Recently, many changes have been made in the college recruitment and application process. Some of the major changes that have arisen are the inability to have race be a factor in admission decisions, SAT and ACT tests becoming optional, and a decline in acceptance rates at the nation’s most exclusive colleges and universities. 

The college search and application process has changed over the years. Since COVID, schools have removed previously mandatory SAT and ACT test requirements, and some elite institutions have ended preferences for legacies, the term used for children or grandchildren of alumni.

Standardized tests like the ACT and SAT have continued to be optional for applicants for practical and social justice reasons. Practically, colleges found during COVID, when students often couldn’t sit for standardized tests, that they could reasonably make admissions decisions without the tests. Now that testing is widely available again, many colleges have continued to make the SAT and ACT optional for social justice reasons. Research has found that standardized tests usually favor wealthier applications, including white and Asian-American students. Many wealthier students take the tests numerous times, inevitably improving their scores. Further, wealthier students can afford private test prep tutors, which offer a huge advantage over those who can’t afford such test prep, which typically costs hundreds of dollars per hour.

Mr. David McCauley, Northwood’s Director of College Counseling, isn’t sad to see test requirements go. “I don’t like them at all,” McCauley said. He doesn’t like them because he does not believe a single test determines the work of four years of a student. The student’s academic record speaks far more than a single multiple-choice test.  

College acceptance rates at the nation’s most selective schools have gone down in recent years. McCauley shared that acceptance rates for students at Northwood have stayed the same and, if anything, have risen a little bit. But on the national scene, McCauley believes the reason for the decline is that, since COVID, schools have removed standardized testing, which has created an uptick in applications at the most elite institutions. More students have applied who were never going to get in before because students believe it’s easier to get into a school without an SAT or ACT test. An uptick in apps will result in fewer students getting accepted. So, this is why there has been a decline in acceptance rates