A faculty task force from the Academic Council of the University of California (UC) has released a report recommending that the UC system continue to use the SAT and ACT as an admissions requirement, following its year-long investigation. 

Already, more than 1,000 colleges and universities, including the University of Texas, the University of Chicago, New York University and Boston University, have decided to no longer require applicants to submit test scores. Now the pressure falls on UC, the second largest collegiate system in the nation, to make its decision. UC has nearly 300,000 students.

Critics of the ACT and SAT argue that the tests put low-income and minority students at a disadvantage, and are more reflective of students’ family wealth than how well they will perform in college. 

Students who can afford expensive tutoring will naturally perform better on the tests, they claim. And although students can take the tests as many times as they want, each new test costs money, which gives wealthy students an advantage. 

In an effort to make the test more accessible for students from all income levels, many states offer low-income students the opportunity to take the SAT or ACT for free during the school day. But the subsidized tests don’t always include the optional writing section, which students applying to schools in the UC system are still required to submit. So, students who want to take the essay portion may have to pay for it. 

In November 2019, UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ voiced her support for abandoning the testing requirement. And in December, the Compton Unified School District filed a lawsuit against UC on grounds of discrimination, by virtue of requiring the tests, against low-income, minority and disabled students. 

In its report, the task force recognized that the students enrolled in the UC system don’t accurately reflect diversity in the state of California. In 2019, for example, 59 percent of California high school graduates were underrepresented minorities (African American, Latino or Native American), but underrepresented minorities represented only 26 percent of all admitted students. And at UC Berkeley, only 18 percent of admitted students were from these minority groups. 

Yet, the task force “did not find evidence that UC’s use of test scores played a major role in worsening the effects of disparities already present among applicants and did find evidence that UC’s admissions process helped to make up for the potential adverse effect of score differences between groups,” the report states. 

In an effort to level the playing field, UC admissions officers evaluate students’ standardized test scores and choose to admit them in the context of their demographics, according to the report. As an example, the report explains that among UC applicants with SAT scores of 1000, about 30 percent of white students are admitted compared to about 50 percent of Latinos. White students don’t reach admission rates of 50 percent until they reach a 1200 SAT score, according to the report. 

“For any SAT score, students from disadvantaged groups have a higher probability of being admitted than students from advantaged groups. In other words, how UC uses the test scores appears to be to help identify students within each socioeconomic group who are most likely to succeed,” the report states. 

In defense of the SAT, Jerome White, a College Board spokesperson, explained to the Daily Californian that he recognizes family income plays a role in students likelihood to score high on the SAT. However, that correlation is not unique to standardized testing. “Any objective measure of student achievement will shine a light on inequalities in our education system,” White explained. 

And contrary to other studies, the task force found that standardized test scores were, in fact, good predictors of students college grade point average, retention and completion rates. 

“At UC, test scores are currently better predictors of first-year GPA than high school grade point average (HSGPA), and about as good at predicting first-year retention,” the report states. 

If UC were to drop SAT and ACT requirements, the task force warns that the system may see lower first-year GPAs among incoming students, as well as increase the time it takes students to graduate. 

At this point, keeping the SAT and ACT mandatory is merely a recommendation. It won’t be set in stone until it is approved by the UC Board of Regents. 

Over time, the report recommends that UC develop its own admissions tests. But as that’s not an immediate solution, the task force, for now, recommends preserving the existing standardized test requirements.