Bringing Back the SAT Can Help Poor Students Who Ace It

Dartmouth College went test optional during the pandemic. Then its leaders looked at their own student data and concluded the policy was hiding some of the applicants it was meant to help.

Sian Beilock, who leads Dartmouth, says the analysis showed standardized scores were a better predictor of success at Dartmouth than high school grades or letters of recommendation.

That is because family money helps with the rest of an application. Harvard researcher Raj Chetty has shown that family resources help with the nonacademic parts of a file, from spending a summer in the Galapagos instead of working at McDonald's to getting help with a recommendation letter.

Test prep is not equal either. Beilock acknowledges that practice and money help a student score higher. But she says the advantage does not erase the signal.

The key, in Dartmouth's reading, was context. Beilock says a score measured against the school's average was a good predictor of success, and a way to find students excelling with fewer resources. In a test optional system, Beilock says, those lower income students were "less likely to report their scores," so admissions officers missed what would have been an important indicator that they could thrive.

Dartmouth was the first Ivy League school to bring test scores back into admissions after the pandemic. Beilock says most of its Ivy Plus peers followed, with Columbia the last Ivy to return.