Test scores matter less as KY colleges change approach on admissions amid pandemic
Anxiety is high among some Kentucky high schoolers looking to boost their ACT scores in an uncertain environment where pre-planned test dates are increasingly jeopardized by the spread of COVID-19.
Many of this year’s high school seniors have been able to get in a standardized test or two either just before the pandemic or in far afield locations between local test cancellations.
But students who were looking to boost their scores to become eligible for more selective schools or scholarships are running into obstacles, said Jane Crickard, the owner and college adviser for Class 101 Central Kentucky. Crickard helps students with ACT prep, and she said she’s heard from increasingly anxious students running out of options to increase their scores.
“We just don’t know from one day to the next literally if these tests are going to happen,” Crickard said.
After a concussion her junior year made it hard for her to study, Sarah Sajadi — a Lafayette High School senior — said she was relying on her senior year to boost her college admissions profile. She was able to find some testing locations over the summer, but the recent cancellation of her December test has left her with a score she’s not satisfied with.
In response, many higher education institutions across the state and country have dropped standardized testing requirements for admissions and scholarships in favor of a more “holistic” approach that puts more weight on GPA, high school course difficulty, essays and other factors.
Many higher education institutions were already moving away from putting so much emphasis on test scores. Centre College in Danville joined thousands of institutions across the country in going into a three-year test run of test-optional admissions policies. Bob Nesmith, the dean of admission and financial aid at Centre, said the school was already preparing to present a test-optional initiative to the school’s faculty when the pandemic hit locally in March.
“It became crystal clear that this is exactly the right time to make this move that we’ve talked about making,” Nesmith said. “So it was a happy coincidence of internal thinking and external factors.”
What are colleges looking for this year?
This year has been a blessing in disguise for students who might struggle on a standardized test, but have high GPAs, said Rachael Howard, a college counselor at Henry Clay High School.
High school GPA is one of the best indicators for student success, said Christine Harper, the University of Kentucky’s chief enrollment officer in a release.
“We ran our data here at the University of Kentucky, and it paired very well with the national data — finding that GPA is a better indication of student success and retention than test score,” said Harper. “So, based on that, we felt very comfortable moving to a test-optional process.”
Universities across Kentucky have been making the same decision, and nearly all of them have cited GPA as the best indicator for college success.
At the same time, many colleges have made instituted test-blind policies in their merit scholarships — which in the past would increase with higher standardized test scores.
For example at UK, the essentially full-ride, competitive Otis A. Singletary scholarship — achievable in the past with a 3.8 GPA and a 33 ACT — is now also achievable for a 4.0 high school graduate. Funds for such a scholarship are of course limited and applying students are in competition with other applicants.
Nesmith said when they’re evaluating high school GPA at Centre, they also look at the difficulty of the courses the student took. Doing well in a class schedule with honors, AP or other dual credit-type courses shows the college how the student may handle more rigorous academic work. If a student were to submit a standardized test score, it would be considered along with GPA in the academic assessment, he said.
After academics, Nesmith said they would move on to recommendation letters and extracurriculars to try to get a feel for the intangible qualities that might make a student successful in college.
Not every school is test-optional this year, but there are some online resources like FairTest which makes up-to-date lists of schools that are. Universities that haven’t gone test optional have already tended to fare worse in terms of future enrollment. Some of Florida’s twelve state universities are seeing close to a 50 percent drop in applicants after the system opted to keep its testing policies in place, Inside HigherEd reported earlier this month.
This year has come with more troubling indicators for the future of college admissions, as the Common App — a college application that works for hundreds of colleges — is reporting lower amounts of applications compared to this point last year.
As of Nov. 13, national completion of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid — better known as the FAFSA — is also down by 13 percent compared to this point last year. According to the Form Your Future FAFSA tracker, Kentucky’s completion of the form commonly needed to receive financial aid is down 25 percent.
Best piece of advice for applying students?
Crickard said she has been widely encouraging the students she advises to call their dream colleges to talk to their admissions officers to see what they’re looking for.
Many colleges have been offering virtual or limited-capacity tours, and Howard said that visits to high schools from traveling college representatives have essentially gone virtual.
Students used to be able to get to know colleges and the people at them by “showing up and walking around,” Nesmith said. With tours and travel limited, that’s been much harder to do this year.
“Be creative about how you get to know places and take advantage of opportunities to connect with real people at those places,” Nesmith said. “Maybe you can’t visit campus, but maybe you can have a Zoom conversation with a current student, or a faculty member or an admissions counselor. That might press a student’s comfort zone, but I think it’ll really help them in their confidence as they try and evaluate choices going forward.”