It may be nearly 30 years ago, but I can still remember the stress involved with taking my ACT exam. I wasn't exactly a model student throughout high school but I managed to get things together by my senior year. The summer prior to my senior year I took the ACT exam. The test was a large part of what colleges looked at before granting you admission to their school. I remember studying for weeks in my room. I ended up scoring a 22, a score good enough to get into the colleges I was looking at. But now, the Iowa Board of Regents is about to do away with the student requirement of taking the ACT or SAT exam.

The Cedar Rapids Gazette reports that the State Board of Regents will soon permanently end the ACT and SAT mandate when it comes to Iowa's public universities, ending the 63-year-old requirement. The board will take up the issue at a meeting today. The move would become permanent after the board waived temporarily waived the testing requirement in August of 2020 due to the stresses of the ongoing COVID pandemic. The proposal will still retain ACT and SAT scores as one of three factors that freshman applicants need to receive automatic admission into the University of Iowa, Iowa State, and UNI according to the Gazette. The other two are grade point average and courses taken in core subjects.

If you decide NOT to take one of the entrance exams, the Gazette reports that an individual review will be done by an admissions team to determine your entrance into the school. So basically, the exams will be optional. The decision by the regents comes after data showed that the better indicator of collegiate success wasn't the ACT or SAT score. Grade point average was the largest factor in whether a student graduated in four years or not.

 

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