Between 2000 and 2018, some 200 colleges and universities adopted similar policies. It was hardly a groundswell — there are about 2,300 public and private four-year colleges and universities in the US — but it cracked the door to a different future for standardized testing.
Covid-19 pushed that door wide open. The pandemic scrambled the logistics of test administration and caused most colleges to go “test-optional.” Covid had the same effect on mandatory admissions testing that it had on the practice of requiring white-collar workers to go to the office five days a week: It transformed a growing but not-yet-mainstream trend into a sudden sea change.