Colleges Are Dropping Standardized Tests for Admissions. What Should Come Next.

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About the author: Daniel Pianoko is Managing Director of Achieve Partners.

The world of college admissions as we know it will never be the same. In the three years since the varsity blues scandal uncovered the cynical “side door” for college admissions, all eight Ivy League universities have joined in massive fashion state higher education systems like Cal State University in doing without standardized tests. Amherst became the newest selective school eliminate inheritance admissions And positive action will likely to be crushed by the Supreme Court.

These shifts reflect the fact that society as a whole has lost faith in the university admissions process. But while colleges themselves are now realizing they need to replace a system widely recognized as exclusionary, biased, and inefficient, they are attempting to solve the problem by relying on highly subjective metrics that vary greatly by high school distinguish – like grades, personal statements, and letters of recommendation. A growing number of research results shows that “test-optional” does not increase the socioeconomic diversity of the student body, and affluent students still do submit test results far more likely than their peers who grew up in lower-income quintiles — which still appears to be the case, despite college claims to the contrary give them a leg in the admissions process. The other screening mechanisms Colleges use to replace standardized tests that may actually exist tipped the scales further away of meritocratic admissions.

In short, few colleges take the step to actively seek new ways to welcome students from communities historically underrepresented in higher education. If they really want to build a better admissions system, schools need to think much bigger than just replacing standardized tests with other proxies that still give rich families an edge.

Some organizations are already demonstrating what’s possible when universities start thinking bigger. Consider the National Education Equity Labs initiative Enroll low-income high school students for an online Harvard course: 89% of them passed, and many went to colleges they never even thought of applying to before. Elite universities could open similar low-cost online courses, backed by personal support and mentoring, in every school in the country. These colleges might skip the SAT, but invite formal applications from the top 10 percent of achievers on those courses — not unlike things already work in Texas, where the top 10% of students in all of the state’s high schools have guaranteed admission to the most selective public universities. The Common App is taking a similar step, working with a select group of colleges to proactively offer students admission based solely on grades and scores.

Ultimately, the world of college admissions should probably look less like it does now and more like Cerebro, the invention from Marvel’s X-Men comics that can find super-powered mutants anywhere in the world. Shouldn’t we be working to develop the tools that will help colleges find the best and brightest in the country, no matter where they’re from?

For example, it would be (relatively) easy for universities to set up a system to proactively identify prospective robotics engineers through targeting high level Lego buildersor novel software programs created by students that build on it substitute. How about finding future financiers from the cryptocurrency community or using Twitter to find the next generation of political scientists? What if we used social media reach as a measure of creative potential? The next Martin Scorsese is more of an active social media tycoon with millions of followers on TikTok than a mediocre student whose parents happened to go to an elite school.

Employers who are always one step ahead are already coming up with unconventional recruitment methods. In 2016, Goldman Sachs replaced initial on-campus interviews with pre-employment assessments to identify candidates from a wide range of schools, as the Ivy League recognized that the Ivy League was not creating an adequate talent pool. Platforms like HackerRank have 11 million programmers competing for top jobs, and job screening for positions from flight attendant to McKinsey analyst is no longer dependent on “fill in the bubble” testing. companies like Entelo help employers identify talented employees who may not be job hunting at all. Even the state of Maryland recently agreed Remove college degrees from many of his job postings altogether.

Of course, none of these ideas is a silver bullet against the pervasive injustices in our education system. No single algorithm or strategy should be solely responsible for getting students into college, and we must work proactively to ensure that any tools used for such a purpose avoid the all-too-common pitfalls of bias and short-sightedness. But that doesn’t mean we can’t find new ways to find unique talents and use new technologies to help select rough diamonds. If we do, how many students who would otherwise have gone undetected will gain access to the hallowed halls of elite higher education?

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