[Farm93]

Not only are a number of schools stopping their use of standardized tests, a few states have adopted or proposed guidelines that actually prohibit the public schools from using the test scores.   It becomes a bit of a tricky situation for the NCAA to have test score minimums when most students in a state didn't take tests.  

The original approach would actually have started to impact public schools in California.   The UCs and CSUs are no longer allowed to consider test scores for admissions.   Therefore at CSUs and UCs the only HS students that could have been negatively impacted by a bad test score would have been the student-athletes.   We were not that far away from a place where only the HS athletes would even need to take the test, so the NCAA is just catching up with the reality that many schools don't even want to know standardized test scores now.

FWIW - Applications were up at most selective schools last year for a number of reasons.  There were a lot of kids across the USA that declined to enroll for fall 2020 and then applied at a number of schools for fall 2021. 

Ultimately, Fall 2020 proved to be a relatively easy year at many places as a lot of schools went deep into their waitlist to try to build a class.   Fall 2021 proved to be really difficult with many schools getting unexpected yield rates and overcrowding despite being rather stingy on acceptances.

[Farm93]

Not only are a number of schools stopping their use of standardized tests, a few states have adopted or proposed guidelines that actually prohibit the public schools from using the test scores.   It becomes a bit of a tricky situation for the NCAA to have test score minimums when most students in a state didn't take tests.  

The original approach would actually have started to impact public schools in California.   The UCs and CSUs are no longer allowed to consider test scores for admissions.   Therefore at CSUs and UCs the only HS students that could have been negatively impacted by a bad test score would have been the student-athletes.   We were not that far away from a place where only the HS athletes would even need to take the test, so the NCAA is just catching up with the reality that many schools don't even want to know standardized test scores now.

FWIW - Applications were up at most selective schools last year for a number of reasons.  There were a lot of kids across the USA that declined to enroll for fall 2020 and then applied at a number of schools for fall 2021. 

Ultimately, Fall 2020 proved to be a relatively easy year at many places as a lot of schools went deep into their waitlist to try to build a class.   Fall 2021 proved to be really difficult with many schools getting unexpected yield rates and overcrowding despite being rather stingy on acceptances.