Why some Oregon universities won’t require the ACT or SAT

Four years ago at the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic, many universities across the country scaled back on their admissions processes, no longer requiring SAT or ACT scores with applications. Now, U.S. universities are bringing standardized testing back. Institutions such as Brown University, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Tennessee are all reinstituting the requirement for applicants. This also comes at a time when the Supreme Court recently struck down affirmative action.

In Oregon, no schools have made an announcement to require scores again. Milyon Trulove is the vice president and dean of admission and financial aid at Reed College. Jon Boeckenstedt is the vice provost of enrollment management at Oregon State University. They join us to share what the admissions process is looking like now and why they are not reinstituting score requirements.

This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Four years ago, at the beginning of the pandemic, many colleges and universities across the country stopped requiring that applicants send in SAT or ACT scores. But in recent months, a growing number of schools have backtracked: Caltech, Dartmouth, Yale, Harvard, MIT, Purdue, Georgetown, and Brown are all going to require test scores again. Leaders at the University of Texas at Austin said that these scores are a “proven differentiator, engaging academic potential,” but no Oregon college or university has made an announcement to require scores again. We’re gonna hear from two Oregon schools right now. Jon Boeckenstedt is a vice provost of enrollment management at Oregon State University. Milyon Trulove is the vice president and dean of admission & financial aid at Reed College. They both join us now. Welcome to the show.

Jon Boeckenstedt: Glad to be here, Dave.

Milyon Trulove: Hi, Dave. Good to be here.

Miller: Jon, first. You’ve been working in admissions for decades now. How long have you been skeptical, or outright critical, of relying on, or using ACT or SAT scores?

Boeckenstedt: Well, it’s a long story, but my skepticism started in about 2008 to 2009, somewhere in there. And three years later I led the first institution that took the test optional, which was DePaul University in Chicago, to eliminate the requirement of the SAT or ACT for admissions.

Miller: What were your reasons then, and are they the same ones that OSU used a couple of years ago?

Boeckenstedt: It is, and in fact, we were talking about going test optional even before the pandemic hit. It was just a coincidence that made it an even easier decision. When we did the research, and when almost everybody who’s ever done the research has done it, what we find is that the SAT contributes very little to our ability to understand the student’s propensity to do well as a first-year student.

It’s not that that help, or that assistance is zero, it’s that when the societal costs, the economic costs, the opportunity cost, of adding that little bit of insight, it doesn’t seem necessary to me, and to a lot of researchers who’ve done this work over the years.

Miller: I want to hear more about that reasoning. But Milyon Trulove, what about Reed? Why did Reed College decide to drop the requirement?

Trulove: At the time, it wasn’t simply that students didn’t have access to taking the test once, they didn’t have access to taking the test twice and some, not at all. And so we thought, for those that were at different levels in that process, it was best just to do away with the test altogether.

Miller: Why stick with that decision so far?

Trulove: Well, it’s a big debate. I’ve always said that test optional was higher ed’s version of, “don’t ask, don’t tell.” But in many ways, I’m starting to find that students wanna let us know how well they did on test scores. And so that’s been a conversation, considering moving to a test optional policy. But the truth is we have test scores of about 80% of our students, even being test blind, and the nature of the student body hasn’t changed.

Miller: All right, you’re using a couple different phrases that I’m pretty sure that a lot of folks, me included, don’t totally understand. So what does “test blind” mean?

Trulove: Great question. It means that we don’t consider test scores as a part of the admission process…

Miller: So four out of five of your students send them to you, and it’s not, “don’t ask and tell,” it’s, “they tell, you don’t listen”?

Trulove: That’s the case. You know, in this debate, we’re talking about a lot of recent research being the reason why schools are coming back to this testing policy, but there are decades of research before this that has told us that we have information outside of the test scores that help us determine if a student will be successful here. And we’ve found it to be really helpful.

Miller: So what do you do with the information that they’re giving you? I mean, does it just get somehow shredded? I assume they’re saying, “I’m proud of this score,” or “I’m giving it to you even though I don’t need to, because I think it’s going to help my chances,” and you literally just delete it?

Trulove: It’s a great question. We are continuing this policy of reviewing every two years. In order to do that, we need data. Students may submit it because they’re accustomed to doing that in a “test optional” atmosphere. We also, after we make our admission decisions, ask students to send us their test scores, if they haven’t done it before. And we’re hopeful that this data will help inform this choice we’ve made not to use those test scores. And if that will correlate with their success or not.

