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During the pandemic, many colleges adopted test-optional admissions policies, meaning applicants did not have to submit SAT or ACT scores to get in. New research, though, shows many applicants are choosing to submit those scores anyway. J.D. Allen reports.
J D ALLEN, BYLINE: For 17-year-old Gracie Stewart (ph), the decision to take the ACT wasn't about meeting a college entrance requirement. It was about standing out. Stewart scored a 34 on the exam. The max score is a 36.
GRACIE STEWART: When I saw my ACT score, I was honestly really excited.
ALLEN: Stewart played sports, volunteered at a local hospital and joined the Honor Society. Still, she felt submitting her scores was an important extra edge for the competitive applicant pool.
STEWART: I felt they added another dimension to my application and helped reinforce my academic abilities.
ALLEN: Stewart is part of a recent shift in student behavior who started to apply for colleges in November. This application cycle, way more students reported test scores - up 10% compared to last year. That's according to the Common App, which helps students apply to nearly a thousand participating colleges annually.
STEWART: I saw my scores as a way to provide additional evidence of my readiness for college-level work.
ALLEN: And it's all happening ahead of college requirements. Only 5% of colleges that participate in the Common App program even require these scores for admission.
HARRY FEDER: I think there is a culture of standardized testing that is pervasive in American education.
ALLEN: That's Harry Feder, executive director of FairTest, an organization that advocates against standardized testing. The organization tracks more than 2,000 schools that remain test-optional. He says students are feeling outside pressure from parents, counselors and the standardized testing industry of paid college prep.
FEDER: The truth is over 90% of four-year colleges are either test-optional or test-free. But because the culture is so used to that, the faucet just got naturally turned back on a little bit.
ALLEN: Some experts believe that students are using test scores to combat grade inflation, where high school GPAs rise so much that it's hard for college admissions officers to distinguish applicants. Bruce Sacerdote, an economics professor at Dartmouth, says standardized tests are a helpful tool in a world where transcripts can look identical.
BRUCE SACERDOTE: We find that so many of the applicants who apply to Dartmouth have just top, top high school GPAs and they shot the lights out in their coursework. Having metrics that aren't completely top-coded is quite useful.
ALLEN: That logic is what led Dartmouth to restart its testing requirements in 2025. Several other prestigious schools have done the same or plan to - Stanford, Princeton, UPenn, Louisiana State. Sacerdote says all students can choose to sit for the same test, but they might not all have access to AP classes, extracurriculars or paid college prep. Yet research shows that going test-optional has remarkably little impact on who actually gets in.
ZACHARY BLEEMER: Providing the test score or not providing the test score is only adding a little bit more information to what universities already see.
ALLEN: Zachary Bleemer, an economics professor at Princeton, argues that a student's economic performance is already highly predictable based on their high school, their grades and their course load.
BLEEMER: If you take a seasoned admissions officer and hand them an application without a test score and have them guess the test score, they're going to do a very good job.
ALLEN: So while there isn't a clear reason to use test scores to apply for college, Gracie Stewart says she and her friends don't regret the extra work.
STEWART: I would say it's pretty mixed. Some are submitting their test scores if they feel confident in them, while others are choosing not to and are relying more on their grades, activities and other parts of their application.
ALLEN: She's now waiting on responses from schools like Boston University and the University of Florida, hoping for the best. For NPR News, I'm J.D. Allen in New York.
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