Test optional college admissions during the COVID-19 pandemic and campus diversity

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about a rapid acceleration of standardized-test-optional college admissions policies. Using an event study design, we compare admissions outcomes between American colleges ranked among the top 100 national universities that dropped testing requirements to those that maintained required testing. While the share of enrollees who were White did not change, increases of 1.1 percentage points each for enrolled Black and Hispanic students (95% CI: 0.003–0.019, p = 0.011; and 95% CI: −0.001–0.024, p = 0.08, respectively) and decreases of 1.5 percentage points for Asian students (95% CI: −0.029 to −0.0009, p = 0.04) were measured in the second year.