Is Harvard Next to Leave Standardized Testing Requirements Behind?

Colleges and universities during the pandemic, many of them ditched the requirement for tests like the SAT or ACT. And now,

Yale University announcing that it's reinstating a standardized test requirement for admission. MIT is bringing back its standardized testing requirement. Schools like William and Mary are extending the test free option for a few years.

By the end of the month, Harvard will release its regular decisions for the class of 2028. But as tens of thousands of students around the world brace themselves to hear Harvard's answer on whether or not they got in, one question remains: Will Harvard continue to keep standardized test scores optional in their application? After Yale and Dartmouth's recent decisions to bring back standardized testing requirements, admissions experts across the country are divided if Harvard will follow suit. Today on Newstalk , we join our reporters to break down what could be coming next.

From Plympton Street, I'm Frank Zhou. This is Newstalk .

Hi. My name is Elyse Goncalves.

I'm Matan Josephy. And we cover admissions and financial aid for the Harvard Crimson.

Thank you so much, Elyse and Matan, for joining us. So in the past few months, colleges have revisited their test optional policies, whether or not they'll require standardized test scores as a part of applicants' admissions packets for these schools. Tell us some of the changes that universities have made.

In early February, Dartmouth shifted their admissions policies to require standardized testing again, which they stopped doing when a lot of schools stopped doing that during COVID. Shortly following Dartmouth's decision, Yale instituted its test flexible policy, which essentially states that students are required to submit test scores in their application, but they can choose between submitting any range of SAT, ACT, all AP, or all IB scores. And so, essentially, Yale will accept any or all of those.

And how does Harvard fit into this entire conversation? What's Harvard said on this front so far?

With Dartmouth's announcement and Yale's announcement, but also with colleges like Cornell who have extended test optional through next year with Brown, which hasn't announced a new policy yet, but has very publicly said that they're looking into it, and they have a report coming. Harvard is really, at least to our knowledge, one of the very few schools that are very prominent in the public eye, but also very secretive that haven't outright said anything. Right? They very much stuck by their commitment to being test optional through the admitted class of 2030, which is for the next couple of cycles. But beyond that, Harvard stayed mum.

And so with every college that announces either for or against test optional, more eyes turn to Harvard.

And in these conversations, as eyes turn towards Harvard, one place that we can look is to experts, folks who study this type of thing and have opinions to share. Tell us about some of the experts that you've talked to and what they've told you about test optional policies here.

Yeah. So a lot of experts right now are pretty split on what Harvard will plan to do. Dan Lee, co-founder of Solomon Admissions Consulting, and David Blobaum, co-founder of standardized test Tutoring at a firm called Summit Prep, have both said that Harvard will likely switch to test required policies because other schools in the similar realm are switching to requiring testing. They said that it's likely a trend. However, Anna Ivy, the former dean of admissions at University of Chicago's Law School and the founder of Ivy Consulting said, this doesn't necessarily indicate it's a trend in admissions policy.

Harvard is an individual entity. The admissions team at Harvard doesn't necessarily know exactly what they're going to do for an infinite amount of time. And so it's kind of a consistently changing process. But Dan Lee said schools that aren't in the same pool that Harvard is aren't quote top schools will likely not get rid of test optional policies. And that's simply because test optional policies give them more applicants.

I think that there's often a perception that when we say that schools need more applicants, it's because of the application fee. And that is true to some extent. Right? An application fee generates money, which goes into a school's coffers, which helps it run. But we talked to David Blobaum, who, as Elyse mentioned, is an admissions consultant.

And what he explained to us was that it's not just the fee itself. It's the fact that they have a lot more options to choose from in terms of who they admit. Right? If I'm a school with a smaller endowment and I have a test optional policy, so I get a lot more applicants. Right?

Oftentimes, a good chunk of those applicants are going to be people who wouldn't have applied otherwise because they don't have the scores to, but who are wealthier, who can pay full tuition, Who maybe would donate in the future. For some schools, they then have the luxury of going in and saying, here's a student who, if they had applied with test scores, would not have been within our typical range. But because we are test optional and they can pay the full price of the school and not have to apply for financial aid, A lot of these schools have a guarantee that they're going to get money, and they can keep their lights on, their classes running, their professors on salary. That's an enormous boost for a school. For schools like Harvard, like Dartmouth, like Yale, schools that have, you know, multibillion dollar endowments, that have massive operating budgets that are need blind.

Right? So don't need tuition dollars to keep the lights on and to keep the schools running every day. Going test optional can make sense financially because they can afford to take what they want ostensibly, irrespective of financial means. But for a lot of other schools that don't have that luxury and that privilege, that's just not possible. And so just by merit of expanding that application pool, not just to cover more fees, but to cover a larger amount of applicants who are then full tuition or wealthier, a school can then dramatically boost the amount of people who then pay full tuition, who donate to its endowment or to its funds, and then can then give it more money.

So all of this conversation about test optional policies is also coming as universities across the country are taking another look at long held admissions policies like legacy admissions, like athlete recruitments. How, if at all, does this debate about test optional policies fit into recruited athletes, for example?

Yeah. So this is something that we talked to David Blobaum about actually. And his take was this was part of his surprise why certain schools were going back to test required policies simply because that puts them at a difficult position when it comes to recruited athletes. There are studies that show that recruited athletes have, on average, lower test scores. And by still needing to fill your class of recruited athletes for sports and things like that, you're going to have to admit students with lower test scores than your average scores, or have to get those students to get their test scores up.

And that's something that kind of puts schools that are going back to requiring testing at a disadvantage when it comes to athletic recruitment.

So as we wrap up this application cycle, regular decisions for Harvard, for example, will be released come March. What can applicants and what can we look forward to in terms of things to watch when it comes to test optional policies?

Harvard has said they're looking into data. They're looking into things about test optional policies. But there's no conclusive evidence that they'll make a decision anytime soon. They have their policy set until the class of 2030. And so for applicants over the next few years, just stick to what Harvard has with test optional policy.

We're currently in a pretty unprecedented time for admissions around the country, to any university, Harvard or otherwise. Post Supreme Court effectively ending affirmative action around the country with test optional policies brought on by the pandemic either coming to an end or coming to an extension. The admissions landscape now has not been in this level of flux, in this level of uncertainty in a very, very long time.

Thank you so much, Elyse, Matan, for joining us to break down test optional policies and where we're moving next.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you so much.

This episode of Newstalk was hosted and produced by Frank Zhou with help from Melanie Sanchez. Our multimedia chairs are Julian J. Giordano and Addison Y. Liu. Our associate managing editors are Claire Yuan and Elias J. Schisgall. Our managing editor is Miles J. Herszenhorn.

Our president is J. Sellers Hill. News clips in this episode come from NBC, CBS, ABC, and CBS Boston. Music in this episode by Bea Wall Feng . From 14 Plympton Street, this is Newstalk.

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