The
recent announcement that the College Board has discontinued both the SAT
Subject Tests and the Essay portion of the SAT I is a welcome move for students
scrambling to find last-minute spots at testing centers this spring. Instead of
taking even more tests, students can now concentrate on either preparing for
just the SAT I or ACT, or utilize the extra time they would have spent on these
tests on either their schoolwork or their extracurricular activities.
Given
the diminished significance of standardized testing these last few months
because of COVID-19, the move is also not surprising. This trend of devaluing
the Subject Tests has been in the making for a while now. Just last year,
prominent colleges like Yale, Caltech, and MIT announced that they would no
longer consider these tests to alleviate concerns about students not being able
to take them because of COVID restrictions. But a closer examination of college
admissions trends points to the fact that these tests have lost significance
for most colleges anyway, as a 2017 NACAC Admissions Trends Survey
reveals that 70.5 percent of colleges considered SAT II tests as being of “no
importance” in their admissions decision making, whereas only 6.6 percent held
them to be of “considerable importance.” The UC system’s decision to remove
Subject Tests as required testing back in 2012 likely was an early sign that
these tests were on the way out, as UC officials pointed out that these tests
served as a barrier to access for some underprivileged students.
So
is this a win-win scenario for everyone?
Certainly for students who didn’t want to have to study for additional
tests. However, what about students who were hoping to take additional testing
to distinguish themselves to colleges, or perhaps make up for less-than-stellar
grades? I think it’s important to first understand why SAT Subject Tests, or
even SAT II tests, as they were previously called, were important to college
admissions offices in the first place. They served as a way to gauge a
student’s mastery of specific subjects beyond just the math and English covered
in the SAT I. In many ways, the growing
prevalence of AP coursework in most high schools in American made the need for
Subject Tests a bit antiquated, since colleges now have better ways to gauge a
student’s advanced knowledge of various subjects.
But
if everyone else is in the same AP courses at a given high school, how does an
aspiring Ivy League student set himself or herself apart from the rest of the
applicant pool? One possible way to
stand out is to take advanced coursework, such as online college courses or
through various summer pre-college programs. This would certainly serve much
the same purpose that colleges wanted to see from Subject Tests initially, but
students would have a much wider range of coursework to choose from. The
additional benefit to a student’s GPA is also a bonus, as each college course
would count the same as an AP-weighted semester course.
Beyond
that, students could distinguish themselves from their peers through other
endeavors, such as performing community service. Given how badly some people
need assistance these days during these trying times, students could genuinely
make an impact in their local communities by conducting remote or online
volunteer work, for instance. Simple tasks such as tutoring local elementary
school students or even brightening up the day of an elderly hospice resident
with a cheerful email could go a long way to show colleges that students aren’t
just “paper geniuses,” but rather the types of conscientious individuals who
are not only bright but represent the values that many elite colleges advocate
in their mission statements.