Do test-optional admissions hurt disadvantaged students?

Two weeks ago, the standardized testing giant ETS acquired ACT, solidifying its position as the largest provider of college testing. ETS already owns the GRE and TOEFL, and previously administered the SAT through the College Board.

Critics of the merger pointed to the potential harm to students. Some students chose the ACT because of its unique pacing and structure. Corporate consolidation might jeopardize the ACT's distinctiveness.

Also see: ACT vs. SAT: What’s the difference?

Testing homogenization aside, the merger comes at an inflection point in standardized testing’s place in college admissions. More institutions of higher ed are reinstating mandatory testing following a COVID-era experiment with test-optional admissions. Columbia University’s recent announcement that it will require tests beginning in August 2027 ends test-optional admissions for all Ivy League applicants.

Before COVID, however, the SAT and ACT already had their critics. When the University of California flirted with dropping testing requirements in 2019, civil rights attorneys argued that these tests failed to predict college performance. The case against testing requirements pivots on supposed racial and class bias, with naysayers claiming it harms disadvantaged applicants.

The topic has recently gained a political charge. The Trump administration’s proposed compact with universities exchanges research grants and federal dollars for adopting the administration’s preferred policies, including a return to standardized testing.

While ETS has promised to make the ACT less racially biased by leveraging AI to root out potential discrimination, criticism has remained persistent. Harry Feder, executive director of the advocacy group FairTest, puts it bluntly: “What do tests tell us? They tell us how wealthy your parents are. To near perfect correlation.”

What’s often missing from the argument around test-optional admissions is evidence. The intuitive assumption that disadvantaged students do worse when testing is mandatory is just that: an intuitive assumption about access to test prep and tutors.

As with any issue about college admissions and whom a particular policy helps or hurts, research cuts through the clatter of public opinion.

When the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) published its working paper on test-optional policies and disadvantaged students, it arrived at a counterintuitive conclusion.

When most colleges dropped their testing requirements during the COVID pandemic, the shift was widely viewed as a win for equity. But an NBER study of Dartmouth College found that test-optional policies mainly hurt high-achieving applicants from low socio-economic backgrounds or under-represented high schools.

Test-optional policies “encouraged” these students to submit scores at a lower rate, which, in turn, lowered their admissions odds. 

Researchers compared two test-required admissions years (2017 and 2018) with two test-optional years (2021 and 2022). They looked specifically at hidden scores: cases where students took the SAT and submitted it before asking that it not be counted.

The paper’s core finding was striking. Disadvantaged students with an SAT score above 1400 were more than 3x more likely to be admitted if they submitted a score. For disadvantaged students scoring 1550, submitting a score raised admissions odds by 10 points.

Why does submitting scores help these students so much? As it turns out, admissions officers read scores in context. Critics of standardized tests often wrongly assume scores exist in a vacuum. They don’t.

In the context of a student’s neighborhood and high school, a score of 1400, with the 75th percentile at 1200, is a signal that admissions officers take seriously. By contrast, the admissions boost for advantaged students submitting a high score was smaller because officers interpret those scores in context as well.

Yet, the way scores are read and used in admissions isn’t obvious to most applicants. Disadvantaged students are likely to compare their scores with those of other applicants. They don’t know that they’re being measured against a different yardstick.

Two additional findings also complicate the case for test-optional admissions. First, Dartmouth's switch to test-optional didn’t increase the demographic diversity of the applicant pool. And second, test scores were a better predictor of academic success regardless of a student’s background, while other parts of the application (such as recommendations) weren’t.

The takeaway for college counselors and applicants? The instinct to withhold a good but not perfect score may be costing you. The better read for disadvantaged and advantaged students alike: how does your score compare to others at your high school? How does it stack up against those with similar backgrounds?

See also: What to do if you get a low SAT score?

So can we retire the idea that test-optional admissions automatically helps disadvantaged students? Not quite. The Dartmouth study doesn’t settle the whole debate. After all, it’s one study at one highly selective school that speaks to a specific group: high achievers with strong test scores.

But for that group, the finding cuts hard against the assumption. A high score from a student in a low-scoring environment is heavily weighted, and these students give it up when they don’t submit scores.

Here’s the thornier question: if test scores predict academic success better than most other measures, regardless of background, why don’t schools just admit by numbers (scores, GPA), and call it a job well done? Why do elite schools like Harvard also weigh subjective qualities like “character” and “leadership”?

These soft factors are contested terrain, as we pointed out in an earlier article. In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the plaintiffs argued that Asian American applicants (who, on average, post higher test scores) were rated lower on subjective personal qualities. Whatever you make of that specific case, it shows how much weight and scrutiny the non-academic side of the file now carries.

Arguably, it comes down to a numbers game. Over two million students took the SAT in 2025. By definition, 20,000 students scored in the top 1% of test-takers. If Harvard wanted to fill its entire incoming class with top scorers (even after adjusting for neighborhood and school characteristics), it could easily do so. But Harvard only enrolls about 2,000 first-year students. What happens to the other 18,000?

That’s the trap. Elite schools can’t take only top scorers because there are far more top scorers than seats. And test-optional sharpens this trap. If a score is one of the few true academic signals in an applicant file, removing it pushes even more weight onto factors like leadership and extracurriculars. 

And access to those is itself unequal. Students at well-resourced schools have more leadership opportunities and more adults around to package themselves well. Test scores, for all their warts, are at least one more objective data point in the mix.

None of this makes the soft factors noise. When a school is staring at thousands of applicants with near-identical scores and transcripts, something has to distinguish them. And that something is the story the rest of the application tells. The extracurriculars, the essays, and the student’s choices. At the top of the pile, that story is what the decision comes down to.

Hang on to two truths at once.

First, if you have a strong score, submit it. The research is clear: sitting on a good-but-not-perfect score is more likely to cost you than to protect you, especially if you’re a high achiever whose number reads better against the backdrop of your high school. Again, this holds for both advantaged and disadvantaged applicants. Test-optional shouldn’t hide a strength.

Second, a great score won't carry you alone, because the seats run out long before qualified applicants do. The students who break through are the ones with a complete file: the score and the transcript, plus the essays, activities, and narrative that tell an admissions officer who they are.

That both/and is how Empowerly works. Our approach is holistic and data-driven at the same time. Our Empowerly Score combines your academics, test scores, extracurriculars, and essays to show you where you stand relative to the schools on your list and what to strengthen next. 

Then, before you submit, your application is reviewed by former admissions officers (multiple times) from top schools. A real admissions officer reads your file the way a committee will. The results of our approach bear fruit: 98% of students who work with an Empowerly counselor are admitted to a top-100 college, and our acceptance rate is 11x the national average.

The testing debate will keep swinging. Our advice won't: submit scores that help you, and build an applicant profile that makes it matter. But before all that, book a consultation to find out where you actually stand. You can’t strengthen your application until you know where your weaknesses are hiding.