The Temple Option, Temple’s new admissions pathway for applicants whose standardized test scores do not accurately measure their true potential for academic success, was featured in a story in The New York Times’ “Education Life” supplement (“The Test-Optional Surge,” Oct. 28, by Cecilia Capuzzi Simon).

 

Temple’s first undergraduate admissions cycle with the Temple Option available to applicants produced a record-breaking number of applications—more than 30,000 for the first time in school history—a school-record average high school GPA among enrolled freshmen and dramatic increases in the number of African-American and Latino students enrolling as freshmen in 2015.

 

At Temple, the decision to let applicants apply without submitting SAT or ACT scores was all about fairness—a natural extension of Temple’s tradition of offering students of all backgrounds access to education at a world-class university.

 

“There is a socioeconomic bias in standardized testing, and test-optional may be eliminating that,” Temple Senior Vice Provost for Enrollment Management William N. Black told The Times.

 

Farid Elhadidy, a freshman in Temple’s Honors Program who elected not to submit an SAT score, told The Times about his frustration when he learned that peers who could afford expensive tutoring were able to score higher on the SAT.

 

“I didn’t have the ability to do that,” said Elhadidy, who was grateful that Temple would “appreciate my abilities, and not my parents’ ability to pay for my scores.”

 

Temple’s appearance in The New York Times’ influential quarterly “Education Life” supplement was the university’s second in the last 19 months. An article highlighting Temple’s investments in student advising was published last spring.

 

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