With graduation and prom likely canceled and classes moved online, students are facing a spring semester that looks very different from that of a few months ago.
But for many students, even more troubling than this pandemic’s effects on their present are its implications for their future. The coronavirus has led the College Board and ACT, Inc., which administer the SAT and ACT, respectively, to cancel test administrations until at least June. This has led upwards of a million students to miss test dates, with seventy percent of those missing free, in-school exams. The COVID-19 pandemic already disproportionately impacts our most vulnerable communities — the cancellation of these tests simply adds another layer of difficulty for students who may lack the finances or transportation to take a paid test outside of school hours.
The inequities compounded by this pandemic will require long-term policy solutions. But there is one simple step colleges and universities can take to reduce the burden placed upon the students who already face barriers in their quest to attain a postsecondary education. By going test-optional for the Fall 2020 admission cycle, educational institutions acknowledge that many students’ plans have been upended by this crisis, and that students should not be put at fault for a situation entirely outside of their control.
These test cancellations have affected different students and different regions in a myriad of different ways. To learn more about the range of experiences informing the test-optional movement, we talked to Courtney, a junior at Beechwood High School in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky. Courtney had missed her free sophomore and junior ACT dates because of illness and test anxiety, and her junior ACT make-up date because of cancellations due to coronavirus.
The following conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Are you concerned about your ability to get a test score/the score you want because of this pandemic?
Yes, I am! Especially because of exams, and I don’t know what they’re going to be on. I guess [ACT scores] depend on how you retain info during NTI and not being in class when we had in-class ACT prep.
Has this pandemic affected your ability to study, both for standardized tests and academics in general?
I was going to take [the ACT] in late March, about a week after everyone else took it. But I missed the ACT retake, so now it’s scary because I’m more prepared now, and I’m probably going to forget all that information by June or later. My dad is mad at me for not taking it even though I really tried to. I kind of hope they do it just for me. Like, proctor me individually in a room that’s isolated so I still get to take it. Only a few kids retake it anyway.
For me, usually when there’s extra time during school [with study halls and down time in class], I get homework done. Home is where I relax. I usually don’t do much at home and doing all of it here is really affecting my headspace. I don’t feel as relaxed, and I’m not as motivated to do things. I want to go back [to in-person classes] because I don’t like online. Like in chemistry, we have two hour videos to watch and answer questions about.
How do you feel about schools going test-optional? Do you think students should still be required to submit standardized test scores? Why or why not?
I don’t know. I’m not sure how the ACT is super useful. If you know how the test is, you can memorize how the test works and not your actual knowledge. It doesn’t mean that much if you’re not in a STEM major. Like, [if you’re] majoring in psychology, why does it matter? Most of the time it doesn’t match up to your actual knowledge, and I don’t think you should really submit them. You could have a bad test day — um, test anxiety! A lot of people think you should, but I don’t.
More generally, how has this impacted your feelings about the college application process?
For certain [high] schools, they may not prep as much, or may prep more. If you go for prestigious [post-secondary] schools and [another student] does good and you didn’t do as good, you don’t know how you match up. You don’t know. Do I stand out?
What would you want to tell university admissions officers and leadership?
Not taking the ACT is stressing me out, and not taking it as soon as possible is stressing me out because I have to start applying and college visits in the fall. And college visits won’t be going on for a while, which is bad because that plays a major role in deciding what schools I want to go to. NTI plays a role with admissions, too. Junior year is notoriously the hardest grade and being taught online is hard. My scores could go down; I’m not learning like I’m used to learning.
This interview was conducted and transcribed by Autumn Boone, a junior at Beechwood High School. It was edited by Sadie Bograd, a junior at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, who also wrote the introduction.
This piece is the first in a series on the #TestOptionalNOW campaign. For more information, visit Student Voice’s website or sign the petition.
The opinions expressed on the Forum represent the individual students to whom they are attributed. They do not reflect the official position or opinion of the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence or the Student Voice Team. Read about our policies.
