Study: Eliminating SAT increases diversity

Using data collected from 250,000 applications to 10 selective colleges and universities, sociology professor Thomas Espenshade GS ’72 and Office of Population Research statistical programmer Chang Chung considered the effects of two possible admissions policies: “SAT optional” and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

The former refers to colleges that would look at standardized test scores when considering applications but would not require them. In this scenario, lower SAT scores would not be sent and thus would be ignored, while higher SAT scores would still matter. In the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” scenario, admissions officers would not consider SAT scores for any student.

“Under both of these admission strategies, we find that there is certainly an increase in racial diversity on campus,” Espenshade explained. “There is also an increase in socioeconomic diversity on campus.”

The impact of SAT scores on lower-class applicants seems to be about the same as on minority students because of the high correlation between the demographic groups, Espenshade added.

“Effects on racial diversity are pretty much the same order of magnitude as the effect on socioeconomic diversity,” he explained. “Black and Hispanic students tend to draw from lower-income communities.”

Yet Espenshade added that though racial diversity is poised to increase at schools that instate SAT-optional policies, the impact on members of different racial minorities will vary.

“At private institutions, the increase in the representation of black students might be slightly greater than the increase in the representation of Hispanic students, but both are going up a fair amount,” he said.

Espenshade’s results parallel earlier findings by fellow sociology professor Marta Tienda.

“Sigal Alon and I have established quite definitively that growing reliance on [the] SAT has generated need for affirmative action,” Tienda explained in an e-mail.

High school grades are in fact more accurate predictors of college success, Tienda said, based on her study of schools in Texas that forego consideration of SAT scores. She found that minority students in the top 10 percent of their high school classes achieve greater academic success than their white peers who score 200-300 points higher on the SAT but are outside of the top 10 percent of their graduating class.

Though removal of the standardized testing requirement may create greater opportunities for minority students with lower SAT scores but high grades, Espenshade said he is reluctant to make an overall judgment on the effectiveness of such policies.

“Generally, I don’t have a strong public policy leaning on this one way or another,” he said. “I like to think of myself as just the mouthpiece of the data,” which was prepared for the Rethinking Admissions conference this week at Wake Forest University.

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Some schools that currently require standardized test scores base their admissions decisions on other factors, Espenshade noted, adding that such schools should perhaps consider dropping the requirement.

But for many private institutions like the University, dropping standardized test scores may lead to incoming students being less prepared academically for college, Espenshade said.

“One potential drawback of the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy at private institutions is that some measures of academic preparedness decline,” he noted. “Not only does the average SAT score of admitted students go down, but the subject test (SAT II) scores go down, and you have a decline in the proportion of students in the top 10 percent of their high school class.”

As a result, such a policy could produce a student body less prepared for an intense course load in college, he said.

“If you believe that these various measures are indicators of how well prepared students are for the intellectual rigors of life at selective colleges, this policy will produce an admitted student population that isn’t as able to handle the work,” Espenshade said. “The faculty would not be happy.”

Jenny Aguilar ’11, president of Accion Latina, also noted that removing the SAT as a consideration for admission may result in undergraduates less prepared for difficult university exams.

“I’m not personally for [the SAT-optional policy] myself,” she said. “I think the SATs are a good indicator of how well you will be able to do on tests and how prepared you are in terms of pressure and timing for exams.”

She did note, however, that more underprivileged and minority students could be encouraged to apply under such a policy.

“Students would be more likely to apply because they don’t have a physical number [of the average SAT score] to compare themselves to,” Aguilar said, but, she added, “I don’t know if more [minority] students would come to Princeton as a result.”

An influx of students from low-income families resulting from the elimination of SAT score consideration may place greater financial strain on already-strapped universities, Espenshade noted.

“In this current economic climate, it’s increasingly difficult to maintain financial aid levels, unless you have an endowment like Princeton’s, before such a policy is enacted,” he said. “After adoption, there will be even more needy students asking for financial aid, and it may not be possible for colleges to meet that need.”

Some would inevitably object to the increasingly diverse student body resulting from the elimination of SAT scores, though, Espenshade said. A mother of a white applicant who gets turned down from a school with such a policy may think that her child was denied admission because of the policy itself, rather than other factors in her child’s application, he explained.

“As a result of the reconfiguration of the pool of admitted students, some groups are going to figure more or less prominently,” he said. “Anyone who belongs to a group that is figuring less prominently is going to have some beef.”