Is the best answer choice A, B, C, D, or none of the above? High school students across America are furrowing their brows at that conundrum as they seek top scores on the SAT and ACT, even as more than two-thirds of American colleges and universities no longer require applicants to submit results.

Many universities implemented test-optional policies in the fall of 2020 to combat unequal access to testing centers during the pandemic and amid longstanding criticism that standardized tests favor wealthier students. Now, some experts believe that these revised admission policies are inflaming admissions selectivity rather than leveling the college admissions playing field. 

“What this has really done for a lot of kids is just make the process even more competitive,” the chief executive officer of a New York City-based tutoring program for standardized tests, Tutor Associates, Sasha DeWind, told the Sun. 

Elite universities like Harvard and Stanford that suspended testing requirements in turn reduced their acceptance rates in the 2022 admissions cycle by encouraging more students with high grade point averages and low test scores to apply. 

Additionally, students who earn scores below the 25th percentile are choosing not to submit them, explained the co-founder of the educational consulting firm Entryway, Jennifer Bloom. As a result, the ACT test score ranges of applicants to schools including NYU, Emory, and Washington University at St. Louis increased to between a 33 and a 35 this cycle from between a 31 and a 34 a few years ago. 

“As test scores have diminished in importance, the other parts of the application — including extracurriculars — have increased in importance,” explained Ms. Bloom.

Students with high GPAs who do not submit their test scores will still be less appealing candidates than their peers who do. “If colleges release detailed admissions data, it’s always revealed that a student has a better chance of admission with test scores than without,” Ms. Bloom said. 

Both Ms. Bloom’s and Ms. DeWind’s counselors urge students to achieve and submit high scores to maintain a competitive advantage, especially for those in the New York City private school market. Meanwhile, pro-bono clients “want scores more than ever to make sure that they get scholarships,” Ms. DeWind said. 

Standardized tests have historically enabled students from lesser-known high schools to gain access to prestigious universities. The SAT, which began in 1926, was originally intended to level the playing field when it came to college admissions. “Scores have been one way kids have been able to show their abilities when they’re coming from a place or from a background that is underserved,” Ms. DeWind said.

The SAT’s questions are “instructionally sensitive,” measuring students’ ability to apply what they learned in their high school curriculums, a researcher on the effects of test preparation on college admissions, Derek Briggs, explained. His research has shown that tutoring programs, despite their widespread popularity, have the potential to raise students’ scores by only 10 or 20 points in total on the SAT, mostly on the math section. 

Even so, free coaching services, such as those offered by the online educational platform Khan Academy, can supplement inconsistencies in high school teaching quality and mitigate unequal access to tutoring.

“The tests like SAT and ACT probably have considerable flaws, but they’re probably better than the alternative of not having any test at all,” Mr. Briggs said, noting that a more objective alternative measure does not currently exist. 

“There’s no piece of this process that isn’t affected by where you come from and the privileges you have,” Ms. DeWind said. “It starts from the beginning of your education and moves all the way through this process.” Removing the test requirement alleviates strains on students’ time, responsibilities, and finances, but not underlying differences in resources, she argued. 

“There’s a real worry about exactly what happens in the reconfiguring and the re-weighting of those other pieces of the profile when the test scores aren’t there,” Mr. Briggs added. 

The University of California system has permanently banned students from submitting SAT or ACT scores. Yet Mr. Briggs speculates that schools centered on highly technical STEM curriculum will be less inclined to remain test-optional. 

In March, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reversed its test-optional policy after determining that test scores are necessary for successful admission decisions. “It turns out the shortest path for many students to demonstrate sufficient preparation — particularly for students with less access to educational capital — is through the SAT/ACT,” according to the dean of admissions and student financial services at MIT, Stuart Schmill.

Faculty who are disappointed in the educational preparation of incoming students might pressure other universities to return to the test-mandatory regime. “Tests do a good job of finding the students that faculty like to teach,” a researcher on meritocracy in college admissions, Zachary Bleemer, said.

However, universities will have to make compromises to cultivate both a diverse and academically prepared student body, Mr. Bleemer said. 

Affirmative-action measures can improve the gender and racial composition of admitted students by a factor of up to 10 times more than test-optional policies, he explained. Those policies could soon be ruled unconstitutional, as the Supreme Court will decide next year on Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, a case that turns on race-conscious admissions in higher education. 

In the wake of a potential ruling banning such policies, Mr. Bleemer suspects that “universities are going to look at a large number of alternative policies in trying to maintain student diversity.”