Dropping Standardized Testing for Admissions Trades Off Information and Access

We study the role of information and access in capacity-constrained selection problems with fairness concerns. We develop a theoretical framework with testable implications that formalizes the trade-off between the (potentially positive) informational role of a feature and its (negative) exclusionary nature when members of different social groups have unequal access to this feature. Our framework finds a natural application to recent policy debates on dropping standardized testing in college admissions. Our primary takeaway is that the decision to drop a feature (such as test scores) cannot be made without the joint context of the information provided by other features and how the requirement affects the applicant pool composition. Dropping a feature may exacerbate disparities by decreasing the amount of information available for each applicant, especially those from non-traditional backgrounds. However, in the presence of access barriers to a feature, the interaction between the informational environment and the effect of access barriers on the applicant pool size becomes highly complex. In this case, we provide a threshold characterization regarding when removing a feature improves both academic merit and diversity. Finally, using application and transcript data from the University of Texas at Austin, we illustrate that there exist practical settings where dropping standardized testing improves or worsens all metrics.