MU Faculty Council votes to extend test-optional admissions
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
The University of Missouri's Faculty Council voted on Thursday to extend test-optional admissions.
The council recognized the pandemic caused a lot of academic disruptions for students, and while students are now in better shape, the council says they will need to collect data before requiring the test scores.
The council voted to extend the pilot through 2025. The extension is not permanent.
The admissions process was approved in 2020 due to COVID-19's impact on the availability and accessibility of the ACT and SAT exams for prospective students.
If approved, the proposal would allow students to apply to the University of Missouri without an ACT or SAT score through 2025.
According to the proposal from the university, many institutions that have implemented the admissions process have made the test-optional admissions process permanent.
Those universities include:
- University of Arizona
- George Mason University
- University of Iowa
- Iowa State University
- University of Kansas
- Kansas State University
- Ohio University
- University of California System
- University of Washington
Other schools, such as the University of Arkansas and the University of Illinois, have chosen to continue the trial of the test-optional admissions process through 2023.
According to the university, students who attended the University of Missouri in 2021 after applying through the test-optional process had similar retention rates and only slightly lower GPAs.
Of those 986 students, the average GPA was 3.08 with a retention rate of 93.2%, compared to 3,817 traditional students who had an average GPA of 3.29 and a retention rate of 94.4%.
