ending “the misuses and flaws of standardized testing.” Schaeffer said high school grades, while still imperfect, were a better tool to predicting undergraduate success, a statement backed up by several studies, including from the Urban Institute and the University of California.
Optional testing in Illinois
In 2018, prior to the pandemic, the University of Chicago became the most prestigious and highest-ranked university to go test-optional. Schaeffers said that if one of the top-ranked and most competitive universities in the country — and the world — could go test-optional, anyone could.
There are 12 public four-year universities in Illinois. Some of them — including Southern Illinois University–Carbondale — adopted test-optional policies prior to the pandemic. SIUC announced its decision in December 2019, months before much of the U.S. shut down to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
The other public universities, including SIUE, announced standardized test scores would be optional for 2021; some have suggested the change might end up being permanent.
A permanent change
Schaeffer expects that many of the schools nationwide adopting temporary policies will end up changing permanently.
“Once they see they can walk without the crutch, they’ll feel comfortable doing it,” he said.
Both SIUE and McKendree already have expressed interest in making a permanent change.
McKendree had already been test-optional for students with a 3.0 grade point average, which is the equivalent of a B letter grade average.
“We intend to take advantage of this unique opportunity to track the impact on accessibility and student persistence,” McKendree Vice President for Admission and Financial Aid Chris Hall said in an email. “Compiling this data will allow us to determine our best path forward and whether or not we will continue with a test-blind policy in the future.”
SIUE’s associate vice chancellor for enrollment management, Scott Belobrajdic, said in a statement that the university would like to adopt the policy permanently “in recognition of research demonstrating testing bias and inequities.”
A release from SIUE includes preliminary research from Carrie Butts-Wilmsmeyer, the director of SIUE’s Center for Predictive Analytics. For most majors, she said GPA was nearly seven times as important as ACT test scores for indicating success. Her analysis also shows that SIUE students with a high school GPA of 2.6 — between a C+ and B- letter grade average — have a 78.6% probability of returning for year two.
SIUE did not respond to requests about what it would take to make the change permanent.
“Filling in bubbles on a Saturday morning is a test of how good you are at filling in bubbles on a Saturday morning,” Schaeffer said. “It’s not a measure of how well you’re going to do in college.”
This story was updated Sept. 26 and 10:45 a.m. to reflect the policies of Chicago State and the University of Illinois at Springfield.
This story was originally published September 19, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
