SCHENECTADY — Union College has become the first school in the Capital Region to drop its requirement of the SAT or ACT tests for admission.
Union announced Tuesday it is joining a growing list of more than 700 colleges and universities nationally who have made such standardized test scores optional for admission.
Other local colleges and universities are mulling making a similar change, but higher education moves at a measured pace and such a shift is apparently at least a year or more away on other area campuses.
At Union, the discussion about dropping the SAT began nearly two decades ago when a pair of professors found there was no correlation between the outcome of student success and graduation rates with SAT or ACT scores.
After years of debate, Union administrators decided such standardized tests were “a prestigious but flawed instruments” with demonstrated biases based on racial, gender, socioeconomic and cultural factors, according to Dan Lundquist, Union's dean of admissions and financial aid.
The tipping point for Union's decision to drop the standardized test requirement for admission came amid widely reported SAT scoring errors in the past year and a continued refrain from the anti-test movement.
“There's a growing frustration in the college admissions world about what they consider an arms race on college competitiveness and an explosion of test coaching,” said Robert Schaeffer, publication education director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing. The group was formed in 1985 and is based in Cambridge, Mass., under the banner of making the SAT and ACT obsolete.
Schaeffer said there is a backlash against affluent parents who “buy” an additional 200 to 300 points on their child's SAT score by paying for expensive tutoring.
As of Tuesday, the fair test advocates counted 732 colleges and universities nationwide that have made SAT or ACT optional.
In New York alone, nearly 90 institutions have dropped standardized tests for admission, although that includes dozens of non-traditional, specialty or religious colleges.
In the Capital Region, administrators at the College of Saint Rose, Siena College and Skidmore College said they currently require SAT or ACT scores, but all three are actively discussing whether to make them optional in the future.
There are no plans to drop the SAT or ACT requirement at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, but James Nondorf, vice president for enrollment, said test scores are a single element in the “holistic approach” they take to assessing prospective students.
“It's an important piece, but it's not the only piece,” Nondorf said of the standardized tests.
The decision to make the SAT and ACT optional takes effect immediately at Union. Lundquist said some early applicants for next year who submitted their SAT or ACT scores will be contacted and given the option of whether to pull their scores out of their application packet.
Among so-called selective colleges, in whose ranks Union counts itself, 32 of the U.S. News and World Report's 100 best liberal colleges have become SAT- or ACT-optional, Schaeffer said.
“Numerous long-term reports have backed up our contention that schools end up with a better class in terms of intellectual abilities and diversity by dropping the SAT and ACT,” Schaeffer said.
Previously, Union proudly touted its average SAT score of 1240 for this year's freshman class. The college received a record 4,373 applications for this year's class, with 1,841 accepted and 560 freshmen who ended up attending.
Rather than relying on SAT or ACT scores as a yardstick, Lundquist and his admissions staff will focus on the student's class ranking, the rigor of classes taken, community service and other factors.