Yale University said on Thursday (Feb 22) it would reinstate a requirement that applicants submit standardised test scores after a four-year hiatus for the Covid-19 pandemic, and the admissions dean said the requirement would help disadvantaged students.
Critics of standardised testing in college admissions have long pushed for schools to permanently drop the requirement, saying the tests mostly benefit students with access to expensive preparation courses, leaving disadvantaged students further behind.
Hundreds of colleges made standardised testing an optional portion of the application when Covid-19 shut down testing centres. Since then, elite schools have evaluated admissions results with and without test score submissions in an effort to create permanent policies that help them admit high-achieving, diverse classes.
Yale’s admissions dean Jeremiah Quinlan said his team had analysed admissions data from the past few years and found that test scores, in conjunction with all other parts of a student’s application, gave them a better sense of whether students had excelled in their circumstances and were ready for the university’s academic rigour.
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