Miller: And that’s work that you can do starting now, or in the coming years, to say, we do have the vast majority of these scores, and we can chart student success and correlate it or not, with their scores?

Trulove: Exactly. You’ve hit it right on the head.

Miller: Jon Boeckenstedt, what about you? You said that OSU is “test optional.” What does that mean, in practice, in terms of what students are sending to you, and what you do with that information, if they choose to say, “this was my SAT score”?

Boeckenstedt: Well, test optional means that if a student thinks a standardized test is reflective of some ability they have, or if they’re proud of the accomplishment of their score, they can send that to us. Last year in our incoming first-year student class, only about 15% of applicants requested that a test score be considered as part of their application. So, we’re probably different from a lot of other places, and in some sense, it’s no different than other things that we say are optional – leadership ability, athletic ability, winning the debate competition in the state – those things are nice to have in a folder when you’re reading an application, and they’re interesting, but they don’t always make a huge difference in the decision that you make.

And it’s very similar with test scores. Of that 15% of students who sent the test, the SAT or ACT probably made a difference in maybe 15 students who were on the borderline with regard to academics, and test scores can be a little glimmer of hope, or a sliver of hope that the student has some academic ability and capacity and can succeed here.

Miller: One argument for dropping the requirement, and this is an argument that’s been made for decades, is that it would actually make the admissions process more equitable. And I’m curious, first of all, from the OSU perspective - have you seen a more diverse student body, racially or economically, as a direct result of getting rid of the requirement?

Boeckenstedt: Well, admissions is so complicated, it’s impossible to say that it’s a direct result of that, and diversity in the state and higher education is changing anyway. But I can tell you that the student body at Oregon State, the undergraduate student body, is more diverse than it was four years ago by about a point and a half. And, when you consider that only one-fourth of your student body changes every year, that’s actually a pretty remarkable change.

And at the same time, anybody who might have been concerned that somehow test optional meant ability optional would be gratified to see that our first to second year retention rate has gone from about 84% to about 87%, over that same time. So we’re not only admitting students without tests, we’re admitting better students without tests. The cause of that? Test optional may have something to do with it. Other factors outside our understanding at this point probably contribute to that too.

Miller: Well, how do you then explain… I wouldn’t say this seismic shift, but a little bit of a trend, of a number of, in general, highly selective schools, reversing their decision. What do you think is behind it? Jon Boeckenstedt?

Boeckenstedt: Well, it depends on how cynical you want me to be?

Miller: I want you to be as honest as you can. I don’t want cynicism, but I want honesty.

Boeckenstedt: Yeah, I think if you work at one of those institutions, you have to acknowledge that you got there because you were a good standardized test taker. Your SAT scores are probably high that got you into Columbia or Berkeley or Stanford, your GRE scores, which are sort of similar in that sense, got you into the graduate programs. And those things were the catapult to work at Brown or Princeton or Yale or Harvard or Stanford or wherever.

And there is what economists would call “rent seeking behavior,” where there’s some sort of a panache or luxury to being in the club and being known for having those high test scores. This, despite the fact that the college board is just a company offering a service to colleges. They’re not a government agency. Nobody voted them in. We don’t have a standardized curriculum in America. So the very idea of a standardized test is complete folly from my standpoint.

But somehow, to the college board’s credit, they have become such an embedded part of the admissions process that there are people that cannot even fathom making a decision on a student without the benefit of that one single number that goes into the application folder.

Miller: I should say, I made it seem like there’s a bright line between cynicism and truth telling, but it’s hard to distinguish them sometimes.

Milyon Trulove, it seems to me that Reed, as a school, is in a really interesting position culturally, when it comes to the metrics or the cultures that Jon was just talking about. I mean, I’m not sure that countercultural is the right word, but for decades now, Reed has lived in a relatively unique position in terms of the academic world where “Reeders” are known for going their own way.  What does that mean? And how does that affect your decision to say we are going to be blind, we’re not going to pay attention to standardized test scores, the particular Reed culture?

Trulove: Well, while we have a distinctive reputation, we’ve been pretty traditional in the college admission process. I loved test scores. I couldn’t imagine having an admission process without test scores before COVID...

Miller: What did you love about them?

Trulove: Well, I thought they were helpful. They gave me quick data I can compare to other schools, nationally. Inherently, test scores are not evil. I really thought it’s the decisions that people make based on these test scores that are really problematic. I think college officials chose not to admit students despite their test scores. I think the prevalence in their decision-making process was too great, and when you allow that to guide most of your decisions, I think you end up in some really tricky spots where you’re not saying “Yes” to phenomenal students.

