To mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, for the past four years many colleges have switched to test-optional admissions. However, now that COVID poses a smaller threat, certain schools have decided to return to test-mandated policies.

For example, Dartmouth College states in their updated standardized testing policy that the Class of 2029’s application process will include a mandated ACT or SAT. According to the Dartmouth College Admissions website, “Our bottom line is simple: we believe a standardized testing requirement will improve—not detract from—our ability to bring the most promising and diverse students to our campus.”

Dartmouth President Sian Beilock commissioned a research study about standardized testing, which Dartmouth economists Elizabeth Cascio, Bruce Sacerdote, Doug Staiger, and educational sociologist Michele Tine. conducted. The study used the ideology that standardized testing with the background of the student’s high school “is a valuable element of Dartmouth’s undergraduate application.” This allows for a broader and more diverse admission of applicants since the admissions team can keep in mind the “under-resourced or less familiar high schools.” When reviewing tests, “high-achieving applicants from low and middle-income backgrounds.”

Despite Dartmouth’s recent shift to test mandating, they ensure that “contextualized testing will be one factor—but never the primary factor—among the many quantitative and qualitative elements of our application.”

In response to how many schools in the future will switch to mandated testing, College Advisor Jamie Brightman said, “We will have a lot more clarity later in the spring but we just don’t know what direction” each school will go in.

In response to test-mandated versus test-optional policies, Ms. Brightman said, “I don’t think I could say with authority that either way is the best.” She also believes that going back to mandated testing would not necessarily have a negative effect on Deerfield Academy students. She said, “Most  schools that Deerfield students apply to have a very high number of applicants, meaning tons of kids are applying, so any tweaks in policy tend to have marginal impacts.”

Although high SAT and ACT scores are often associated with college acceptance success, Ms. Brightman said, “For every school the main thing they look at is people’s grades and the rigor of their curriculum… [testing] is only one data point that colleges use among many other factors.”

Accompanying the shift back to required standardized testing is the gradual digitalization of many standardized exams, including the SAT college entrance exam this year and 17 AP exams in the next two years.

All U.S. SAT exams will soon be transferred to digital in Spring 2024, while SAT exams in some other countries have already switched in 2023. This change was made after the College Board, the nonprofit that runs the SAT, PSAT, and AP programs, initiated a pilot project in 2021 which showed 80% of students found a digital test less stressful than the traditional paper-and-pencil format. Consequently, the College Board announced in January 2022 that the SAT would be permanently transitioning to digital-only testing experience on Bluebook, a testing app developed by the College Board itself.

These changes offer some potential benefits. The shortened exam time means that test takers’ scores are affected less by fatigue, students will be able to receive their scores within days of taking the exam, and adaptive testing makes the test more relevant to each student’s capabilities.

However, there have been concerns about the new test, primarily focused on the difficulty of the exam relative to its predecessor. The College Board sponsored test takers to take a prototype exam. The test takers shared online that the exam was easier without the long reading sections, while other takers say that the new questions themselves are unrelated to each other and thus more challenging.

However, the difference between new and old SAT scores is yet to be determined. Deerfield’s test center, which offers ACT, SAT, and AP exams, will soon shift to digital SAT and AP exams, affecting test taking for future Deerfield students. Specifically, the Class of 2025 will be the first class taking the new SAT exam for college admissions.