Some International Test Sites for College Admissions Are Shut on Virus Fears - The Wall Street Journal

Testing centers across China and elsewhere are being temporarily closed.
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Patrick Thomas

The Wall Street Journal

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Updated March 3, 2020 8:55 am ET

Several college-admissions tests including the SAT, ACT, GMAT and Toefl have been postponed at some international locations amid the spread of the novel coronavirus, potentially weighing on the volume of international student applications that U.S. universities receive.

In China, the February and March sittings of the SAT and ACT, two exams for undergraduate admissions to many American colleges, were canceled across the country, according to the organizations that administer those tests. In other areas, including Mongolia, Hong Kong, Vietnam and Thailand, some testing sites have been temporarily shuttered.

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“We may need to cancel additional March SAT administrations in other countries,” said Jaslee Carayol, a spokeswoman for the College Board, the New York nonprofit that owns and administers the SAT. Students who had signed up for the March exam will have the option to transfer to a May date, she added.

During the 2018-19 academic year, nearly 370,000 Chinese students were enrolled at U.S. universities, according to the Institute of International Education, making them the largest group of international students at American colleges and accounting for a third of international students studying in the U.S.

Testing centers for Toefl, a widely used test to measure the English language ability of non-native speakers, and the GRE, a general graduate school admissions test, were closed in China in February and will remain closed until the end of March, according to the Educational Testing Service, which administers those exams.

“China is one of the largest source countries of international students all over the world, so any kind of an impact is a big impact,” ETS spokeswoman Allyson Norton said.

Toefl tests have also been postponed until April 2 in Iran, and at some locations in the U.S., Canada, Japan, Italy and Macau. The ETS said it wouldn’t detail which U.S. testing centers are closed except to say site operations are made on a case-by-case basis.

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ETS had more than 375 testing centers in China and is prepared to expand capacity there if the centers reopen as planned in April, the spokeswoman said. She also noted that spring isn’t the busiest test-taking period because it is typically late in the admissions cycle for most schools.

The ACT, a college-entrance exam alternative to the SAT, closed its test centers in China, Hong Kong, Vietnam and Thailand at the request of local officials for its February international test date, and it will give students who were signed up the option to take the test on any future international test date at no charge or receive a refund of their registration fee, according to Tarah DeSousa, a spokeswoman for the ACT.

“ACT is consulting with local government and school officials in each country and city to make the appropriate decisions,” she said.

China also canceled the business school admissions tests, the GMAT, through March, according to Geoff Basye, a spokesman for the nonprofit Graduate Management Admission Council, which administers the GMAT test. The GMAT is also temporarily canceled in certain areas in South Korea, Italy and Thailand, he said.

The lack of GMAT and GRE testing in China are a blow to business schools and M.B.A. program applications that have already been on the decline for several years, partly because of a drop in foreign applicants. International students accounted for nearly 40% of all U.S. business school applications in 2019, according to the council.