We went directly from requiring test scores to being completely test blind, and I gotta tell you, I didn’t miss them. I found enough information in the application process to figure out if students would be successful here. And I think the most recent conflation between the use of test scores and success is really academic preparation during COVID. Folks are blaming this test optional atmosphere for students not being able to take a lab in the classroom. And it has put some real stress on student success in school systems and I think it has very little to do with test score performance.

Miller: So you’re seeing… and, let’s turn to this now. Just in recent weeks, we’ve talked about drops in math performance in K-12 years as a direct result of the pandemic. We’ve earlier talked a lot about gaps in reading preparation. You’re saying that you’re seeing that at the college level, or that’s being seen nationwide?

Trulove: It certainly is, and test scores are not gonna fix that. Requiring test scores won’t fix that. Let’s be honest, when you have to take chemistry on Zoom, it’s not gonna be the same experience as being in the lab with that teacher. So we’ve had to respond appropriately to help support students. We know there’s opportunities for success, but these were really circumstances beyond their control.

Miller: I want to turn to other aspects of the admissions world right now. We’re approaching the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court saying that colleges and universities cannot take race into account in admissions, striking down Affirmative Action Programs. Jon, first. What kinds of effects have you seen? And is there any connection between dropping taking race into account and getting rid of, or staying “test optional,” at OSU?

Boeckenstedt: Well, I think the two things are not connected here, but they may be at some institutions. At Oregon State, we’re like a lot of big public land-grant universities, where we’re not driven and focused on how many students we reject. We’re an opportunity organization and institution, and we try to extend access to as many students from the state of Oregon as we possibly can. So when we consider all the factors in a student’s file, it’s important for us to understand that we’re not denying thousands of 4.0 students. And in the old days, it used to be 4.0 students with perfect test scores.

So it is sort of a zero-sum game, but we’re not excluding one Caucasian student in order to take a student of color, for instance, and that’s the big difference between us and a place like Harvard or Berkeley or Stanford or Princeton, where they have to make extraordinarily difficult decisions, deny thousands of students who are clearly capable of doing the work.

And so for us, the SCOTUS decision had no – I mean, maybe a tiny little bit of effect around the fringes – but for all intents and purposes, it didn’t affect us at all. And the idea of staying “test optional” is more about granting access to students who have done everything they can, including those from the eastern parts of rural Oregon, where they may not have calculus as an opportunity in their senior year, as it is about diversity from a race or ethnicity standpoint.

Miller: Milyon, have applicants to Reed responded to that Supreme Court ruling in terms of what they’re writing in their admissions essays?

Trulove: Great question. We’ve offered an additional essay, and, like many colleges, we know that there are certain parameters on which we can talk about or think about ethnicity. To be really frank, I don’t think any college right now knows how to do this very well. I think there is fear that someone will get in trouble for thinking about how they might apply race in the application or evaluation process. So I don’t feel confident any of us know quite how to do that right now.

Miller: And just briefly, Jon Boeckenstedt, we talked a couple of months ago about what was already at the time a gigantic catastrophe or chaos, in terms of the federal government’s redoing the financial aid system, FAFSA. Have things been worked out at this point?

Boeckenstedt: Well, it’s hard to say, I think things are better than they were a few months ago, and we certainly have an awful lot of ISIRs, which is the form we get when a student fills out the FAFSA. But I’m not sure anybody in financial aid has a lot of confidence in the information that we’re getting from the Department of Education.

I’ve heard of students who have offers from Profile [CSS Profile] schools, which is a different financial aid form, where the college has awarded a Pell Grant, and offers from colleges that only use the FAFSA where there’s no Pell Grant embedded.

So we’re still trying to work through what’s going to happen, how it’s gonna happen, what information we’re going to trust.  We’re hoping students can go in and make corrections soon. It’s supposed to be this week sometime, but until then, I don’t think anybody in my job at any university in the country knows what’s going to happen in the next two to six weeks.

Miller: Jon Boeckenstedt and Milyon Trulove, thanks very much.

Boeckenstedt: My pleasure.

Trulove: Thanks so much, Dave.

Miller: Jon Boeckenstedt is the vice provost of enrollment management at Oregon State University. Milyon Trulove is vice president and dean of admission & financial aid at Reed College.

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