Who Would SAT-Only Admissions Help? White, Affluent Students. – The Chronicle of Higher Education
The SAT looms large in the minds of college applicants, who know that their scores could greatly determine their odds of admission to high-profile colleges. But what if the big test were an even bigger test? What would happen if the nation’s most-selective institutions ditched their holistic evaluations and considered nothing but test scores?
Those campuses would end up enrolling even more white, affluent students, according to the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. In a new report, SAT-Only Admission: How Would It Change College Campuses?, researchers there raise important questions about the fairness of the admissions system and the role of tests within it.
As a “thought experiment,” the researchers examined what the effects would be if the selection process relied on a single variable — standardized-test scores.
What they found is that it would make the top 200 institutions less racially diverse. The share of white students would increase to 75 percent from 66 percent; the combined share of black and Latino students would fall to 11 percent from 19 percent; and the share of Asian-American students would fall to 10 percent from 11 percent.