Dear Commons Community,

The State University of New York will no longer require standardized exams for college admissions, as the number of test-takers dwindles across the state.

The SUNY Board of Trustees, consisting of 18 members mostly appointed by the governor, unanimously approved a resolution on Tuesday to “prospectively” make the submission of SAT or ACT exam scores optional, as first reported by POLITICO.

The policy was first implemented as a pandemic emergency measure in June 2020 and extended each year for limited terms — until this week.

The SUNY Board of Trustees, consisting of 18 members mostly appointed by the governor, unanimously approved a resolution on Tuesday afternoon to “prospectively” make the submission of SAT or ACT exam scores optional, as first reported by POLITICO.

While applicants can still submit standardized test scores if they so choose, close to 40,000 fewer high school graduates in New York took the SAT last year than before the pandemic, according to data from the College Board.

“Colleges in New York State and across the country are largely maintaining their test-optional policies and/or implementing them permanently,” SUNY Chancellor John King said in a resolution.

That includes Columbia University, which became the first Ivy League institution to drop the requirement last month. The liberal arts college Vassar College in Poughkeepsie followed suit on Thursday.

Other public universities, such as colleges in the University of California system, have scrapped test scores entirely from consideration for admissions or merit scholarships.

“In addition, fewer New York State high school students are taking the SAT, especially among historically underrepresented groups,” read the SUNY memo.

Fewer than 6 in 10 New York students who graduated high school last year took the SAT, according to College Board data. Before the pandemic and the proliferation of test-optional policies as an emergency measure, nearly 8 in 10 graduates statewide sat for the admissions test during high school.

The report shows 122,170 members of the Class of 2022 took the exam before graduation, 39% of whom were white. One third of them came from families earning more than $110,000 each year.

SUNY will continue to study the use and value of standardized tests through its public policy research arm, the Rockefeller Institute of Government, and tweak the policy if necessary.

But officials so far found that students who did not submit SAT or ACT scores are keeping pace with their peers.

“Importantly,” King said in the memo, “during the period that exam submission has been optional at SUNY, the retention rate gap between test-takers and non-test takers has stayed the same or even shrunk.”

Good move on the part of the SUNY Board of Trustees!

Tony

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