This year, only 44% submitted SAT or ACT entrance exam results with their Common Application, which lets students apply to many schools at once. That’s down from 77% in the 2019-2020 season. Schools are suspending required testing because of the pandemic.

While many students are delighted, some counselors worry that the scarcity of scores could add to growing inequality in American higher education.

The reason: Wealthier students can game more subjective measures. They can hire consultants to sharpen their essays, and their school counselors tend to have the time and expertise to write recommendations that will catch an admissions officer’s eye.

Ayah Fakhy, the daughter of Moroccan immigrants in Los Angeles, registered for at least two SAT tests in August and the fall of 2020. But they were canceled because of site closings.

Now, the 17-year-old worries that she’ll be at a disadvantage to classmates who drove — or even flew — to open test centers.

“It frightened me,” said Fakhy, whose parents never attended college. “I knew I’d have to make the other parts of the application stand out.”

That concern has merit, according to Bob Sweeney, who works with a Brooklyn college access program that each year helps about 20 senior girls, most of whom are the first in their families to attend college.

“They’re at a disadvantage if there isn’t someone who can advocate for them,” said Sweeney, a former college counselor at Mamaroneck High School in Westchester.

But testing critics say the exams — established in the early 20th Century to promote meritocracy — have instead long been biased against poor students and members of underrepresented minority groups.

Ditching them will improve race, gender and income diversity, said Bob Schaeffer, interim executive director of FairTest, a nonprofit that has long pushed to eliminate the exam requirement. More than 1,300 schools have made SATs and ACTs optional for at least the current junior class, according to FairTest.

“It’s remarkable how many schools found the experience good enough to say ‘Let’s do it again,’” Schaeffer said of those dropping the requirement.

Representatives of the SAT and the ACT say the test remains essential. Zach Goldberg, a spokesman for the College Board, which administers the SAT, said the absence of common yardsticks will increase reliance on grades; well-off schools are more likely to inflate grades, he said.

In a Kaplan Test Prep survey of almost 400 college admissions officers, only 9% required standardized test scores this year. But there’s a divide among those who are sending them anyway, according Eric Waldo, a vice president at the Common App, which is used at more than 900 colleges.

Forty-nine percent of students whose parents earned at least a bachelor’s degree provided test results, compared with 79% the previous year. Among those families who reported that neither of their parents earned at least a bachelor’s degree, only 31% sent scores, down from 71%. Wealthier students were also more likely to submit results, as were White and Asian students.

Shawn Babitsky, the son of a single mother who works as a nurse’s aide and an Uber driver, won’t be sending scores to Brown, Northwestern and other universities. The 17-year-old, whose family moved from Moscow when he was 2, said he couldn’t take the SAT after his sessions were canceled four times.

Like Fakhy, the daughter of Moroccan immigrants, Babitsky is getting help from College Match Los Angeles, which works with talented applicants from low-income families. He’ll be competing with students from wealthier families who knew to start much earlier.

“No one told me to start thinking about the SAT sophomore year,” said Babitsky, who would like to study molecular biology. “If I had, then maybe I could have had a test score. I wish I had been able to submit test scores.”