(By Marlee Napurano, App.com)
Reports of rising cases of COVID-19 and the impact of the pandemic on the economy have monopolized the news. But what about our high school juniors fast approaching their college application seasons?
As it stands now, the admission testing required by over 85% of American colleges and universities has been made unavailable to students since March. The SAT was canceled in March for many New Jersey students whose high school testing locations were closed due to early cases of coronavirus.
Two weeks later, once all U.S. schools had closed, the College Board, the private company responsible for the SAT, and ACT, both suspended their next rounds of testing, the May SAT and the April ACT. This left hundreds of thousands of 11th graders across the country prepped for the spring testing, but with no tests to take.
According to CDC recommendations and with New Jersey still three weeks away from the peak of the pandemic, it is a very real possibility that the June SAT and ACT will be canceled as well.
So where does this leave our juniors with no spring SAT’s and early admission deadlines as early as Oct. 15, 2020? As I see it, we have three possible outcomes. The first hinges on the CDC and local governments giving the all clear by August for public high schools to reopen as testing centers. This would enable the August SAT to run as scheduled.
In this scenario, the October test date would also run as scheduled, giving college applicants those two test dates only to reach their career high scores before the Early Admission deadlines. Of course, in this scenario it is possible that colleges will extend their deadlines for application as they are always the good guys in the process.
For example after superstorm Sandy, colleges extended application deadlines for all students in areas affected by the storm. Extended deadlines could give Early Admission applicants the chance to submit scores from the November and December SAT’s as well. The College Board will no doubt be looking for every opportunity to schedule makeup dates to avoid issuing refunds for the canceled March and May tests, but the college application timeline itself will limit just how many they can schedule.
In the second scenario, if state clearance is not in place in time to permit the administering of the August SAT, it is entirely possible that colleges will not want their application season contingent upon students’ opportunity to take the SAT and ACT. In this case, colleges will waive standardized testing for that admission cycle, essentially going test optional nationwide for the class of 2021.
In place of the SAT/ACT, the colleges will impose some other requirements such as a graded writing sample or extra essays. Either way, there will be additional hoops to jump through. Graduate school programs are already setting precedent for this scenario with universities poised to announce their waiving of GRE and GMAT scores for admission for masters and MBA programs.
We have seen this technology on many platforms currently used in online college and graduate level courses, where testing is performed in a room at home, but with a webcam monitoring for a remote proctor and strict time constraints for completion, all of which ensure the test taker is not collaborating with anyone else or using outside materials.
It may be hard to imagine the manpower required to administer the SAT to thousands of students all in separate locations, but the alternative for the College Board could be the untimely death of the SAT, and they are certain to go down swinging.
So what should you take away from all this if you have a high school junior? The college admission process is sound, fair and pre-dates the SAT by 200 years. American colleges are no strangers to surviving crisis: Yale University, for example, closed its campus for two whole years during the American Revolution (yep, that’s how long they’ve been around).
Colleges will not persecute our kids for the Covid-19 damage done to admission test scheduling. They are on the forefront of efforts to preserve normalcy during social distancing, delivering admission decisions last week as usual and brainstorming creative ways to celebrate the achievements of seniors in lieu of traditional commencement ceremonies. This season’s college admission process will be different from the norm, but no more difficult. The hardest part will probably be getting your refund for your canceled SAT.
Marlee Napurano is co-founder of WaveLength tutoring and test prep, a test preparation and college consulting company serving Monmouth and Ocean counties.
