Brown University becomes college that is latest to drop SAT, ACT essay for applicants
Brown University this week became the school that is latest to avoid requiring prospective students to take SAT and ACT essay tests, joining a burgeoning list of selective universities and colleges which have eliminated the necessity this current year.
Brown was the last Ivy League school to require the writing assignment. Princeton University dropped the necessity earlier this month. Less than 25 schools now mandate students to submit essay scores as part of their college applications, based on some estimations.
Brown officials said the essay requirement might pose an impediment to students from low-income families. Students with lesser means often make use of free SAT testing offered through the school trip to nearly 8,000 schools across the country, in accordance with the university.
But the free offerings do not always range from the portion that is writing of exam, which university officials feared could dissuade students from applying to schools that want it.
“It’s important to allow students from low-income families to use the tests already offered by their school districts and never place an undue burden on them to go in separately outside of normal school hours,” Logan Powell, Brown’s dean of admission, said in a news release. “Our goal is that for almost any student that is talented in Brown, the program process is not a deterrent.”
Brian Clark, a university spokesman, said Brown continues to assess students’ writing abilities based on how they fare in writing-intensive high school classes and through college application essay questions.
“Standardized test performance is just one point of measurement, and we also have a look at an array of factors when considering each applicant for admission,” he said.
Applicants may still essay that is voluntarily submit, as well as the university encourages students to submit a graded paper from a humanities or social sciences class if they apply.
The essay tests emerged more than a dozen years ago in hopes they would reshape college admission testing and provide a tool to measure a student’s potential.
The faculty Board, which runs the SAT, mandated a 25-minute writing assignment in addition towards the main test 13 years ago and raised the maximum total score to 2400. The business overhauled the test in 2016, reverting to a high score of 1600 and scoring an optional 50-minute essay separately.
Zach Goldberg, a College Board spokesman, said in a contact the redesigned SAT still requires students to show writing skills. Within the writing and language portion of the test, students are asked to learn passages and answer questions that are multiple-choice how or if the writing should be revised.
“Everyone agrees that writing essays and developing research that is extensive are necessary for college readiness and like it success,” Goldberg said. “We genuinely believe that the SAT Essay provides a complement that is strong the multiple-choice section by asking students to demonstrate reading, analysis, writing, and critical thinking skills into the context of analyzing a provided source text.”
The ACT’s 40-minute essay is definitely optional and doesn’t factor to the test’s main score, that will be 36. Wayne Camara, the ACT’s Horace Mann research chair, said the company acknowledges the essay has drawbacks and upsides – it does not measure other kinds of writing, such as for instance longer pieces students may develop with time, but Camara said it can offer universities and colleges a way to compare students across schools.
“Colleges, universities certainly have freedom to decide what measures they need to make use of to evaluate candidates for admissions,” he said, adding about 50 percent of students who use the ACT choose the writing assignment. “We always felt that the essay has benefits as limitations.”