Could COVID-19 Make College Admissions More Equitable?

COVID-19 has had far-reaching effects on every aspect of life, and the college admissions process is certainly not immune to it. While I’ve written about its effects on the process previously, there’s an aspect that I may have overlooked. COVID-19 may make this year’s admissions process more equitable.

Because the pandemic wreaked its havoc on the SAT and ACT testing calendar, a huge number of colleges have gone test optional for at least the 2020-2021 application cycle. Test optional means that an admissions office will consider applications that are submitted with ACT/SAT scores and applications that are submitted without them. While the number of schools implementing this policy has spiked this year (and is likely to drop precipitously when the pandemic ends), it has been a growing trend among selective universities for a few years. While arguments have been made since the beginning of standardized testing that it is a “great equalizer,” the SAT and the ACT have long had severe racial achievement gaps for a wide variety of complicated reasons that I will likely dive into at some other time. That racial achievement gap has often led to Black and Latinx students fighting an uphill battle for admission into the most selective schools, or landed universities in court fighting lawsuits against their race-based admissions policies. Going test optional, and only having students who are happy with their SAT/ACT score submit it with their application, represents a way out of that problem. Students who struggled on a standardized test are not punished for the results of a single Saturday morning, and groups that claim discrimination because of standardized test scores are left with a weaker argument. While the effects of test optional policies are still being studied and debated, schools that adopted test optional policies have seen an increase in total applications, an increase in student diversity, and no negative effects on their graduation rate. At some institutions, students that did not submit SAT/ACT scores actually graduated at a higher rate than their peers. Being test optional focuses the attention on a student’s achievement in the classroom and the intangible qualities that are gleaned from the rest of the application. Taking a standardized test out of the process removes a huge external factor and allows what the student did day in and day out in high school to show through. Given that, it seems quite possible that this year’s college application cycle could be the most equitable we have ever seen.

However, reality is never quite that simple. We don’t know how the other effects of COVID-19 will shake out in the college application process. The pandemic has disproportionately affected people of color, which could create obstacles for students who are considering college. Additionally, colleges have seen that the shift to online learning had disproportionate effects on low-income students and students of color. That trend was likely the same for high schools, which could throw up another roadblock to college admission. As we move to the fall and a likely second wave of COVID, low-income students, who are less likely to have an adequate number of counselors in their schools, may struggle even more to reach a counselor if they can’t meet with them in person, which is yet another potential impediment. The economic fallout from the pandemic may also have disproportionate effects on students of color when it comes time to actually enroll in college. 

In such difficult health and economic circumstances, it’s nearly impossible to make accurate predictions, but for college admissions, I’m hopeful. Colleges and universities, though usually cautious and slow moving, have reacted quickly and nimbly to this crisis. So many things could go right or go wrong, but the colleges are at least ready to react, and it seems possible, if not likely, that a turn away from standardized testing will make the college admissions process more equitable for at least this one year. It may even push more schools to make these test optional policies permanent, creating long term positive effects on diversity, equity, and inclusion.