A tour group visits the campus of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire in April 2023.
Charles Krupa/AP
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Charles Krupa/AP
A tour group visits the campus of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire in April 2023.
Charles Krupa/AP
Dartmouth College has announced that it will once again require applicants to submit standardized test scores starting with the next application cycle for the class of 2029.
This comes after the Ivy League university in New Hampshire opted to make test scores optional in 2020, citing the coronavirus pandemic.
A new study conducted by the university found that test scores may have helped disadvantaged students, including first-generation students and those from low-income households, gain admission.
“We realized we were missing out on some great students,” says Bruce Sacerdote, an economics professor at Dartmouth College and co-author of the study.
He said that although students from disadvantaged backgrounds had a much lower rate of submitting test scores, their scores were high enough that they may have contributed to their admission.
“If you look at the data, you can see, oh, that student had a 1450…or a 1500…we didn't even know that. And they got into Dartmouth. “I couldn’t let it happen,” he says. “That's a really great score. And it would have been a great production.” [of information] to have.”
The study also found that test scores help attract students from high schools that don't have a track record of sending students to Dartmouth.
The Dartmouth study challenges long-standing criticism that standardized tests like the ACT and the College Board's SAT hurt students from marginalized backgrounds when it comes to admissions.
Multiple studies have found that higher test scores are correlated with higher incomes. And in the high school class of 2020, Black and Latino students scored lower on the math section of the SAT than white and Asian students, according to the Brookings Institution.
A years-long movement to eliminate testing requirements gained critical momentum when the pandemic hit, complicating students' ability to take exams.
“The wave of test-optionalization is going to be a tsunami,” said Harry Feder, executive director of FairTest, an advocacy group that tracks college test-optional policies.
According to FairTest, more than 1,900 colleges and universities in the United States are currently “test optional,” meaning students can decide whether to submit standardized test scores when applying. California State University, one of the nation's largest public universities, removed standardized tests from its admissions requirements in 2022.
Dartmouth's Sacerdote said it's not the exams that put students at a disadvantage, but the inequities in the education system.
