"Harvard College will no longer require applicants to submit scores from the optional writing portions of the ACT and SAT beginning with the Class of 2023, according to a Monday statement.
‘Harvard will accept the ACT/SAT with or without writing, starting with the Class of 2023, entering in August 2019,’ College spokesperson Rachael Dane wrote in an emailed statement. ‘This change will add an additional component to the comprehensive outreach of the Harvard Financial Aid Initiative (HFAI), which seeks outstanding students from all economic backgrounds.’
Students who choose to take the writing portion of either exam pay an extra $14 for the SAT and $16.50 for the ACT, though fee waivers are available for both." …
My guess why Harvard does this is that there are too many “wealthy” students taking tutoring classes and improving their writing scores while “poor” students couldn’t afford tutoring. But why can’t Harvard just set a lower threshold for the writing score because, after all, if an “outstanding” student performs so poorly on the writing section, he/she can’t be said to be outstanding.
Harvard students need to be able to write. The freshman expository writing classes do not teach how to write in any basic sense. I don’t really think this is about giving a pass to students with deficiencies in writing. Presumably writing skills will be apparent in daily high school classes and Harvard can evaluate them that way.
Perhaps the cost is a factor but more likely Harvard has not found the SAT and ACT writing tests that helpful.