Students who hope to enroll in Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts got some good news when the school announced that standardized test scores will no longer be a factor in examining their possible enrollment.
The liberal arts school announced on its website that SAT and ACT scores will no longer be part of their admissions or financial aid evaluations. The school’s previous policy allow students to decide for themselves if they wanted their test scores to be included in the evaluations but the recent decision completely removes that option from the table. Hampshire College officials said they consider the test to be an outdated method of evaluating a student’s academic performance that “more accurately reflects family economic status than potential for college success,” according to the statement.
Standardized testing has long been a contentious issue among educators but the SAT and ACT tests came under fire recently for not keeping up with the times. The College Board recently announced they would alter the SAT test due to claims that the test was more biased towards students from higher economic backgrounds and schools with better funding measures. Changes enacted by the board included the elimination of questions about “obscure” vocabulary words and an optional written exam.
Something tells me that student enrollment at Hampshire College is about to explode. Could you even imagine what high school would have been like if you didn’t have to spend every waking minute worrying about your SAT or Act scores? We imagine it would have been somewhere just about “mildly tolerable.”
Massachusetts College Removes SAT Scores From Admissions Process
