Universities that have eliminated standardized test requirements for admissions in recent years generally experienced gains in diversity in their student bodies, according to research by the University of California, Davis. However, if the universities also faced recent financial shortfalls or enrollment declines, or continued to prioritize quantitative academic criteria such as test scores and class rank, these gains in diversity diminished or disappeared.

The paper, “Same Policy, No Standardized Outcome: How Admissions Values and Institutional Priorities Shape the Effect of Test-Optional Policies on Campus Diversity,” was published in the American Sociological Review on Aug. 11.

“Although test-optional admissions policies are often adopted with the assumption that they will broaden access to underrepresented minority groups, the effectiveness of these policies in increasing student diversity appears to depend on existing admissions values and institutional priorities at the university,” said Greta Hsu, co-author of the paper. Hsu is a UC Davis professor in the Graduate School of Management who studies organizational behavior.

This paper was co-authored with Amanda Sharkey of the University of Notre Dame.

Data from 16 years

Researchers analyzed a broad sample of data from more than 1,500 public and private four-year, degree-granting colleges and universities in the United States between 2003 and 2019. During that time, more than 200 of those universities eliminated standardized test requirements.

Some universities, such as University of California, are currently “test-blind” and do not consider test scores at all, while others make them optional. Students have control over whether tests are sent or not, and students must contemplate whether it helps or hurts them to include test scores in their application where tests are optional, Hsu said.

COVID years eliminated from study

The data does not include the period after the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, in which more colleges eliminated testing requirements and altered enrollment processes in myriad ways because of changes in high school educational attainment, lack of test centers and other issues.

Campus populations changed

During the years analyzed, demographics on college campuses changed. Students identifying as white decreased, overall, from 68% to 53% while those identifying as an underrepresented population (Black, Hispanic or Native American) increased from 19% to 28% percent of students attending college.  Those identifying as Asian or Asian American increased slightly from 6% to 8%.

Testing and inequities

Standardized tests have been broadly used to assess college readiness since the 1950s. But concerns have risen over the years — beginning in the 1980s and especially more recently — that the testing is flawed, exhibiting racial and income-based inequities. Further, critics argue that access to test preparation tutors and materials favors those who can afford and access those resources.

Colleges that give much weight to test scores — while not requiring them — show no significant increase in enrolling underrepresented students for three years following a change in testing policy. In contrast, colleges that give less weight to test scores show a slight 2% increase in enrollment of underrepresented students in the same period. Researchers said additional recruitment and individual university efforts to strengthen student body diversity could affect those numbers but were not studied.

In addition to examining the metrics colleges report valuing when making admissions decisions, the researchers looked at whether colleges were facing institutional pressures, such as from financial or enrollment shortfalls, when they went test optional.  They found that colleges facing financial or enrollment-related pressures were less likely to see a significant increase in minority student representation when they went test optional.

“It is important to recognize that college and university environments, like most complex organizations, face multiple competing pressures,” Hsu said.  “Actions and policies aimed at responding to each of these pressures can, at times, work at cross-purposes with one another."