Are Elite Colleges Hurting High-Achieving Applicants from Disadvantaged Backgrounds by Going Test Optional?

Sacerdote, Staiger, and Tine (2025) examined whether test-optional college admissions policies help or harm high-achieving applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds. They analyzed admissions and enrollment data from Dartmouth College covering more than 99,000 applicants across test-required and test-optional years. Their primary question was whether withholding SAT or ACT scores affects admission outcomes. They found that high-achieving disadvantaged students often failed to submit scores that would have strengthened their applications. Among disadvantaged applicants with strong scores, reporting them increased admission probabilities from 2.9% to 7.2%, more than doubling their chances of admission. They concluded that test-optional policies can unintentionally disadvantage talented students from less advantaged backgrounds.

Why This Article Was Selected for The Policy Scientist

This article addresses a policy question that extends well beyond college admissions: how institutions identify talent and allocate opportunity. As universities, employers, and policymakers increasingly debate the role of standardized measures, understanding whether test-optional policies improve or reduce access for high-achieving students from disadvantaged backgrounds has become especially timely. Sacerdote, Staiger, and Tine have contributed extensively to this literature, and this study advances the discussion by showing how admissions offices may interpret test scores within an applicant’s broader context. The dataset is unusually strong, covering nearly 100,000 applicants and including otherwise hidden test scores for many non-submitters. The findings are likely most applicable to highly selective institutions rather than higher education generally. The statistical analysis is careful and persuasive, but the study remains observational rather than a causal inference design. Future research using stronger causal methods or experimental approaches would provide greater confidence about the effects of test-optional policies.

Full Citation and Link to Article

Sacerdote, B., Staiger, D. O., & Tine, M. (2025). How test optional policies in college admissions disproportionately harm high achieving applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds. American Economic Review: Insights, forthcoming. https://doi.org/10.1257/aeri.20250177

Central Research Question

This study examines whether test-optional admissions policies alter the likelihood that high-achieving applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds are admitted to highly selective colleges. Specifically, the authors investigate whether students make optimal decisions about submitting SAT or ACT scores when score reporting is voluntary and whether admissions offices use standardized test scores in a contextual manner that differs across applicant backgrounds. The article addresses a central question in higher education policy: do test-optional policies expand opportunity, or do they inadvertently reduce the visibility of academically strong students from less advantaged circumstances? The authors focus on Dartmouth College and analyze whether applicants who choose not to submit scores experience different admissions outcomes than otherwise similar applicants who report their scores.

The study also evaluates a broader claim frequently made in debates over standardized testing: that test scores may disadvantage applicants from lower-income backgrounds. The authors investigate whether test scores are actually interpreted in absolute terms or whether admissions offices incorporate information about an applicant’s educational and socioeconomic context when evaluating academic achievement. By examining score-reporting behavior and admissions outcomes simultaneously, the article seeks to determine whether test-optional policies produce unintended consequences for the very students they are often assumed to help.

Previous Literature

The article builds on several strands of literature concerning college admissions, educational inequality, and standardized testing. Earlier research produced mixed conclusions regarding the effects of test-optional admissions policies. Some studies suggested that eliminating testing requirements might increase application rates and improve demographic diversity, while others found little evidence that applicant quality or diversity changed substantially. The rapid adoption of test-optional policies during the COVID-19 pandemic intensified interest in these questions and created an opportunity to evaluate the consequences of large-scale policy changes.

The authors also engage with research examining the predictive validity of standardized test scores. Numerous studies have found that SAT and ACT scores predict college performance, retention, and subsequent educational outcomes. Recent work by Chetty, Deming, and Friedman demonstrated that standardized test scores are associated not only with academic success but also with later labor-market outcomes at elite institutions. The present study extends this literature by examining how test scores are used within admissions decisions rather than focusing exclusively on their predictive value.

Another important contribution involves the concept of contextual evaluation. Admissions offices often claim that they evaluate academic accomplishments relative to available opportunities, yet empirical evidence on how such contextual evaluation functions has been limited. The authors provide direct evidence that standardized test scores may carry different implications depending on an applicant’s background, high school environment, and socioeconomic circumstances. In doing so, they connect longstanding debates about merit, opportunity, and admissions practices with newly available evidence from the test-optional era.

Data

The analysis relies on applicant-level administrative records from Dartmouth College. The authors examine applicants from four admissions cycles: 2017 and 2018, when test scores were required, and 2021 and 2022, when test submission was optional. The resulting dataset contains information on approximately 99,000 applicants and includes detailed measures of academic achievement, admissions outcomes, and demographic characteristics.

