The headline should really be, "A test-optional policy is likely a barrier to Dartmouth identifying less-advantaged students who would succeed at Dartmouth." I think it's no surprise to anyone that test scores correlate with academic success, but it might seem counterintuitive that test-optional policies actually bias admission in favor of higher-income students.
Honestly, reading this makes me think "well yeah... Why is anyone surprised?"
Being a good test taker will 100% translate to doing well in college. Almost every course I took in college had over 80% of it's overall grade being tests, with a large number of them being closer to 90-95% for how much tests+final count.
So yeah, if you are good at taking tests and/or studying for them effectively... Yeah, you will do well in college. Especially the first year.
