‘Fiske Guide’ to Drop SAT and ACT Scores

This marks a dramatic change in applying to college.

Edward B. Fiske characterizes use of average scores this year as promoting “inaccurate and misleading data” in his comprehensive and reputable college guide. Therefore, The Fiske Guide to Colleges 2022 will feature no test scores. We can predict that other guides will follow.

Why?

“...only 44 percent of those who applied to college through the Common Application through Feb. 15 2021 submitted SAT or ACT scores. That represents a substantial decline from last year (comparing only colleges that used the Common App both years), when the total through Feb. 15, 2020, was 77 percent.”

Most of my students still choose to take standardized tests, and I still encourage them to do so unless preparing for testing is, or becomes, too stressful and sabotages their grades or if they are poor test takers.

I have seen the shift in attitudes towards testing shift for the past ten + years. Test optional colleges were the outliers, albeit a large group of schools that grew each year. The lack of opportunity for students in many areas to test during the pandemic pushed us to the current status of testing. Nearly all colleges are test-optional,

test-blind, or test-flexible. Exceptions are the Florida and Georgia public university systems. Many colleges have committed to remaining test optional permanently, while some are making their decisions one year at a time.

Despite the current position on test scores, one answer does not fit all. Contact me to discuss test scores in the context of the 2021 admissions data I have from my own students and those of consultants nation-wide.