I, for one, did not take the SATs in high school. I didn’t even try after the pandemic, primarily because I knew that taking classes from home during COVID stunted my academic growth, so I knew that I wasn’t going to make it far by taking any standardized test.

There wasn’t a point anymore. As New York Times journalist David Leonhardt states: “After the Covid pandemic made it difficult for high school students to take the SAT and ACT, dozens of selective colleges dropped their requirement that applicants do so. Colleges described the move as temporary, but nearly all have since stuck to a test-optional policy.”

Thankfully, the University of Oregon has stuck with a  “test-optional” admissions policy, allowing many students to apply with a better advantage after the pandemic. 

Thousands of students skipped it based on the same reason I didn’t take it. If I had to have taken the SATs before college,I wouldn’t be where I am today. Many other students feel the same. 

UO sophomore Madeline Moore said,“I didn’t take the SATs mainly because most colleges didn’t require them, and I was nervous to take them in general.”

However, some Universities are starting to move away from being “test optional” and reinstating the SATs for enrollment. 

Which schools you may ask?  The list includes Ivy League schools such as Brown, Harvard, Dartmouth and Yale. It almost makes sense to have the requirement reinstated at these schools due to the prestigious stereotype and history of each university. 

Other private and public universities such as MIT, Georgetown, CalTech, Florida State, Fairmont State, Purdue, University of Texas, University of Tennessee, and many others plan on or have already reinstated the SAT. 

At first glance, these universities’ choice to require the SAT may seem unimportant, but these schools’ GPAs are higher than average. It’s not exactly fair to all of a sudden change the requirements for future incoming students when the rest of the applicants “got it easy” in previous years.

Many of these students still had to struggle through the hardships of COVID-19 learning and readjust to in-person instruction after online classes. COVID-19 has affected a larger portion of this generation than universities think, even if they weren’t in high school at the time. I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to change the enrollment policy to require SATs after letting students enroll without them since 2020.

I think that the SATs aren’t the best way to reflect a student’s knowledge of a subject. Everyone’s brain works differently, and they learn and execute what they learn in different ways. In no way are SATs justifiable ways to determine someone’s intelligence. 

We have score gaps, socioeconomic background, different types of test preparation, test accuracy, calculator access, etc… 

Leah Lehmkuhl, a journalist for “The Reflector,” wrote, “An unsatisfactory test score should not determine a student’s level of college readiness or eligibility to go to an elite college, especially when considering the disparities between the test scores of students with different socio-economic statuses.”

At the end of the day, SATs are pointless. There are better alternatives to determining whether someone belongs at a university.