LSU drops optional writing condition

• By JORDAN BLUM
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: Nov 4, 2009 - Page: 1B

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Reprints
• Twitter
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

LSU will no longer require student applicants to take the optional writing component of the standardized ACT test, university officials said Tuesday evening.

The change comes in the wake of LSU leaders realizing that close to 300 students per year are meeting university admission requirements except for taking the writing aspect of the ACT test, said Stacia Haynie, LSU vice provost for academic affairs.

For the 2010 applicants, LSU already has detected 257 students who qualify for LSU but had not taken the writing component of the ACT test, Haynie said.

“Not to be a bean counter, but that’s almost $1 million,” Haynie said, referring to just one year of tuition revenue for 257 additional students. That is especially relevant, she said, because LSU leaders want to increase the enrollment from about 28,000 students to 32,000.

LSU began requiring that potential students take the ACT writing component in 2006, shortly after ACT started offering the optional writing test. ACT did so just after its competitor, the SAT Reasoning Test, began including its own writing test in 2005.

LSU does not factor the SAT writing section score into its admissions criteria either.

Although LSU has required the writing component for three years, Haynie said the writing section scores have played no factor in student admissions.

“We literally don’t use it at all,” Haynie said.

Only the LSU Honors College looks at the writing test results at all, she said. The Honors College will continue to require the writing component.

University Registrar Robert Doolos said the writing test offers a writing sample provided in a “controlled environment” and aids Honors College officials in the admission process.

Current LSU admission standards require completion of a core high school curriculum, a minimum 22 ACT score out of a possible 36 — or an SAT equivalent — and a minimum 3.0 grade-point average on a 4.0 scale. The Honors College has more stringent requirements.

Haynie on Tuesday checked with the LSU Faculty Senate to make sure no one objected, and no one did.

LSU Faculty Senator Andrew Christie, who was on a committee that decided to require the writing component in 2006, said LSU only opted to do so because ACT forced universities to require the writing test in order to get the ACT writing test results data for free.