When the College Board introduced the essay portion to the SAT test in 2005, it sent a clear message that all students should have sufficient writing skills. This decision was met with different reactions.
When the College Board introduced the essay portion to the SAT test in 2005, it sent a clear message that all students should have sufficient writing skills. This decision was met with different reactions.
Some justified the necessity of testing writing skills because they were thought to be a strong predictor of success in college while other opposed the decision citing the added test time and higher costs for students.
Now, most colleges, including those in the Ivy League, say it’s times up for SAT/ACT essays. One by one, major colleges and universities have dropped the requirement of these essays and made them optional.
The College Board provided two major reasons why the requirement should be dropped. The first one was its ineffectiveness to assess the students’ skills. According to the organization’s report on the redesigned SAT:
“One single essay historically has not contributed significantly to the overall predictive power of the exam.”
Simply explained, admission officers don’t have substantial evidence to justify the mandatory requirement of SAT/ACT essay. It just doesn’t have that kind of effect on predicting the performance of students and accessing their skills.
The second reason is a more complex one and involves costs.
The Costs of SAT/ACT Essay Test
While it’s pretty difficult to calculate the total costs for taking SAT/ACT for students in the U.S., one thing is clear: they add some significant costs, especially for low-income families. These costs prove to be extreme for many, considering the fact that 1 in 4 high-achieving, low-income students apply to college completely on their own, according to Opening Doors, a report by Jack Kent Cooke Foundation.
For example, a student who wants to take the essay test must pay about $17 just to add the essay to the ACT and $14 to add the essay to the SAT. The cost of the test itself is about $46. Added together, the cost becomes a problem for students from low-income families, so the College Board thought that the elimination of the financial barrier could be a solution to this problem.
In the aforementioned report by College Board, the organization wrote that they:
“Anticipate the cost to students of the redesigned SAT with Essay will be similar to the current cost for the SAT, and that the price of the redesigned SAT without the SAT Essay will be less expensive than the current SAT.”
The elimination of the essay test, therefore, aims to accomplish three important goals:
- Ensuring that extra costs of essay testing don’t drive applicants away
- Removing an extra barrier to quality education for low-income students
- Alleviate financial hardship placed on students who couldn’t take the test for free but required financial assistance.
But will these goals be achieved?
According to academic writing company A-Writer, more and more educational institutions are trying to increase the accessibility of quality education for students from low-income families, and they are making it very clear.
For example, Rachel Dane, a spokesperson from Harvard College, has recently said in a statement that the elimination of SAT/ACT essay cost “will add an additional component to the comprehensive outreach of the Harvard Aid Initiative, which seeks outstanding students from all economic backgrounds,” Yale Daily News reported.
Next, California Institute of Technology also explained their decision to remove the essay test to “eliminate additional testing fees” and “streamline the application process,” described InsideHighEd.
Current College Enrollment Rate for Low-Income Students
An analysis of the share of recent high school graduates enrolling in college by income group reveals an interesting pattern. There is a graph, originally published on Forbes and compiled using data from NCES Digest of Education Statistics, that reveals that the share of low-income students dropped in 2007 and began to increase only in 2013.
Earlier, a student’s chance of enrolling increased reliably with their family income, but that’s not the case right now because students from low-income families enroll at an even higher rate than their middle-income peers. That’s certainly a positive sign for low-income students.
Could it be that the elimination of SAT/ACT essay contributed to the increase in the enrollment for low-income students? No one knows for sure, and it’s probably an effect of a combination of factors, but it’s also very likely that the annulment of this requirement was among them.
At this point, it’s safe to suggest that if the trend of facilitating equality in access to education continues, the share of students from low-income families in U.S. colleges and universities will increase. The SAT/ACT essay, however, will remain optional so the admission officers have more evidence of students’ abilities, but its importance may fade over time. Clearly, the future progress in making college education accessible and reducing the gap between high-income and low-income students depends on all stakeholders in the educational system.
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