By Jeffrey Dalton

Over the past year, colleges and universities in the United States have adjusted their policies regarding standardized testing, especially for the SAT and the ACT. Though these exams were originally required by virtually all undergraduate programs, select institutions are increasingly choosing to go “test optional” - considering both student applications with test scores AND those without test scores.

For some domestic students (those who are currently living in the US and applying to American colleges and universities), this is a great policy. Unable to pay for test prep services and disadvantaged by circumstances, these students now have more opportunity to apply to and be accepted by the best institutions out there, including the Ivy League. An education at an elite institution is life-changing - that’s why so many students apply!

For international students, however, nothing has really changed.

The latest decisions statistics suggest that students are admitted to universities roughly in proportion to their testing status. This is to say that the percentage of students who submit test scores is roughly the same as the percentage of students who are admitted with test scores. And as always, students are compared to their peer group: international students are assessed against each other.

None of this, however, means that testing is no longer important. On the contrary, testing is now more important than ever.

Good test scores make an application stand out more, not less. In particular, admissions departments analyze both the topline scores and individual subscores - Reading/Writing and Math sections for the SAT; on the ACT, the Reading, English, Math, and Science sections - and high performance in one section may provide some support if the education profile is weak in certain areas. Remember, grades in classes are the single greatest indicator of academic potential, but a very high Math score, for example, may contribute to an application if grades in ordinary math courses are slightly lower than desirable.

Additionally, not all curricula are equally familiar to admissions counselors. Fair or not, admissions counselors are often more familiar with American curricula - especially AP and IB - than they are with other national curricula, including British (A Levels), Indian (CBSE), and French (Baccalaureate). A good score on the SAT or on the ACT provides a standard against which students from these curricula may be judged against their peers. If there is any doubt as to the rigor of a student’s high school’s curriculum, and therefore the student’s ability to learn from and contribute to university scholarship, fine performance on a standardized test may, at least in part, assuage concern.

Lastly, students of particular backgrounds are, again, fairly or otherwise, expected to sit the exam. Admissions strives to be just but, given the amount of uncertainty in the world, it is difficult not to fall back on trusted information. Students in Dubai have access to world-class infrastructure and good weather. There is little reason why a student here could not arrange to sit the ACT or the SAT during their years of secondary school. Students elsewhere in the world, certainly in countries with few testing sites or frequent inclement weather, for example, may be offered wider latitude in submitting or not submitting scores. It will be expected of students across the UAE applying to American universities that they will have taken the SAT or the ACT. The access is, quite honestly, there.

For this reason, the lack of an SAT or ACT from certain students will raise more questions than it answers. “Optional” components are only sometimes actually optional, and our advice as admissions consultants generally is that if given the opportunity to further strengthen your application through additional information or resources - or, in this case, academic achievement - then students should unequivocally do so.

- Hale Education Group