Hampshire College, a liberal arts institution in western Massachusetts, has for the last few years touted the success of its test-blind admissions policy each September with a new report. This coincides with the annual college rankings announced by U.S. News & World Report.
Hampshire’s report is also designed to counter the fact that it is not included in the highly publicized rankings because of its bold decision two years ago to adopt a test-blind admissions policy. Hampshire is currently in the foreground of a national movement among hundreds of four-year, liberal arts schools—including many considered elite—to have decreased reliance upon ACT/SAT test scores in college admissions.
These institutions are self-identifying in three admissions categories: test-optional, test-flexible and test-blind.
“In 2014, we interviewed 50 highly rated third- and fourth-year students and went back and looked at their admission files,” Meredith Twombly, Hampshire’s dean of enrollment and retention, tells Diverse.
“We saw clear patterns in motivation, passion, follow-through, leadership and empathy. … then we also looked at the data associated with those files. Most of [the students] had submitted test scores, so we compared that data with the data of first-year struggling students, and we found that test scores didn’t predict who was going to be a success at Hampshire and who was going to struggle,” says Twombly.
Twombly says college stakeholders generally concurred with her recommendation for eliminating standardized test scores from admission requirements. She says one faculty member initially objected because “he just wanted to make sure we would keep researching the situation and doing an assessment of our admission components. … He wanted to be sure that we would be using evidence to guide us throughout the process.”
More and more test-optional
