The number of SAT tests administered is rising back towards the pre-pandemic levels, mainly thanks to in-school weekday testing spreading rapidly. A few universities like Georgetown and MIT have bravely starting to again require scores from all applicants. MIT has a very robust defense of the requirement here. Quite simply: the SAT provides a standard measure of student ability that has a proven correlation with eventual academic success. Grade inflation accelerated with Covid and it is hard for a university to compare a 4.1 GPA at high school A with a 4.2 from high school B without massive resources and past data sets. A student scoring a 1450 on the SAT is nearly always going to do much better academically than a student with a 1200.
A common criticism of the SAT (and all standardized testing) is that it is biased towards affluent students who attend high schools with greater funding. We would contend that the test is biased towards students that go to better-funded high schools because those students have received a superior education and hence are better prepared for university, as revealed by higher scores. Blaming the SAT for education inequalities is like blaming a thermometer for hot weather, to paraphrase Freddie de Boer.
More recent research has revealed that university admissions is indeed a corrupt process that is biased toward the affluent. A summary of Chetty, et. al. is here and offers a damning indictment of the industry backed up by statistically robust data. Beyond the fact that the system is very much biased towards rich tennis players whose Mom and Dad went to the same university, there also is a clear correlation between SAT scores and eventual academic and career success. "Among available indicators, SAT/ACT scores remain one of the best predictors of student success".
Small liberal arts colleges with 1,200 students can take the time going through each aspect of an application carefully and can proudly be test blind in admissions. Large schools with upwards of (or over) 100,000 applications have no such luxury and the SAT provides a reasonably accurate metric to be viewed along with academic transcripts and other data. NYU doesn't require the SAT, but the reported median score is 1540. Why report this information if it wasn't considered? NYU and many other similar schools have enjoyed a massive surge in the number of applications by going test optional.
SAT scores may be optional, but technically so are high grades, good recommendations, strong essays, and outside activities. Students that submit high SAT scores have a better chance of acceptance to the most rejective universities. This is especially true for students coming from affluent international schools where there are no barriers to accessing the test.
