In another new age of college admissions, high school seniors call the shots, more than ever
The admission process for selective colleges has changed as fewer students apply in a post-pandemic world. (Illustration by Eric Thomas for Kansas Reflector)
When my son and his friend, another Kansas teen, visited Trinity University this April in San Antonio, they got a preview of today’s shifting, psychedelic world of college admissions.
Along with dozens of other parents and high school students, we sat in an auditorium to hear an admissions rep talk about standard stuff: campus life, academics and meal plans. Everyone sat up a bit straighter and listened a bit more intently when it came time to hear the admissions requirements.
The school’s admission standards snagged our attention because Trinity, a small, liberal-arts college, only admits 25% of applicants. Like generations of American students before him, my soon-to-be college son wondered: “What would it take to get in?”
Within the borders of Kansas, there are few, if any, schools that college counselors would label as selective in the same way as Trinity. Most, including the six major state universities, post clear admissions requirements allowing students to know whether they will be admitted before applying.
The mystery remains for Kansas students looking outside the state at more selective schools.
To find the answers in 2026, high school seniors schedule time with their college counselors, study scatterplots on college admission websites and scroll social media. Each post, graph or expert claims to know the alchemic recipe required to earn a spot in next year’s freshman class at selective universities. This GPA. This kind of essay. These test scores.
The high school graduating class of 2027 enters a unique admissions landscape. Selective universities are wriggling in their seats, shifting their posture on standardized tests and student writing samples at a time when the number of potential college students is falling.
As an instructor at the University of Kansas, I knew all of this as we sat in the auditorium in San Antonio. I knew that declining American birth rates during the late 2000s financial crisis have resulted in fewer potential college freshmen next fall. I knew that some colleges would be poised to offer better incentives to attract students. And I knew that artificial intelligence has roiled higher education — admissions included.
Standing at the lectern, the admissions rep told the students that Trinity is test-optional. That, on its own, is pretty standard. Along with other schools, test-optional admissions allows students to choose whether to submit standardized test scores — ACT and SAT — with their application. Maybe the score would help my son’s application. Perhaps it would ding his chances. It’s often difficult to discern from one school to the next.
As the admissions rep pointed to the PowerPoint slide, full of ACT scores and average GPAs, things got trippy.
“If you are unsure about test-optional, about whether or not to submit your scores,” the rep said, “just call us or email us to tell us your test scores. We will get back to you, letting you know whether you should include them in your application. Whether it’s in your best interest.”
I looked around to see if anyone else registered the bizarro logic.
Why would an admissions department receive information about a student and then pretend to forget that same information when making the decision about admitting that very same student?
Or, perhaps more confusing, why is a score really useful in evaluating a student, but if that same metric is a few points lower, the score is irrelevant?
No wonder parents and students feel bewildered by applications, rejections, deferrals and admissions to selective schools.
The usefulness of standardized testing for college admissions departments seems to have swung back and forth — from vital to misleading — during the last few decades. Concerns about racial and income disparities first led schools to de-emphasize the scores. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown made ACT and SAT testing impossible because of lockdown provisions.
In reaction, the number of students taking the ACT, the most popular college admissions test in Kansas, fell each year from 2016 to 2021 before leveling out in 2022 and 2023, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. By 2023, nationwide participation on the ACT had fallen 21 percentage points over seven years to 37%.
Similarly, the national average composite score on the test fell every year between 2017 and 2023.
For their part, Kansas students did not excel in 2024, the most recent year for which scores are available. During that year, 72% of the state’s high school graduates took the ACT, earning an average 19.3 composite score. That ranks 35th nationally among the states, plus the District of Columbia.
In many states, 100% of high school seniors take the ACT. That makes it especially concerning that the 2024 ACT scores in Kansas approached the bottom, while omitting 28% of students (likely students who would have pulled scores down even more).
In this way, schools that are test optional give students exactly what they want: an admissions process that shrugs at testing. No need to spend this Saturday morning — a national ACT testing day — bubbling in answers on a standardized test.
Clearly standardized tests reveal bias in our society. Our family was able to pay an excellent math tutor to help my fortunate son with his preparation. He felt a bit less fortunate to have me, his lame dad, helping him with the English portion. The American education system, whether student-to-teacher ratio or ACT prep, ruthlessly separates students by class.
Even with privilege baked in, count me as confused about test-optional policies. If having the data (in this case, test scores) is helpful for one student, why not every student?
Testing data also feels more valuable at an educational moment when other reliable information seems elusive.
High school transcripts have become less and less useful as grade inflation continues. A few years ago, a friend who teaches in a Kansas City area school told me that the 50th percentile of students at that school averaged an A- across their transcripts. If most students earn A+ after A+ after A+, how useful can that information be?
You might assume this climate of grade inflation and optional testing would point admissions departments toward emphasis on college essays. However, this year many selective schools eliminated “supplemental” writing from their applications. These extra questions — in addition to the standard college essay about your personal strengths and weaknesses — had also become less useful.
Admissions reps explained to the New York Times that many students likely use artificial intelligence on such questions in a way that pollutes student writing samples. If students cannot be supervised writing, we suspect that it isn’t them writing at all.
For the class of 2027 and beyond, authentic writing is surveilled writing.
Most Kansas universities, including the six major state universities, don’t require any writing samples. They also remain test-optional, asking that students clear either a high school GPA threshold or a minimum test score on the ACT or SAT. These policies have been in place for years.
The collective effect of so many other admissions decisions shifting at once gives students more leverage. They don’t want to take tests. If they do, they might not want to report their scores. They earn straight A’s. They can’t be trusted to write themselves.
Meanwhile, they are increasingly precious to student-starved universities.
We have arrived — yet again — in a new age of college admissions.
Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.