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Elite French university Sciences Po will reintroduce its written entrance exam by 2026, having scrapped the test in 2021 in an effort to promote social equality following criticism for being discriminatory.
The university’s new director, Luis Vassy, said the test won’t be a return to the old format, and instead will be a “socially non-discriminatory” assessment, likely integrated into the national French platform for university admissions, according to French outlet Les Echos.
The new format is unclear, but will likely take into account the effect of new artificial intelligence tools on students’ ability to do the test, a French education expert told Le Figaro: For example, a short, timed reflective essay that is hard to over-prepare for or pre-write or use AI like ChatGPT for help, rather than a multiple choice questionnaire or a more straightforward written test.
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The backtrack comes after several elite American universities, including Dartmouth College, Yale, and Brown University, reinstated mandatory standardized test scores to evaluate candidates.
Standardized testing has been criticized for essentially mirroring societal inequalities, The New York Times noted, with many university administrators expressing concern about the politics of such tests. However, newer research suggests that some standardized testing could be a predictor of success at elite universities, and so could open doors for some students. “Just getting straight A’s is not enough information for us to know whether the students are going to succeed or not,” the dean of admissions at MIT, which has also brought back a test requirement, told the outlet.