Many students may struggle with taking tests and for those students, Bluffton is offering a test-flexible policy for students who are applying as first-year or transfer students in undergraduate degree programs. This means that if students are consistently on their high school honor roll they can be admitted only based on their GPA.
Robin Bowlus, vice president of enrollment management, explained there are a lot of questions and concerns that come with the way admissions are determined.
“In higher education, there are lots of theories on whether the GPA or the test score or a combination of the two is the best indicator for success in college,” said Bowlus. “In addition, there are questions and concerns about how the tests are biased for underrepresented populations.”
She also explained the new policy ACT announced which gives students the opportunity to retake single sections of the five-part test. Bowlus said this policy will complicate the admission process.
“This will allow students to raise just that score on that section,” said Bowlus. “That will become very complicated for the admissions process with individual section scores coming in throughout the year.”
Another reason Bluffton is offering this policy is because high school students are currently unable to take or retake any standardized test due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which means they will have many 2021 applicants without a test score. They decided to add this policy so they don’t have to make applicants wait and potentially lose those applicants to test flexible colleges.
Applicants will use the same application process, but the process the admissions office uses will change when making the decision to accept a student.
Bowlus hopes this process lasts a few years.
“Admissions requirements do change over time,” said Bowlus. “The last tweak was done about four years ago when the use of class rank was removed. My hope is we will use these standards for a few more years but with COVID[-19] and as access to tests in question, we may need to update them sooner than we would hope.”
Bluffton does make it clear that standardized tests will be required for certain things.
“Standardized test results will remain to be required for placement in certain majors, for class placements and for competitive academic scholarships,” Bowlus said.
