But many families visiting test-optional colleges have a different preference. “I think SAT-optional is great, it’s wonderful,” said Lynne Brandes, of Hanover, Mass., who took her daughter, Jacqueline, on a New England college tour this summer. “Some families have the money to pay for tutoring, but some don’t. I’d love to see the SAT’s abolished.”

At test-optional colleges, admissions officers say they look forward to students’ liberation from testing.

“We hope that now that there are more test-optional schools, students will think about not taking it, and putting their time and money into other activities, like music or writing or community service,” said Jane B. Brown, vice president for enrollment at Mount Holyoke, which dropped the SAT requirement in 2001. “We hope they will have more interesting lives.”

But most admissions officials at selective colleges continue to rely on standardized test scores. “They’re especially useful for evaluating the rural Midwestern kid who’s No. 1 in a graduating class of nine at a high school you don’t know,” said Paul Thiboutot, dean of admissions at Carleton College.

William Shain, the dean of admissions at Bowdoin, has seen the pros and cons. Last year, he was at Vanderbilt, where tests are required. At Bowdoin, the first and most selective college to become test-optional — admitting fewer than a quarter of its applicants — Mr. Shain is mindful that each student admitted without scores displaces one with stellar scores and grades. He also said test scores become more helpful as high school transcripts provide fewer clear indicators of students’ abilities.

“Many schools won’t do rankings, there’s enormous grade inflation, and parents help write some of the essays,” he said. “It’s not so easy to disentangle from SAT’s. Even the bond-rating people, when a college borrows money, look at SAT scores.”

True, neither the Ivy League nor most large universities are about to drop their testing requirements. At the Ivies, anything that helps differentiate among hordes of highly qualified applicants is useful. And many large public universities do admissions by the numbers. But some state universities have minimized their use of SAT scores. For example, Texas students in the top 10 percent of their high school classes are automatically admitted to the University of Texas or Texas A&M.