Carleton recently announced its decision to implement a permanent test-optional policy for admissions. The change, announced on Feb. 13 in a newsletter by College President Alison Byerly, marks the college’s embracing of a five-year pilot program originally created to support applicants during COVID-19, suspending the requirement that applicants submit standardized test scores.
Carleton first became test-optional in 2020, when many prospective students were unable to take standardized tests because of pandemic procedures.
“We needed to decide whether to maintain that test-optional strategy or return to our previous requirements,” Byerly said.
Through the guidance of the college’s Admissions and Financial Aid Committee (AFAC) who advises and sets policies for the Admissions and Financial Aid Offices, the college recently decided on its new policy. According to Carleton Admissions’s statement, the conclusion “follows extensive analysis, discussion, and community feedback, including an externally conducted study that showed Carleton’s holistic application review process is effective at assessing the academic readiness of each student, regardless of whether or not they submitted test scores.”
A critical component of the admissions process at Carleton is to make the application process as accessible to as many people as possible. Part of the pilot-program for the test-optional process was to understand how to evaluate applicants without a data-point of their test scores.
Vice President and Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Art Rodriguez ’96, explained that the Admissions committee saw that once test scores became optional in 2020, there were “increases in applications to the college … specifically, we saw increases from international students applying to [Carleton].” Rodriguez said this was a critical component of the change since Carleton aims to bring together a diverse community full of students with different backgrounds.
“The accessibility that a test-optional application provided is one of extreme significance and vital to making the campus as inclusive as possible,” Byerly said. “The test-optional policy allows each student to make the best case for themselves and makes Carleton appealing to a wider range of prospective applicants.”
It was also acknowledged that years of work were put into analyzing the beneficial effects of the policy, with AFAC reaching out to other institutions, such as Bowdoin College, that have experience with test-optional admissions. These schools provided guidance on the implementation of the policy and helped make the transition as seamless as possible.
One of the most important things that the Office of Admissions kept in mind during this change was maintaining equity. Staff had to be trained on how to read applications without test scores as a data point, and although prior to the change test scores were never the most essential element of an application, an omission of them entirely was a difference worth reevaluating the process of reviewing as a whole.
As Rodriguez put it, the Office of Admissions surfaced a core question during the reevaluation of the application review process: “how do we gauge that students are college ready for Carleton?” The answer was found through the “academic rating” that admissions assigned to each application that was based on more important factors such as high school transcript, GPA and kinds of classes that students were taking, all based on the type of school that they attended.
“The academic rating we used in our review process was the strongest predictor for how students might perform at the college,” said Rodriguez. “AFAC saw that as a benefit because then we didn’t have to rely on test scores alone as part of the process; there were other criteria factors in our holistic review that understood how a student might navigate Carleton academically.”
There are also important characteristics that admissions look for in their application review process, such as students who “have curiosity and excitement around learning.” These qualities are harder to define through quantitative metrics, so emphasizing a holistic approach helps the Admissions Office to understand how prospective students will bring these characteristics to life in the community on campus, explained Rodriguez.
Rodriguez explained that Carleton is a ‘values driven institution’ that focuses on building a community that is kind, curious and have a passion for engaging with the world around them.. “Carleton’s admissions process should be void of test-scores that have the ability to possibly limit bright intellectuals from applying to the college. He summarized the way that admissions at Carleton looks at applicants and pledges to frame the review process: “essentially we evaluate them as a human.’”