I don’t have to tell you that one of the biggest stresses of the entire college process is the standardized testing. The prospects of taking the SAT and/or ACT is daunting, particularly since so much can ride on the results. I resented the amount of time and money spent in my house on these darn tests for my own two kids.
Time and money – and many families don’t have it to spend – won’t raise the test scores for everybody. When that happens, however, there are plenty of great colleges and universities that don’t require that students submit their test scores. As you’ll see from the list, a significant number of liberal arts colleges are test optional. In fact, more than a third of the top liberal arts colleges in the country fall into this category.
FairTest, a nonprofit that helps schools adopt a test-optional policy, sent me an updated list of colleges this week that I’m passing along to you. There are well over 800 schools that don’t require test scores, but many of them have easy admission policies. The schools you’ll see below are highly selective or selective schools.
The schools above that are test flexible require some type of test scores, such as Advanced Placement or SAT subject tests, in lieu of the regular ACT or SAT.
Test-optional schools
To learn more about test-optional practices, I’d suggest you read this article that I wrote for The New York Times a couple of summers ago:
The Other Side of Test Optional
Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of Shrinking the Cost of College, a workbook available on her website. She also writes a college blog for CBSMoneyWatch. On Twitter follow her @CollegeBlogs.
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