Make SAT testing universally optional: Pros and Cons discussion

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From NPR:
Why Are Colleges Really Going Test-Optional? http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/09/03/436584244/why-are-colleges-really-going-test-optional

“The test-optional policy should strengthen and diversify an already outstanding applicant pool and will broaden access for those high-achieving students who have historically been underrepresented at selective colleges and universities, including students of color, first-generation students and students from low-income households,” said Laurie Koehler, who leads enrollment efforts at George Washington.

In a word: diversity.

It sounds good, but in a recent column in The Hechinger Report, Stephen Burd asks whether schools have “a less altruistic reason.”

“By going test-optional, they appear to be doing one thing but [are really] doing another,” Burd told me in a recent interview from his office at New America, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

The question is: Beyond the admirable goal of wanting to reach more traditionally underrepresented students, why else would schools go test-optional?

“No. 1,” says Burd, getting more applications “allows schools to then reject more students.”

And that, he says, makes them look more selective in the college rankings put out each year by U.S. News & World Report.