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Haverford Admission Goes Test-Optional eginning with the admission process for students entering in Fall 2021, Haverford is adopting a test-optional admission policy for a three-year period. The move was driven by the significant disruptions the pandemic is causing for prospective students, said Jess Lord, Haverford’s vice president and dean of Admission and Financial Aid. “We believe this change to our standardized testing policy will reduce stress and provide students with much greater flexibility as they navigate a college admission process that is unfolding much differently than expected.” The new policy, said Lord, also aligns closely with Haverford’s mission and core values. “We have always taken a holistic approach to evaluating students for admission, including making our admission decisions by consensus, and we embrace an approach that is mindful of how the admission process impacts students,” he said. “We also believe that further limiting the role that standardized testing plays in our process strengthens Haverford’s leadership in and commitment to access, diversity, and inclusion.” Moving forward, first-year and transfer candidates may choose whether or not to submit the results of the SAT and/ or the ACT as a part of their applications. “While standardized testing has traditionally played only a small role in our evaluations,” said Lord, “we are eager to better understand the impact a test-optional policy will have on how students experience our application process and on our ability to build a diverse, talented, and dynamic community of scholars at Haverford.” At the end of the three-year period, the College will evaluate the role standardized testing should play in the admission process going forward.
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FYI
SOUND BITE
In this particular moment, a “global pandemic asks each of
us to rethink the lives we’ve had, the choices we’ve made, and the choices we need to make in the coming months and years.
”
—Steven Beschloss ’80, director of Arizona State University’s Narrative Storytelling Initiative in his inaugural editor’s note in the new online magazine Transformations.
Haverford College Arboretum Horticulturalist Mike Startup came upon the Running Man statue on campus wearing a face mask provided by an unknown jokester and snapped this pic for the Arboretum’s Instagram account. (The sculpture, by British artist Elisabeth Frink, took up residence at Haverford in 1986 when it was donated to the College by art collector Milton Ginsburg.)
THE HAVERFORD COLLEGE ARCHIVES is collecting written reflections, photographs, videos, recorded voice memos, screenshots of social media posts, and other materials that document the experiences of faculty, staff, and students during the pandemic. Says College Archivist Elizabeth Jones-Minsinger, “In the same way that we want to know how Haverfordians navigated past global events, others will want to know how we navigated the experience of a global pandemic brought on by COVID-19.”
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Haverford Magazine
