UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The College Admissions Futures Co-Laborative (CAF Co-Lab), a multi-institutional research initiative based at Penn State, the University of Delaware and the University of Maryland, College Park, has received a $560,000 grant from the Gates Foundation to study the long-term effects of test-optional admissions policies.
“With this new project, we aim to answer a critical question: What are the implications of test-optional policies for students’ academic outcomes?” said Kelly Rosinger, associate professor of education and public policy. “By analyzing both quantitative and qualitative data, we hope to provide a clearer understanding of how these policies shape student success and inform more equitable admissions practices.”
CAF Co-Lab is a multi-institutional partnership of faculty, researchers and scholar-practitioners from Penn State, the University of Delaware and the University of Maryland, College Park. The new grant builds upon a $1.4 million grant awarded to the team in 2022, which led to the publication of a policy brief.
The CAF Co-Lab’s previous research highlighted the widespread yet varied adoption of test-optional policies during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the height of this shift, according to the researchers’ policy brief, approximately 90% of selective four-year colleges implemented test-optional admissions, but with significant differences in execution. Some institutions adopted a fully test-free approach, while others required alternative assessments or retained testing mandates for specific groups, such as international or home-schooled students. Additionally, many colleges continued linking standardized test scores to scholarship eligibility, further complicating the admissions process.
This inconsistent implementation led to confusion among students and admissions professionals, Rosinger said. Crucially, the researchers found that policy design directly related to enrollment outcomes. They found that the most inclusive test-optional and test-free policies — those applied universally to all students and those including test-optional consideration for scholarships — were associated with increasing access for Black students.
“These findings underscore that simply adopting test-optional policies is not enough; their effectiveness depends on how they are structured and designed,” Rosinger said.
As institutions such as Harvard, Princeton and Yale return to mandatory standardized testing, according to Rosinger, many selective public and private universities — particularly on the West Coast but all over the nation — continue to embrace test-optional or even test-free policies. The CAF Co-Lab’s new study will investigate how these policies influence students’ academic outcomes as colleges navigate an evolving admissions landscape. The work will build on the team’s previous findings by using quantitative data from two state university systems to assess the academic outcomes of students admitted under test-optional policies.
The researchers will track key metrics such as credit completion, GPA maintenance, retention and graduation. Additionally, the team will gather qualitative insights from advisers, admissions officers, faculty and students to explore how institutions can best support students in a test-optional environment.
Rosinger’s collaborators on the study are Joseph Sturm, a doctoral student at Penn State; Dominique J. Baker, associate professor of education, University of Delaware; Wan Yu, who earned a doctorate in education policy analysis from Penn State in 2023; Julie J. Park, associate professor of education, University of Maryland, College Park; OiYan Poon, a faculty affiliate at the University of Maryland, College Park; Brian H. Kim, director of data science, research and analytics at the Common Application; and Stephanie Breen, a former graduate research assistant with the College Admissions Futures Co-Laborative who is now the director of research for the Strada Education Foundation.