It’s hard to keep up with the changes to admissions requirements colleges have been making in the past few days and weeks. In response to the cancellations of the SAT through May and the ACT April administration, some colleges are waiving their testing requirements for admissions to release some of the pressure students are feeling and the pressure felt by test sites to administer these exams in a compressed time frame.
Notably MIT, one of the very few colleges to require Subject Tests as part of their admissions requirements, just announced that they are no longer going to accept those scores. Just a few hours ago Tufts University announced that it was adopting a test-optional policy for three years which will be reviewed at the end of that time. Neuman University also just announced that they would be test-optional for students with a GPA of 2.5 or above.
Of course, Fair Test keeps the most up-to-date information about which colleges are test-optional. Be sure to note that “test-optional” means different things at different schools, so be sure to read the fine print carefully. And a quick shout-out to Jon Boeckenstadt, the Vice Provost of Admissions at Oregon State University, who has self-proclaimed March 25th to be National Test-Optional Day and encourages everyone to tweet out their favorite test-optional college with the hashtag #testoptionalday. I’ll start with my alma mater, Bates, College one of the first colleges to waive the standardized testing requirements for all applicants. Go Bobcats!