Dartmouth College will once again demand SAT or ACT scores from would-be students after deciding that a “test-optional” policy introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic was not working. The decision to reintroduce testing next year means the New Hampshire school will be the first Ivy League institution to revert to mandatory testing. The Wall Street Journal said Dartmouth was reacting to research showing that standardized test scores were a better predictor of first-year performance than high-school grades that couldn’t always be trusted. “I’ve become less convinced that [test-]optional is working for us at Dartmouth,” said Lee Coffin, the school’s dean of admissions. “We’re reanimating the policy based on evidence.” Dartmouth was one of more than a thousand colleges to scrap mandatory test scores in 2020 as testing centers were forced to close because of the pandemic, resulting in a surge in applications. Dartmouth last year moved from a “test-optional” to “test-recommended” policy, a precursor to the latest decision.
