The Billion-Dollar SAT Industry is Facing an Existential Crisis
After years of buildup, will the pandemic finally put an end to Big Test?
Last Monday, the University of Maryland announced that it would extend its test-optional application policy to the spring and fall admissions periods of 2022 and 2023, allowing students to choose whether to submit SAT or ACT scores. It was just the latest nail in the coffin of the college-entrance-exam establishment: the College Board and American College Testing, which administer the tests, and the test-prep ecosystem that has evolved around them.
Like many other schools, Maryland first implemented the test-optional policy last year, for students applying to enter school in fall 2020. But calls for un-testing have been growing for years, and schools had been steadily dropping testing requirements well before Covid hit the U.S. last spring. According to FairTest, an organization focused on addressing issues related to fairness and accuracy in student test-taking and scoring, 1,050 schools had already implemented test-optional policies by September 2019.
But the pandemic caused a seismic shift. With test sites—often, schools—shuttered, students who had spent months preparing to take the SATs and ACTs last year found themselves shut out. According to numbers released…
