Or “Alma Lives Mater; But Diplomas Don’t”

A Majority of Colleges Have Dropped SAT Requirements, Matt Yglesias Has an Interesting Theory Why
Hotair | 04/26/2023 | John Sexton

So if you have kids in college or heading to college sometime soon then you’re probably already aware that many schools have abandoned the SAT as a requirement for applicants. Forbes reported last fall that the SAT is now optional at a majority of schools.

As the college application process picks up steam for the upcoming academic year, a new survey shows that more than 80% of U.S. bachelor-degree granting institutions will not require students seeking fall 2023 admission to submit either ACT or SAT standardized exam scores…

“An overwhelming majority of undergraduate admissions offices now make selection decisions without relying on ACT/SAT results,” said FairTest Executive Director Harry Feder in the organization’s news release. “These schools recognize that standardized test scores do not measure academic ‘merit.’ What they do assess quite accurately is family wealth, but that should not be the criteria for getting into college.”

Over at his Substack site, Matt Yglesias says this argument, that the SATs test for wealth is not completely wrong but it is a kind of convenient fiction that is meant to distract from the actual goal of dropping standardized tests. That goal, he argues, is hiding the ball on race-based preferences.

This is so obvious that it’s not worth beating around the bush: the schools leading the push toward de-testing are not making some kind of blunder, they are trying to get away with something. I’m fond of Talleyrand’s old quip “it’s worse than a crime, it’s a mistake,” but in this case, it’s a crime. SAT scores make it inconveniently easy to demonstrate anti-Asian discrimination in college admissions, so the industry is moving to burn the evidence.