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Amina Salahou was planning to take the SAT for free in April at her high school — that is, until the coronavirus pandemic canceled it.

“I planned on taking it in April, then depending on my score, taking it again in August,” said Salahou, a senior at Nottingham High School who plans to apply to Syracuse University. “Hopefully I get to take it at least once.”

But Salahou may not have to complete the SAT to apply to SU after all. In June, SU joined colleges and universities across the country in announcing that it will switch to test-optional admissions for fall 2021.

As of Tuesday, SU hasn’t indicated that the test-optional admissions process will include students applying to the university past fall 2021. College admissions experts told The Daily Orange that dropping the requirement permanently could create a fairer and more financially accessible admissions process in the long-run.

“Fundamentally, why do we even require the test?” said Cathy Engstrom, an associate professor in SU’s School of Education and an expert in higher education. “We’re assuming that the test is an indicator of student success, and there’s very little evidence to suggest that it is.”

Despite college admissions offices’ near-universal adoption of standardized testing, there’s almost no evidence that the tests are an accurate indicator of students’ likelihood to succeed in college, Engstrom said.

The test can also pose a financial burden for prospective college applicants, said Dean Skarlis, president of the College Advisor of New York, an organization that guides students and families through college admissions and financial aid. The SAT costs students about $50 per sitting, a figure that rises to about $65 if students choose to take an optional essay component.

Not all students can easily afford to take the SAT or ACT once, let alone several times as some counselors recommend, Engstrom said.

“Many of our families struggle at times to meet many of their basic needs, so anything excess can be pretty debilitating to somebody who has just enough to make ends meet,” said Jeffrey Eysaman, executive director of the Boys and Girls Club of Syracuse, which offers academic after school tutoring programs.

Salahou said she’s lucky to go to a high school that offers financial assistance to students applying for college, including three SAT fee waivers and free in-school testing dates. But students who don’t have those opportunities are at a disadvantage, she said.

The cost of standardized testing can include more than the price of the test itself. Public schools often don’t do enough to prepare students to take the standardized tests required on college applications, so a majority of students will need to pay for some sort of outside college tutoring or test prep to succeed on the exams, Engstrom said.

“Students who attend public schools in a low-income district really have a disadvantage mainly because you have to do everything on your own,” said Maryam Almafrachi, a senior at Nottingham, which is part of the Syracuse City School District. “Unless you come from a financially stable family and they have the income to pay for private tutoring.”

Anisa Salahou, Amina’s twin sister who is also a senior at Nottingham, said her school has done a good job guiding students through the college admissions process. But she doesn’t feel like her classes prepared her much to take the SAT or ACT.

While SU has offered an SAT prep program to all SCSD students in the past, the university canceled it this year due to the pandemic, Anisa said. Aside from Advanced Placement exams and standardized tests, Anisa and Amina both said they have yet to take any college entrance exams.

Students who wish to apply to schools that still require standardized tests may need some form of outside tutoring, possibly at an additional cost, Skarlis said.

College application fees can also add to the cost of applying to college, he said. SU has an application fee of $85, according to the university’s website.

Skarlis estimated that his students pay about $800 to $1,000 in application and testing fees for college admissions alone. This price varies depending on how many schools a student applies to and how many times they choose to take the SAT or ACT.

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Will Cardimone, director of college counseling at Manlius Pebble Hill School, a private college preparatory school in Syracuse, recommends that his students take standardized tests more than once. Many colleges take students’ highest score on each section from all their test attempts, he said.

Cardimone also suggests students take a pre-SAT and a pre-ACT in 10th grade to see which format they like better. His students typically have taken the SAT once or more before their senior year, but that’s changed this year, he said.

“With COVID, many students have no standardized testing in place, and that’s why so many colleges nationwide have waived testing requirements for the Class of 2021,” Cardimone said.

Manlius Pebble Hill School offers a standardized test prep course at an additional cost to students, which Cardimone said many students take advantage of. He doesn’t tell his students to take any standardized test more than three times, and most do not.

The benefit of standardized testing is that it’s the same across the country, whereas some students may have a lower GPA because they had a more rigorous high school curriculum, Skarlis said. But standardized tests still negatively affect low-income students in districts that lack the resources to prepare students to take the tests, he said.

Lack of exposure to college preparation and the application process can also discourage some students, particularly those from low-income neighborhoods, from applying to college entirely, said Eysaman, from the Boys and Girls Club of Syracuse.

Eysaman would like to see more opportunities for his kids to apply to more schools without concern for financial difficulty.

“In neighborhoods of high need, there’s never enough help,” he said. “We all try to do our best.”

The SAT and ACT place other stressors on families aside from the financial strain, Eysaman said. Two of the parents he is working with don’t speak English, and the language barrier is making it difficult for them to help their son navigate his college application.

SCSD does its best to prepare students for college, Eysaman said. But programs like the Boys and Girls Club are especially important in providing tutoring to low-income students.

While SU’s application process poses some obstacles to low-income applicants, the university isn’t much different from most across the country in terms of admissions, Engstrom said.

SU and other schools moving to a test-optional application model is a “silver lining” of the pandemic, she said, as the switch may force colleges to consider dropping standardized tests long-term.

“One positive thing that may come under this pandemic is that, overnight, almost half the institutions across the country have become test-optional,” Engstrom said. “Let’s see what that does. Let’s see what kind of classes they admit and see what kind of success those students have.”

Published on September 8, 2020 at 11:28 pm

Contact Sarah: [email protected] | @sarahalessan