Available variables include SAT or ACT scores, high school grade point averages, class rank, number of Advanced Placement courses, admissions assessments of academic rigor, neighborhood income measures, first-generation college status, Pell Grant eligibility, international student status, and characteristics of applicants’ high schools. The dataset also incorporates College Board Landscape indicators that capture educational and socioeconomic challenges associated with individual high schools.

A particularly valuable feature of the data is the availability of “hidden” test scores. Many applicants who elected not to submit scores to admissions offices had nevertheless sent official score reports to Dartmouth earlier in the application process. As a result, the researchers could observe standardized test scores for approximately 5,000 applicants whose scores were unavailable to admissions officers but available to the researchers. This unusual data feature allows the authors to compare admissions outcomes among students with similar underlying test scores who made different reporting decisions. Such information is rarely available in studies of test-optional admissions and substantially strengthens the analysis.

Methods

The authors employ a combination of descriptive analyses, regression models, and weighting procedures to estimate the consequences of score-reporting decisions. Their central strategy compares applicants with similar SAT scores who either submitted or withheld those scores during the test-optional period. Because only a subset of score non-submitters have observable hidden scores, the authors estimate propensity-score weights to account for the probability that a hidden score is observed in the research data.

The study relies primarily on observational statistical methods rather than experimental or quasi-experimental causal inference techniques. The authors estimate admissions probabilities across SAT score ranges and examine how those probabilities differ by socioeconomic background, first-generation status, and characteristics of applicants’ high schools. Ordinary least squares regressions are used to estimate the relationship between score reporting and admissions outcomes while controlling for a wide range of applicant characteristics.

Several robustness checks are conducted using alternative weighting procedures. The authors test whether results remain stable under different assumptions regarding the distribution of hidden scores and the composition of applicant pools across test-required and test-optional periods. The consistency of findings across these specifications increases confidence that the observed patterns are not artifacts of a particular weighting approach.

Although the methods are careful and transparent, the study does not establish causality in the same manner as a randomized controlled trial or a strong quasi-experimental design. The results identify highly suggestive relationships between score reporting and admissions outcomes but cannot fully eliminate concerns regarding unobserved differences among applicants.

Findings/Size Effects

The study reports several important findings. First, the transition to test-optional admissions substantially increased the number of applications received by Dartmouth. Applications rose from approximately 42,000 during the test-required years to approximately 57,000 during the test-optional years, representing a 35 percent increase. However, the demographic composition of the applicant pool changed very little. Measures of socioeconomic status, first-generation status, and educational advantage remained remarkably similar across periods.

Second, standardized test scores strongly predict academic success at Dartmouth. SAT scores alone explain approximately 22 percent of the variation in first-year grade point averages, while high school GPA explains only about 9 percent. The relationship between test scores and academic performance remains consistent across socioeconomic and demographic groups.

Third, the study finds substantial evidence that admissions offices interpret test scores in context rather than in absolute terms. Low-income applicants often have admissions probabilities comparable to or greater than those of higher-income applicants despite lower average test scores. This pattern suggests that admissions officers evaluate achievement relative to educational opportunity and background.

The most important finding concerns score-reporting behavior. Applicants with similar SAT scores report their scores at similar rates regardless of socioeconomic background. However, disadvantaged students benefit substantially more from reporting strong scores. Among less advantaged applicants with SAT scores above 1420, reporting scores increases admission probabilities by approximately 4.3 percentage points. Their admissions chances rise from 2.9 percent to roughly 7.2 percent, representing an increase of approximately 2.5 times.

Students from lower-income neighborhoods experience even larger relative effects. High-scoring applicants from such backgrounds can increase their admission probabilities by more than sixfold through score submission. Similar patterns appear among first-generation students and applicants from schools that rarely send students to Dartmouth. In contrast, more advantaged applicants experience little measurable benefit from reporting strong scores because admissions officers already possess substantial information with which to evaluate their academic records.

Conclusion

The authors conclude that test-optional admissions policies may unintentionally reduce admission opportunities for high-achieving applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds. The central mechanism is not differential treatment by admissions officers but rather applicants’ incomplete understanding of how their test scores are evaluated. Because less advantaged students often underestimate the value of their scores, many choose not to submit information that would substantially strengthen their applications.

The study also demonstrates that standardized test scores remain powerful predictors of academic success and that elite admissions offices appear to interpret those scores within a broader contextual framework. Rather than functioning solely as measures of privilege or advantage, test scores may provide additional information that helps identify academically talented students whose accomplishments might otherwise be difficult to evaluate.

Although the findings are derived from a single highly selective institution, they offer important evidence regarding the operation of test-optional admissions policies. The authors acknowledge limitations related to generalizability and causal identification while providing one of the most detailed examinations to date of how score-submission decisions affect admissions outcomes. Their results suggest that understanding applicant behavior is essential for evaluating the consequences of test-optional admissions systems.