Dive Brief:
- Virginia Commonwealth University is the latest higher education institution to stop requiring SAT scores from certain applicants.
- The school’s president, Michael Rao, said that SAT scores will no longer be required for applicants with high school grade point averages of 3.3 or higher.
- Rao said his school isn’t lowering its standards, but recognizing that grades are a better predictor of success in college and that SATs have racial and socio-economic biases.
Dive Insight:
More schools have been dropping the once-standard requirement of applicants to submit SAT or ACT scores. Last year, Hampshire College became the first competitive four-year college to drop the scores all together from admissions decisions. According to Virginia Commonwealth, four other universities in Virginia and 800 in the U.S. have dropped the SAT requirement. Rao called the SATs "fundamentally flawed," and said the SAT biases have been confirmed by the university’s own research. The university will still require SATs from students applying for engineering and certain other programs, and from applicants for certain scholarships.