COVID Levels California’s Playing Field

While the pandemic has erected many obstacles for this year’s college applicants, it has created a few opportunities as well. This is especially true for socioeconomically disadvantaged students who are applying to schools in the UC and CSU systems.

With the California State University and University of California schools not factoring SAT or ACT scores into their admissions decisions, poorer students suddenly find themselves on a much leveler playing field. The ability to secure private test prep has long afforded wealthier kids an advantage in the admissions process, sometimes boosting their standardized test scores by hundreds of points. With the move to a temporary test blind policy, that disparity has evaporated.

As the executive director of Mission Scholars, a program dedicated to minimizing the impact of socioeconomic disadvantages on high-achieving students, I cannot overemphasize the unique opportunity this situation presents for low-income students. As I have been telling my students throughout college application season: the admissions process will still be skewed in favor of wealthier students, but this fall, test scores are off the table for our in-state institutions.