Words by Oscar Ponteri CM ’27

Graphic by Genevieve O’Marah SC ’28

Pitzer College is reconsidering its current COVID-era test-blind policy which is set to expire in fall 2025. The college has been test-optional since 2012, and “test-free” since 2021 but legislation enforcing its current test-blind stance is now up for review. 

Following Claremont McKenna College (CMC), Pitzer is the second of the Claremont Colleges to review their testing policies this year. In January, CMC faculty passed a recommendation to the college’s Board of Trustees advocating the reinstatement of standardized testing requirements.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Claremont Colleges instituted test-optional or test-blind policies to combat the lack of access to test-taking facilities. Although many Ivy-plus schools across the country (including Brown, Dartmouth, Yale, and Harvard) have begun to reverse these testing-policies, none of the Claremont Colleges have announced a return to test requirements. 

As Pitzer reconsiders their policy, CMC (despite the faculty recommendation) and Harvey Mudd College have extended their COVID-era test-optional policies to 2026 and 2027 respectively. Pomona and Scripps Colleges, since the pandemic, have permanently adopted test-optional policies. 

As pandemic-era concerns around lack of access to testing facilities have dissipated, testing requirements have become a central focal point in educational policy, spurred by decisions from Brown, Dartmouth, Yale, and Harvard, among other Ivy-plus schools, to reinstate their testing requirements. 

CMC economics professor Daniel Firoozi teaches the college’s Economics of Education course and provided The Outback with his take on the issue. 

From his perspective, the test-policies at elite universities have become such a hot-button issue , due to these institutions’s ability to “essentially gatekeep access to political and social power” through their vast alumni networks and name recognition, thus making admissions processes that decide who gets access to this privilege highly debated. 

While some public institutions like Florida State, Purdue, and Georgia State have brought back testing requirements, most public schools have either extended or permanently instated their COVID-era policies; testing-policy is largely a concern of smaller, private institutions. Many high-caliber public schools including the University of Michigan and the University of California system have moved to indefinite test-optional or test-blind policies.

While deciding on the faculty recommendation, Firoozi considered the test’s predictive power and the extent to which test scores are biased compared to other measures of academic achievement. Firoozi did not disclose his vote.

Firoozi also considered “added value,” or the idea that part of a college’s objective is to accept students who the college can add the most value to the campus, rather than only admitting those who already have accrued the most success and resources. 

Testing policies can also become an issue of personal importance as students who submitted test scores and those who didn’t clash over conceptions of fairness and equity. 

Explaining her decision to submit test scores, Violet Ramanathan (CMC ‘27) said “I think that my scores would improve my chances of getting into CMC—It felt like they could only add to the rest of my application profile.” 

Ramanathan, who has done extensive research on the topic, is also now a proponent of test requirements, as she believes tests are more impartial to wealth and other confounding variables when compared to other application materials.

“You have things like essays and extracurriculars that are super influenced by wealth and tutors and AI now, and high school, high school GPAs even are tricky with grade inflation …,” Ramanathan said. “[Standardized tests] have some faults but they are less biased than the other metrics the schools can use.”

Ramanathan included a caveat to her argument: “I think looking at a student’s context, looking at the environment they’re coming from, and not just the test scores is really important.” 

Ultimately, when it comes to instituting measures to increase diversity on college campuses, Firoozi said that believes that the conversation should be broadened beyond the test-policy debate. 

He shared two studies from UMichigan with The Outback, which found that, sending high-achievement, low-income high school sophomores in Michigan a flyer telling them they should apply to the university resulted in a notable increase in the college’s socioeconomic diversity. 

Although public institutions like University of Michigan may be able to target certain student populations more closely, Firoozi encouraged the Claremont Colleges to develop proactive admissions measures to take some of the attention off test-policies and into more impactful practices.