Dartmouth Scraps SAT, ACT Admission Requirement for One Year

(Bloomberg) -- Dartmouth College is suspending its undergraduate standardized test requirements for one year as Ivy League schools abandon the SAT and ACT exams during the coronavirus pandemic.

Dartmouth's change is effective immediately, according to an email from the Hanover, New Hampshire-based school on Wednesday. Separately, Columbia University said that such tests will be optional for first-year applicants to Columbia College and the engineering school for the fall of 2021.

More than 200 colleges have shelved the SAT and ACT requirement, some for as much as three years, as the spread of the virus has forced test centers to close. Ivy League member Cornell University also made the test optional for current high school juniors.

The College Board, which administers the SAT, said Tuesday it abandoned plans to offer an at-home test because it requires three hours of high quality internet access, which can't be guaranteed for all students.

College Board Scraps Plans to Give SAT Entrance Exam at Home

The College Board's announcement influenced Dartmouth's decision because of the availability of testing for the current junior class, said Lee Coffin, Dartmouth's vice provost for enrollment and dean of admissions and financial aid.

“Our policy pause is a way of saying stay healthy, stay focused, take this off your list and we will join our many peers who are moving forward with a test optional policy,” Coffin said in an interview.

Coffin said he heard from college counselors about the difficulty students were having signing up for the tests. He's also concerned about the fairness of access because the scarcity of test sites is most acute in areas affected by the coronavirus.

“Fewer seats in those impacted areas meant the demand had no outlet for those of us requiring the test,” Coffin said. “We were driving this anxiety.”