Standardized Tests and Affirmative Action

Abstract

The University of California recently suspended through 2024 the requirement that California applicants submit SAT scores, upending the major role standardized testing has played in college admissions. We study the impact of this decision and its interplay with other policies-such as affirmative action-on admitted class composition.We develop a market model with schools and students. Students have an unobserved true skill level, a potentially observed demographic group membership, and an observed application with both test scores and other features. Bayesian schools optimize the dual-objectives of admitting (1) the "most qualified" and (2) a "diverse" cohort. They estimate each applicant's true skill level using the observed features and potentially their group membership, and then admit students with or without affirmative action.We show that dropping test scores may exacerbate disparities by decreasing the amount of information available for each applicant. However, if there are substantial barriers to testing, removing the test improves both academic merit and diversity by increasing the size of the applicant pool. We also find that affirmative action alongside using group membership in skill estimation is an effective strategy with respect to the dual-objective. Findings are validated with calibrated simulations using cross-national testing data.

Essay content and style are strongly related to household income and SAT scores: Evidence from 60,000 undergraduate applications

“…If analysis consistently finds that essay content and style reflect socioeconomic resources in nontrivial ways, then essay requirements may require the same level of critical scrutiny that standardized testing has been receiving. Removing SAT scores from admission files would likely remove practical barriers to selective colleges for at least some students (39) [removing SAT scores may also limit applicants' ability to know how they might fare in college, a crucial signal (2)], but if essays encode as much information as SAT scores and have a stronger relationship with household income, then the use of essays in admission decisions warrants careful consideration by researchers and admission professionals alike.…”

On fair selection in the presence of implicit and differential variance

“…On the other hand, we do not include the results on two-stage decisions makers for conciseness. Following [1], Garg et al [28] studied a similar model (using the term differential variance that we also adopt here). The authors propose a model of school admission with students of two groups: advantaged and disadvantaged.…”

Fair ranking: a critical review, challenges, and future directions

“…Finally, we note that uncertainties, including the above, may be differential, affecting some participants more than others, even within the same protected groups. Such differential informativeness, for example, might occur in ranking settings where the platform has more information on some participants (through longer histories, or other access differences) than others [49,60]. The result of such differential informativeness may cause downstream disparate impact, such as privileging longer-serving providers over newer and smaller ones.…”