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WFU to make scores optional
Applications won't require test results
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Published: May 27, 2008
Starting this fall, Wake Forest University will no longer require applicants to submit standardized test scores.
WFU officials said that mounting evidence has called into question the ability of the SAT to accurately predict academic success in college. The decision to make standardized test scores optional is designed to enlarge the university's applicant pool and to increase diversity, officials said.
Martha Allman, WFU's director of admissions, said that the university's small size and emphasis on individuality enable it to focus on class rank, strength of high-school curriculum and personal interviews rather than on test scores.
Students can still submit SAT and ACT scores, which will be taken into account just as Wake Forest considers such tests as the SAT II.
"We're simply going to use what we have and not penalize a student for things that we don't have," Allman said.
Officials will encourage students to schedule interviews with admissions officers on campus. Students who can't get to campus can interview with recruiters or alumni in their area.
The university hopes to offer virtual interviews by late fall. Students will be able to log on to a secure Web site and will have a set time to complete written responses to a series of randomly generated questions.
Provost Jill Tiefenthaler said that the new admissions process should increase diversity, a key point in the university's new strategic plan.
"I think considering how we improve access to education at prestigious private universities is a really important question right now," she said. "We're all committed to equity, and we need to make sure that happens in practice."
Alana Klein, a spokeswoman for the College Board, which produces the SAT, said her company believes that its test helps ensure equity in the admissions process.
"The SAT is the fairest test that it can possibly be," she said, pointing out that questions shown to have a racial or ethnic bias are eliminated.
In 2007, 1.5 million students took the SAT, up 13 percent from five years ago.
Klein said that preliminary results from a study to be released in June indicate that the new writing section, added three years ago, is the most predictive of college performance. She said that those results should convince admissions officers that the revised SAT is an even more valuable tool.
Wake Forest is the 41st college or university to make the test optional since the revised SAT was released, a trend that began at elite liberal-arts colleges in the Northeast.
Wake Forest is the top-ranked national research university to make standardized tests optional, said Robert Schaeffer, the public-education director of FairTest, a nonprofit organization that monitors standardized testing. It is also the first university to do so in the Southeast.
Joseph Soares, an associate professor of sociology at Wake Forest, said he is delighted to see the new administration move away from test scores.
"I was not expecting Wake Forest to lead on this," he said. "I was pushing and encouraging but assuming this would be a very long slog."
Soares is the author of The Power of Privilege: Yale and America's Elite Colleges, which says that SAT scores don't accurately predict college grades. The book also discusses the test's biases.
"No one hides the fact that the test scores still correspond in a linear relationship to family income," he said. "That suggests to me that the new test is capturing the same kind of information that the old test is."
Klein acknowledged that students from less-privileged backgrounds often get lower SAT scores.
"That definitely happens," she said.
However, Carol London, a guidance director at Bishop McGuinness Catholic High School, said that test scores should be considered because of the difficulty in comparing grades between schools with varying standards.
"It just seems like there needs to be something that is a leveler among all schools," she said.
Klein said grade inflation is a concern.
"With grade inflation being at an all-time high it's especially important to have a standard measure of achievement," Klein said.
Judging by other universities that have made tests optional, Soares predicted that in the next few years, Wake Forest will have a 12 percent to 18 percent jump in the number of applicants and an increase in minority and working-class white students.
Bates College, one of the schools cited by Wake Forest for its promising results, saw its applicant pool widen after becoming entirely test-optional in 1990. Its research shows that the difference in overall college GPA between those who submit test scores and those who don't averages out to only .05 points, while the SAT difference between the two groups is often 140 to 150 points.
"It's continued to be inspiring to watch students come to Bates, some students for whom their testing might have been a hurdle to gaining admissions," said Wylie Mitchell, the director of admissions at Bates. "They're clearly great students. In the end, that's what we're seeking."
■ Elizabeth DeOrnellas can be reached at 727-7279 or at edeornellas@wsjournal.com.
CORRECTION: This story has been corrected to attribute a quote about grade inflation to Alana Klein, a spokeswoman for the College Board.
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