Amherst Should Set its Own Standard: A Letter to Faculty and Trustees on Testing Requirements in Admissions

To the editors of The Amherst Student:

From Springfield, Mass., I have watched Amherst College from afar, though calling Springfield “afar” requires some generosity. I have been proud of the Association of Amherst Students (AAS), my former stomping grounds, and encouraged by its cooperation with the administration around the new student center and dining hall. Leaving Amherst has given me a different vantage point, but it has hardly diminished my interest in what happens there.

Occasionally, something compels an alum to rejoin the conversation. I write preemptively as the conversation revives around requiring standardized test scores in the admissions process, which I and many others chose not to submit. Before voting on restoring this policy, I hope the faculty and board will take into account not only the advantages of having more metrics for application strength, but also the possibility of discouraging certain students from applying in the first place.

As a low-income student from Springfield, I arrived at Amherst with ambitions and left with skills that don’t show up in standardized test scores. During my time there, I served as AAS president and worked alongside students, faculty, staff, alumni, and administrators across the college. I had the privilege of helping steward a branch of the institution that had taken a chance on me. My experiences were possible because the admissions office saw merit in my application and welcomed me in.

My experience, alongside that of all those who succeed(ed) at Amherst without submitting test scores, testifies to the fact that test scores were not integral to determining our spot. These test-optional admits eventually became people sitting beside you in class, representing you in meetings, eating with you in the dining hall, taking on strenuous tasks and projects for their classes, and helping build the community you inhabit.

The strongest argument for restoring testing comes from a Dartmouth faculty study released in February 2024. It found that SAT/ACT scores explained about 22% of the variation in first-year GPAs, compared with 9% for high school GPAs alone; together, they explained 25%. Scores predicted performance similarly across socioeconomic groups. Researchers also found that some disadvantaged applicants withheld scores that could have helped them because those scores fell below Dartmouth’s published range, despite being strong within their high schools.

Dartmouth’s findings do make it harder to claim that test-optional policies always advance equity. It’s worth taking seriously that contextualized scores can help an admissions officer recognize academic preparation at an unfamiliar or under-resourced school. I want to know whether Amherst’s experience supports Dartmouth’s findings. How have students like me, who applied without scores, done here? If some have struggled, would their scores have helped the admissions office anticipate those difficulties? Before bringing back the requirement, Amherst should explain what it would have learned from those scores that it could not learn from the rest of our applications.

Those questions should include whether requiring test scores might discourage talented students from applying in the first place. Studying enrolled students is essential, but it cannot tell us who we might lose before an application is ever submitted. If Dartmouth’s study found that students from underresourced high schools withheld scores for fear of falling below average, we can only guess how that might affect admissions if submitting test scores were required.  For students and faculty thinking deeply about this, the college needs to share enough of that analysis for its community to evaluate the reasoning. While a correlation with first-year grades matters, it does not, by itself, answer every question about a student’s readiness for or contribution to a residential liberal arts college.

Nor should restoring testing become a convenient answer to anxieties about artificial intelligence (AI) or students’ reading and writing. If students struggle with sustained reading before arriving on campus, a growing generational issue, Amherst should investigate what they struggle with and what instruction helps. If AI complicates assessment, faculty should develop new ways to evaluate students’ thinking. I would much rather see laptops limited in classrooms than see test scores required for admission. A testing requirement ought to be supported by evidence that it will actually address the problems being identified. 

Another reason this conversation feels familiar. In almost every administrative meeting I attended at Amherst, someone eventually raised the question of benchmarking. What were our peers doing? How did our approach compare? What would another institution’s decision suggest about our own? Benchmarking has its place, but in Amherst meetings I often wondered whether we were giving another institution’s decisions more authority than we should. We ask students to exercise independent judgment, and it is fair to expect the college to do the same: we should be able to learn from our peer institutions without assuming their conclusions should become ours.

If we want to benchmark, let’s also consider that no other NESCAC school requires these scores. Having worked with the people who would help shape this decision, I know we have enough expertise and imagination to do more than revive a bygone requirement simply because it is coming back into fashion at the Ivies. Our admissions professionals know how to read an application beyond its numbers. The success of students and alumni admitted without scores might shed light on whether being test-optional has served Amherst well.

Students from wealthier families can also afford private test coaching that others cannot, and admissions officers receive the resulting scores after those unequal opportunities have already done their work. Before voting, Amherst should consider whether reinstating a requirement could undercut its efforts to expand its rural access programs and Access to Amherst. I would rather we put more effort into finding students who have never heard of Amherst, or who assume it is beyond their reach, while letting them decide whether their scores strengthen their applications.

I know how seriously faculty and trustees take their responsibilities, and my affection for the college is part of why I feel obliged to question it. My gentle concern, as a former student and as an alum, is that Amherst can overvalue data in decision making, sometimes obscuring the human being behind the numbers. Faculty and staff come to know students over time, recognizing abilities and potential that may not be apparent from a test score. Their experiences deserve consideration alongside any statistical findings as the college weighs its admissions requirements.

No individual experience can establish the right policy for everyone, but the possibility that a student who might flourish here could lose that opportunity deserves serious attention. Before requiring scores again, Amherst should be able to explain why the rest of that student’s application would no longer be enough, and what it expects to learn from a score that it cannot reasonably learn elsewhere. After all, Terras Irradient asks us to “let them enlighten the lands,” not “let them enlighten the lands only if they get a 1500 on the SAT.”