Students looking to attend Xavier University will have one less hoop to jump through as they seek admission to the private Catholic four-year university.
School officials announced that Xavier will no longer require students to submit ACT or SAT scores as part of its admissions process. Instead, the university is making those test scores optional — something that students can submit if they feel it will help their application.
University officials say they use a process that considers enough data, including high school GPA, extracurricular activities and other factors, to make admission decisions without the test scores. The hope, they say, is to take some pressure off high-achieving high school students and encourage capable students who might not otherwise apply to give Xavier a shot — potentially diversifying the school’s student body over time.
More than 1,000 universities across the country have made the test scores optional. University of Cincinnati’s Blue Ash and Clermont campuses don’t require the tests, though UC’s flagship campus does, as does Miami University.
The standardized tests have for years been used to try and gauge the likelihood that a student will succeed in college. But test results also evidence deep racial and class disparities. Research has shown that children from families with incomes of more than $200,000 a year score 200 points higher on the 1600-point SAT than students coming from families that bring in $80,000 or less a year. Black and Latinx students score roughly 100 points lower than white students on the tests, likely due to income and educational opportunity disparities between the demographic groups. The tests — and test prep courses — are sometimes prohibitively expensive for lower-income students, though price breaks are available in some circumstances.
This article appears in Aug 21-28, 2019.
