Texas Universities Are Ditching the SAT and ACT Test Scores Requirement

During the pandemic, many Texas universities accepted students without them having to submit SAT or ACT scores, now they may never go back to using them.

According to the Texas Tribune, in the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic, public universities in Texas made SAT and ACT scores optional for admission to their college.

Now that COVID infections are down and in-person tests are possible again, some universities are keeping the test-optional policy for admitting new students.

“It was an opportunity that a lot of schools are grateful they’ve been able to take,” said Chris Reed, Executive Director of Admissions at Texas A&M University in College Station. “The pandemic created an opportunity when it was the right thing to do. Now we have a living, breathing dataset to evaluate some of those assumptions.”

Texas A&M is extending the test-optional policy to spring 2023. Stephen F. Austin State and UT Dallas have already extended the test score policies through fall 2023, and Texas Tech has extended them through 2025.

Other Texas universities like the University of Houston, Texas State University in San Marcos, and the University of Texas at Tyler say they will make decisions in the coming weeks or months.

It is unclear at this point if the University of Texas at Austin, the most selective university in the state, will remain test-optional for all students past the fall of 2022.

There were discussions even before the pandemic for schools to make the SAT or ACT scores optional, and some school leaders argued that the test results were not necessarily a measure of student performance in college and an additional obstacle for enrollment and low-income students.

So we will see how it goes and if colleges and universities in Texas will stick with the no-test requirement or will require them again.