Johns Hopkins University (JHU) has joined a growing list of colleges that are bringing back standardized testing as a part of their admissions process.
Many prestigious universities decided to get rid of the SAT or ACT in recent years because of concerns that the standardized test requirement was keeping talented applicants with lower-income backgrounds from being accepted.
However, the trend looks to be reversing. JHU joins Dartmouth and other schools in bringing back the requirement, specifically for undergraduate admissions to the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and the Whiting School of Engineering, the university announced last week.
The reinstated requirement will go into effect for the fall 2026 semester. Those hoping to enter the university in fall 2025 will be encouraged to submit their test scores, but they are not required.
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JHU was one of many schools that decided to make standardized testing optional in 2020 because of concerns that the COVID pandemic limited access to the tests.
However, after conducting a review of the three years of test-optional admissions, JHU said that test scores will continue to be an “important predictive metric” for success at the college, the university said.
“The review also found that the test-optional environment may have discouraged some applicants to Johns Hopkins from less-advantaged or underrepresented backgrounds from submitting test scores that would have provided an additional positive signal of their academic abilities,” JHU said in a statement.
Standardized testing is one factor that JHU has used in its admission process, along with academic achievement, extracurricular activities and “impact and initiative.”
“They probably would never have suspended the requirement in the first place in the absence of the pandemic, so now that students have uninhibited access to the exam again, they’re simply moving back to old policy,” Eric Sherman, a college admissions counselor at educational consulting company IvyWise, told Newsweek.
“The other factor is that the SAT, for better or for worse, is still a predictor of academic success at the college level,” said Sherman, a former admissions officer at Columbia University.
Larger Trend
Dartmouth also made headlines when it announced it would be moving away from testing-optional admissions for the class of 2029.
“For Dartmouth, the evidence supporting our reactivation of a required testing policy is clear,” the college said in a statement this year. “Our bottom line is simple: we believe a standardized testing requirement will improve — not detract from — our ability to bring the most promising and diverse students to our campus.”
While the original argument at many schools for making the SAT and ACT optional was that it would help identify top applicants from lower-income families, Dartmouth said its research found the opposite. Test scores were a consistent predictor of college students “from less-resourced backgrounds.”
“Contrary to what some have perceived, standardized testing allows us to admit a broader and more diverse range of students,” Dartmouth said.
The pandemic led to many top colleges dropping the requirement, such as Harvard, which said SAT and ACT scores wouldn’t be required until at least 2026. MIT said it would bring back standardized testing in 2022 after temporarily getting rid of the requirement.
Harvard University will begin requiring the SAT or ACT for its fall 2025 admissions cycle. Similarly, the University of Texas at Austin is restoring the testing requirement after four years of an optional policy.
Liberal arts colleges had long considered the idea of fully removing standardized testing from the admissions process, Sherman said, but other colleges did so during the pandemic because of the lack of access.
“The decision to return to requiring standardized testing is an attempt to go back to business as usual, which also includes colleges being conscious of rankings,” he said.
“The middle 50 percent or median SAT or ACT score in the incoming class is not only a potential predictor of student academic success in college but is also usually a formal factor in rankings,” he said. “So colleges want to make sure that they remain competitive in regards to those metrics, which are institution-centered rather than student-centered.”