The number of colleges that require applicants to complete the timed-essay portion of college admission tests is dwindling.
On Friday, Yale University said applicants will no longer be required to submit an essay score from the SAT or the ACT. The policy will take effect for rising high school seniors who seek to enter the university’s Class of 2023. Yale’s action comes weeks after Harvard University and Dartmouth College dropped the requirement.
In recent years many states, counties and cities have funded SAT and ACT testing during the school day in public schools, making the exams free for students. Sometimes, those testing programs include the optional essay sections, but sometimes they don’t. That produces a quandary for students who might be thinking about whether to apply to colleges that require the essay: Should they have to take the test all over again just to get an essay score?
Yale acknowledged the problem in announcing its new policy.
“We hope this will enable more students who participate in school-day administrations of the SAT or ACT to apply to Yale without needing to register for an additional test,” Yale said in an email to counselors.
Few schools now require applicants to take the tests with essays. Among those that do are the University of California and Stanford, Princeton, Duke and Brown universities. Most of the Ivy League has dropped the requirement. Selective colleges typically require students to submit one or more essays with their applications, and they also look closely at performance in English classes.
The SAT essay has a complicated history. For many years, students were able to submit essay scores from the College Board, which oversees the SAT, through what are now known as SAT Subject tests (a program separate from the main SAT). In 2005, the main SAT was revised to include a required essay section, and the scale for the total test changed to a maximum score of 2400. In 2016, the main SAT was overhauled again. The maximum score reverted to 1600, and the 50-minute essay section was made separate and optional from the three-hour main test.
In the high school Class of 2017, about 1.7 million students took the SAT. Seventy percent of them — 1.2 million — took it with the essay.
The essay version of the ACT — officially known as ACT with Writing — debuted in 2005. A little more than half of the 2 million ACT takers in the Class of 2017 used this option. The writing section adds 40 minutes to a test that otherwise takes about three hours.
The essay option often means added expense for students. The main SAT fee is $46 without the essay and $60 with it. The ACT fee is also $46, or $62.50 with the writing portion. Both tests provide fee waivers to students in financial need.
The College Board and ACT had no immediate comment on Yale’s action.
Stanford’s dean of admission and financial aid, Richard Shaw, said he is reviewing the issue. “However, we should treasure writing as an important skill in life and it should be a major focus (of) K-12,” Shaw wrote in an email. “So the question becomes what is the alternative to assessing writing competency in the admissions process.”
