ACT and SAT scores are no longer required for admission to this Missouri university
The night before Sadie Billings took her ACT exam, her stomach was in knots. She was so anxious she couldn’t sleep.
She had been in the same position five times before. And although she had maintained a 4.0 high school grade point average, Billings — even after six tries — was never able to score above a 21, the cutoff for admission to the University of Missouri-Kansas City, her preferred school.
“I worried whether I’d get accepted into UMKC. … No one’s future should be determined by a test score,” she said.
UMKC now agrees. Officials announced Wednesday that the school will no longer require student SAT and ACT scores for admission — joining a growing number of colleges across the country.
Since 2004, more than 1,000 schools have adopted such a test-optional admissions policy — more than 45 have done so in just the past year. UMKC is the first of the University of Missouri System’s four campuses to take this step.
Both the University of Kansas and Kansas State University still consider a student’s ACT or SAT score along with GPA and other criteria when making admission decisions.
Rockhurst University dropped the exam requirement last summer, and William Jewell College has had test-optional admissions since 2012.
“This would have been a game changer for me,” said Billings, who attended high school in Creighton, Missouri, about an hour outside Kansas City, and was eventually admitted to UMKC on a provisional basis. Billings, 22, said she grew up in a low-income family, and had to spend “a lot of hours” working at a pizza shop after school to pay the $46 for each of those admissions exams.
Identifying who will succeed
“We are doing this because this approach has been shown to be both more reliable in identifying students who can succeed and more fair to all applicants,” UMKC Chancellor Mauli Agrawal said Wednesday.
University officials said they have been considering going test optional for some time. “We want to remove barriers” that traditionally have kept capable, resilient students from gaining access to higher education, Agrawal said. “If applicants have performed well in high school, they do not need to take a standardized test … to be considered for admission to UMKC.”
But he warned that the change in admission practice does not change UMKC’s academic standards.
A new study out this week by the American Educational Research Association says that high school grades are a powerful tool for gauging a student’s readiness for college, regardless of which high school a student attends.
A 2018 study released by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, using data from 28 colleges and universities, found that schools with test-optional admissions were seeing increases in applications and greater diversity in enrolled students.
And the study said there was little difference in the graduation rates of students who submitted test scores and those who didn’t.
Consider Billings — the student with the low test scores — she says she thrived in college academically and socially. She’s on track to graduate in May, and the communications major has already has been accepted into graduate school at Texas Tech University, alma mater of Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes.
UMKC made the test-optional decision based on research that has “indicated that high school grades are a more reliable overall predictor of college-level potential than are standardized tests,” said Alice Arredondo, UMKC director of admissions.
She said there is also evidence that standardized tests tend to favor students from higher-income families, are culturally biased and don’t do well determining the academic potential of traditionally underserved applicants.
But the College Board, which administers the SAT, says evidence shows that the best way to predict college success is to review both grades and test scores. SAT and ACT are still required by many of the elite private schools.
How it was done
In the past, UMKC has made admission decisions based on student grade point average, class rank, completion of 17 required high school courses and a standardized test score. Now the university will spend more time reviewing student applications for examples of resilience and self awareness — determined by factors such as school involvement, class load and personal essays — to find students who “will be a good fit for UMKC,” Arredondo said.
“We are not reviewing race and ethnicity. We are reviewing the applicant in entirety based on their performance in high school.”
Agrawal sees the change as a benefit to society, preparing students for the workforce: “We are committed to providing every qualified individual an opportunity to leverage their talent and effort to contribute to our economic development and find life and career success.”
Exclusion of an underserved population from a college education “has a negative impact not just on the individual student, but on our overall economy and society,” he said.
The average college graduate is 24% more likely to be employed than non-college graduates, and their average earnings are $32,000 higher annually and $1 million higher over a lifetime, according to the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities.
The admissions change is also expected to grow enrollment, Agrawal said. “That’s the point, giving more people access.”
In recent years, the university has made boosting enrollment one of its priorities and has focused on reducing the cost of attending UMKC by expanding scholarship opportunities. Agrawal said that in a city of nearly 500,000, UMKC’s enrollment of a little more than 16,000 “is too small.”
UMKC will continue to require test results for admission to certain specialized programs, such as the Conservatory of Music and Dance and its six-year medical school program.
This story was originally published January 29, 2020 at 2:43 PM.
