Among the many ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has changed our society, perhaps no area of public life outside of healthcare has been as heavily impacted as education. Beginning in 2020, pandemic-related shutdowns limited or ended in-person education for many students for months at a time, as students were moved to online instruction or simply missed school or deferred college. Standardized tests became difficult or impossible to safely administer, leading colleges and universities around the country to make these tests optional during the pandemic or even drop the requirement for these test scores altogether.

Though driven by the pandemic, these changes also fulfilled the desires of many education reform advocates who have argued for years that standardized tests for college admissions were counterproductive. At best, tests like the SAT and ACT are poor measures of success in college and thus should not be the basis for admission. At worst, the tests are biased along racial, gender and socioeconomic lines, and thus favor those who are already privileged, leading to less diverse and less equitable outcomes in terms of student acceptance and enrollment.

Before the pandemic, standardized test proponents and opponents disagreed on whether dropping the testing requirements would make a substantial difference. One study, based on pre-pandemic data drawn from 99 colleges between 2005 and 2016, showed that switching from test-required to test-optional admissions policies increased enrollment of Black, Latino and Indigenous students by 1 percent, increased the share of low-income students by a similar amount and led to a 4 percent bump in the enrollment of women. Such differences translated into thousands of marginalized students gaining admissions to these schools, but proponents of SAT and ACT testing argued that these changes were too small to be significant and did not justify dropping standardized tests as a part of the admissions process.

Now, however, there are millions of students spread across the vast majority of American colleges and universities who were admitted under either test-optional or no-test admissions policies. Most American colleges have at least two years’ worth of enrolled students who were admitted without submitting SAT or ACT scores. While these students are generally in their first or second year of college — the data on performance for college students admitted without SAT/ACT scores is still being evaluated — the impact on college applications and admissions is clearer.

As expected, white and affluent students were more likely to continue submitting SAT or ACT scores than Black or less wealthy students. There are also regional differences, with students from the South more likely to continue to submit scores, while those from New England and west coast states are least likely to do so.

Optional testing has resulted in record numbers of students applying to college. The Common Application, which administers online applications for 900 colleges, saw the total number of applications increase from 5.6 million in 2020 to 6.2 million in 2021. The increase was widespread, with record numbers of students applying to Ivy League universities, state schools and HBCUs.

Specifically, many schools have seen major increases in applications from minority students, first-generation college students and applicants from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds. Many experts believe that these students had in the past self-selected out of applying to schools that they were convinced were out of reach given their SAT or ACT scores. As Michelle McAnaney, president of The College Spy consulting firm, said to CBS MoneyWatch in 2021, “students who normally would self-select out of the admissions pool — they would look at the average SAT score and not apply — those kids are applying.”

MIT announced last month that it will again require SAT or ACT scores for future applications, claiming that the tests are particularly useful for gauging math readiness among potential students, which the school claims is necessary for students to be successful once they enroll. MIT will not be the only school requiring SAT/ACT scores going forward. Georgetown University, the University of Florida, the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech will all require test scores for future applications as well. Other schools and states are moving in the opposite direction.

Legislators in Michigan have proposed a change to its state law that would remove SAT and ACT scores from high school transcripts. These scores are currently automatically added to the transcripts of high school students in the state, which legislators argue puts Michigan students at a disadvantage compared to students in other states who have the option of submitting or not submitting their scores. Meanwhile, as a result of a discrimination lawsuit that was filed before the pandemic but settled in 2021, the University of California system has permanently banned any consideration of SAT or Act scores in its admissions or scholarship decisions. Proponents of this outcome hope that the permanent ban will lead to greater levels of diversity at UC schools.

The increases in Black and brown applications and admissions at UC schools and other colleges around the country come just as challenges to affirmative action threaten to cut off college access to millions of BIPOC students. Although affirmative action has survived several court challenges over the years, race-based admissions policies have been under attack at the state level for some time. After California implemented a ban against affirmative action in college admissions in 1997, Black, Latino and Native American enrollment plummeted at its schools and have never recovered, even as minority students make up increasingly larger shares of high school graduates in the state. As one education equity advocate stated last year, the affirmative action ban “has been devastating on opportunities for students of color and families of color in California.”

When former Florida Governor Jeb Bush issued an executive order banning race as a factor in college admissions in the state, Black enrollment dropped significantly at the state’s two top institutions, University of Florida and Florida State University.  In total, nine states have implemented affirmative action bans, with Idaho joining the list in 2020. In general, these bans have widened the already existing education gap between white and underrepresented minority students in these states.

Now, the Supreme Court has agreed to evaluate a new set of cases against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina that seek to end race-aware college admissions nationwide. With a conservative supermajority currently dominating the Supreme Court, and newly-confirmed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson promising to recuse herself from the case because of her position on the Harvard Board of Overseers, affirmative action in education appears to be in real danger.

Given this threat, it is more imperative now than ever to permanently remove the barriers to education that standardized tests have created. Again, California’s experience serves as a useful example for the country. The University of California system announced last year that it had “admitted its largest, most diverse undergraduate class ever for fall 2021.” The first crop of students who had applied without having to submit standardized test scores.

Though other factors, such as increased outreach to minority communities, may have played a role, it is notable that minority admissions went up significantly even as the overall acceptance rate for these schools went down due to record high numbers of applicants. California is the state with the largest population and the state with the oldest affirmative action ban in the country. Seeing education access become more equitable after the state dropped the SAT and ACT, even with its affirmative action ban still in place, gives hope that schools around the country can continue to keep their doors open to Black, brown, Indigenous and other marginalized students by permanently ending the reliance on standardized tests for admissions decisions.

The decision to drop the tests had been a long time coming, and it has arrived at a time when truly making the admissions process fairer is crucially important. If colleges and universities around the country are truly committed to diversity and equal access to education, they will make sure that standardized testing does not return as an unnecessary barrier to higher education for our country’s most underrepresented populations.