Yale reinstitutes standardized tests for admissions after years of making them optional amid DEI backlash

Yale is the latest school to reinstate its standardized tests requirements - reversing a pandemic-era policy that previously made submitting such scores optional.

The decision, aired by the Ivy League university's undergrad admissions dean on Thursday, comes amid heated discourse over how to vet aspiring students.

Some admissions officers have claimed the longtime tests are not necessarily the best measure of an applicant's potential performance - with many stating that their high school GPAs would be more accurate.

Others have agreed, criticizing the policy as unfair to disadvantaged students. 

Based on these beliefs, the policy has persisted at countless institutions across the country - including at schools like Harvard. Rival Yale, meanwhile, is the latest to pull the plug, following examples set by MIT and Dartmouth.

Yale is the latest school to reinstate its standardized tests requirements - reversing a pandemic-era policy that previously made submitting such scores optional

Standardized tests are still a good indicator of how students will perform at college, Undergrad Admissions Dean Jeremiah Quinlan said Thursday

'Standardized tests are imperfect and incomplete alone, but I also believe scores can help establish a student’s academic preparedness for college-level work,' said Jeremiah Quinlan of the school's decision, which is final and effective immediately. 

'When used together with other elements in an application, especially a high school transcript, test scores help establish the academic foundation for any case we consider,' he continued, some four years after the policy was put in place.

He went on to put to bed criticisms that tests like the SATs and ACTs serve as just another barrier for disenfranchised students - claiming he and other school officials 'found that standardized tests are especially valuable for students attending high schools with fewer academic resources.'

They came to that conclusion after analyzing the applicant pool of the past few years' admission cycles, finding that test scores have continued to predict academic performance of students at the Connecticut college.

'Test scores convey a relatively small amount of information compared with the rich collection of insights and evidence we find in a complete application,' he explained.

'Simply put, students with higher scores have been more likely to have higher Yale GPAs, and test scores are the single greatest predictor of a student’s performance in Yale courses in every model we have constructed.'

The dean went on to concede that he and other staffer found that some students who had been admitted to Yale in recent years without submitting scores 'have done relatively well in their Yale courses.'

'However,' he added, 'we have further found a statistically significant difference in average GPA between those who applied with and without test scores.'

Some admissions officers at schools like Harvard and Columbia have claimed the longtime tests are not necessarily the best measure of an applicant's potential performance - with many stating that their high school GPAs would be more accurate

The New Haven, Connecticut, school now claims that is not the case - with Quinlan saying Thursday: 'Standardized tests are imperfect and incomplete alone, but I also believe scores can help establish a student’s academic preparedness for college-level work'

The decision follows and example set by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) back in 2022, after the school became on of the first to pull the pandemic-era policy

Earlier this month, officials at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire too rescinded the rule - as backlash has forced other schools to say that it is only temporary

Stuart Schmill, MIT's dean of admissions, (pictured) said the reintroduction of standardized tests led to the university taking the most diverse intake of students this past year

Not specifying that difference, he proceeded to point out how the schools analyses have found that applicants without test scores have been less likely to be admitted. 

He went on: 'Concerningly, this was especially true for applicants from lower-income backgrounds.'

The dean then revealed how the lack of a rule requiring applicants to send at least one standardized test score caused the school's applicant pool to balloon by 166 percent in a matter of years.

He said more than 57,000 students applied for first-year admission this year, up from 35,000 prior to the test-flexible policy .

'The pool has become larger,' he continued, 'but we have not seen that it grew to include many more applicants with strong academic preparation.'

Similar sentiments were aired by Stuart Schmill, MIT's dean of admissions, last month, when he told The New York Times that his school's reintroduction of standardized tests in 2022 led to the university taking the most diverse intake of students this year past.

'Just getting straight As is not enough information for us to know whether the students are going to succeed or not,' he said, of the university's decision to do away with the guidance - one mimicked by officials at Dartmouth College last month.

Previously, students had to submit at least one score from a standardized SAT or ACT to be considered for most colleges, public and private

That's now becoming less and less the case, especially after Thursday's maneuver by the prestigious institution. Other schools, meanwhile, have claimed the guidances are only temporary 

'Once we brought the test requirement back, we admitted the most diverse class that we ever had in our history,' he explained.

A few days later in New Hampshire, staffers at Dartmouth followed suit - with the school citing a research study commissioned by President Sian Beilock that 'confirms that standardized testing - when assessed using the local norms at a student's high school' is valuable for undergraduate applications.

Quinlan conceded on Thursday: 'I believe standardized tests are imperfect and incomplete alone, but I also believe scores can help establish a student’s academic preparedness for college-level work.

'When used together with other elements in an application, especially a high school transcript, test scores help establish the academic foundation for any case we consider.'