Photo: E+
The University of California has officially ditched using any standardized test for admissions decisions. UC Faculty announced Thursday that they could find no alternative exam that would avoid the biased results that led them to scrap the SAT and ACT last year.
The decision follows three years of the UC system researching and debating whether standardized testing does more harm than good when assessing applicants for admission.
The university system announced that they will continue to practice test-free admissions now and into the future. Despite criticism from testing supporters, UC ultimately continued to argue that high school grades are a better tool without the biases based on race, income, and parent education levels found in tests.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the share of students who submitted test scores to the Common Application, a consortium of 900 public and private colleges, fell to 43% in the 2020-21 admission season compared with 77% in 2019-20.
UC President Michael V. Drake subsequently asked the Academic Senate this spring to examine whether an alternative test could be used beginning in 2025.
Without testing requirements, Drake added, UC attracted a record-breaking number of freshman applications for fall 2021 — more than 200,000 — and admitted the most diverse class ever.
Join the conversation below and let us know what you think!
PHOTO: Getty Images