by Brandon Poulter
Brown University will reinstate a policy requiring standardized testing as part of the admissions process, according to a Tuesday news release.
First year applicants for next year’s admissions cycle will be required to submit standardized test scores, like the SAT or ACT, in their applications, according to the university news release. Brown suspended its testing policy in the summer of 2020 citing “unprecedented obstacles to testing” during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I continue to be proud of Brown’s strong track record of national leadership in cultivating diversity and inclusion as core tenets for sustaining academic excellence,” Brown University President Christina Paxson, said in the news release. “I am committed to ensuring these values are reflected in the way we build our student body. The decisions we have reached regarding Early Decision and standardized test requirements remain true to these values, and continuing to examine family connections is the right decision for the complicated questions this issue raises for our community.”
The decision follows months of analysis and deliberations by the Ad Hoc Committee on Admissions Policies, composed by Paxson in September, according to the news release.
“The issues at the core of the committee’s deliberations concerned the manner in which testing requirements intersect with the principles of academic excellence, equity, access and diversity. The majority of the committee concluded that reinstating the requirement that first-year undergraduate applicants submit test scores is consistent with Brown’s commitments to excellence and equity and will serve to expand access and diversity,” an executive summary from the committee reads.
Several schools have also reinstated standardized testing requirements, including Dartmouth College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Brown did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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Brandon Poulter is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Brown University Campus” by Beyond My Ken. CC BY-SA 2.0.
