The Future of Everything covers the innovation and technology transforming the way we live, work and play, with monthly issues on health, money, cities and more. This month is Education & Learning, online starting Aug. 6 and in the paper on Aug. 13.

Relying more heavily on high school grades, designing a better standardized test or holding an admissions lottery: These are three ideas for replacing the SAT and ACT in college admissions.

A steady drumbeat of opposition to the tests escalated last year to a deafening call from school counselors—and some admissions officers—for the elimination of SAT and ACT scores from applications.

As test centers closed during the Covid-19 pandemic and students were unable to complete the exam, more than 1,500 schools, including the Ivy League and dozens of flagship public universities, agreed to consider applications without exam results.

The tests have endured for decades, in part because colleges want some uniform way to judge applicants. Yet the pandemic hastened a long-simmering desire for change. Studies have found that strong scores aren’t a better predictor of first-year college success than high school GPA, and have found stark divisions by race and family income.

It has all left admissions officers pondering whether there’s a better way of judging applicants. And what exactly does a school want to assess anyway—aptitude? Potential? Something else?

“The tenuous grasp we hold on many of our habits and policies has been further loosened [by the pandemic], and we must adapt if we are to continue to fulfill our duty to the public good,” the National Association for College Admission Counseling, made up of admissions officers and high school counselors, wrote in a recent report on testing.

Here are three paths schools could take in the future if they turn away from the SAT and ACT for good.

Make the GPA Matter More

Most selective colleges use a holistic approach to admissions, looking at grades, extracurricular involvement, recommendations, essays, scores and more. If tests are taken out of the equation, one approach would be to weigh the other things more heavily.

If an admissions office is trying to determine who could succeed academically in a college setting, then focusing on how students fared in high school is the most obvious approach, say proponents, including some college administrators and high school counselors.

“Why are we reaching so hard for other things to try to predict classroom performance, beyond classroom performance?” asks Akil Bello, a longtime test-prep tutor and senior director of advocacy and advancement for FairTest, a nonprofit that urges more limited use of standardized tests.

Scores were redundant at best, he says, and at their worst were misleading and perpetuated inequities—those who could afford private tutoring were able to game the exam and get into top schools, and those who didn’t have access to such support lost out.

“ Why are we reaching so hard for other things to try to predict classroom performance, beyond classroom performance? ”

— Akil Bello, test-prep tutor and senior director of advocacy and advancement for the nonprofit FairTest

Getting strong marks isn’t enough, admissions officers say. They want to see good grades in tough classes, or at least as tough as a particular high school offers. Seeing grades improve throughout high school is also telling, says Bard College President Leon Botstein, whose school has been test-optional for decades.

Still, the focus on grades could disadvantage kids from certain schools, where advanced courses are limited. Today, high schools provide short profiles describing their curricula. But the limitations of a school’s course offerings ought to be considered more seriously, according to groups that push to increase enrollment opportunities for low-income and other underrepresented students. That could include taking into account whether a student took the most challenging classes a school offers, even if it doesn’t have many Advanced Placement or honors options from which to choose. Some worry that admissions officers are too swamped to do that homework and could gravitate toward applicants from high schools they already know provide a rigorous education and that are successful feeders to the college. Often, those schools serve a privileged population.

Find Another Test

Several academics and state officials are working to replace the SAT and ACT with tests that attempt to be more equitable or measure different attributes that are important for college success.

A University of California Academic Senate committee is assessing whether it could adapt the Smarter Balanced exam—now given to all California public school 11th graders and students in a range of grades in seven other states—either by modifying the test or the scoring, or using it for admissions as is. The committee is expected to submit its final recommendation this fall. University regents voted last year to scrap the SAT and ACT from consideration in admissions in upcoming application cycles, and a legal settlement in May extended the period during which those tests can’t be used.

The Smarter Balanced test more directly measures English and math skills that students learn in class, rather than the broader material on the SAT and ACT that has motivated specialized and often costly tutoring. The test is already offered free in school, making it more accessible, though students in other parts of the country and world don’t have access. It is also not clear whether that exam is a better predictor of college success than GPAs, and there are still racial disparities.

Those divisions could get worse if the Smarter Balanced test were to become a high-stakes gatekeeper for admission to sought-after schools. An expensive test-prep outfit will inevitably pop up and give new advantages to those who can afford it, Mr. Bello says.

A spokeswoman for the College Board, which administers the SAT, declined to comment on the Smarter Balanced test, but says a nationwide validity study in 2019 showed the SAT is a strong predictor of college performance, and that it remains a valuable way for students, including those who are underrepresented, to stand out in the admissions process. ACT CEO Janet Godwin says studies confirm the ACT measures college and career readiness, and notes that the University of California’s standardized test task force recommended in its early 2020 report that the Smarter Balanced test not replace existing exams.

Because of its sheer population, California is a likely bellwether in any major shift in admissions policy. But other states are taking action as well.

James Skoufis, a state senator in New York, proposed a bill this spring that would force public universities to stop using the SAT or ACT in admissions decisions and require the State University of New York and City University of New York to create another test instead. Neither the bill nor Mr. Skoufis provided specifics on what a new test would involve.

Mr. Skoufis says an applicant’s high school grades alone “won’t clearly illustrate their capacity for collaboration or critical thinking” or reflect their extracurricular engagement or personal stories.

Robert Sternberg, a Cornell University professor of human development who studies intelligence, would also like to see schools do more to measure traits like creativity.

Decades ago, he created a tool called the Rainbow Project to measure analytical skills, as well as creativity and practical skills. While a dean at Tufts University from 2005 to 2010, Dr. Sternberg got buy-in from the admissions office to use a similar assessment on applicants, which he dubbed the Kaleidoscope Project.

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The results from a diverse set of test-takers were far better predictors of first-year college grades than the SAT, according to research Dr. Sternberg published in the journal European Psychologist in 2009.

“We were admitting people who wouldn’t have gotten in, who had skills that were relevant for university success and life success,” Dr. Sternberg says. The Kaleidoscope project also resulted in higher minority enrollment at Tufts, he says.

Tufts used the tool for a few years, the school says, and continues to use some elements of it with essay prompts. The students who were admitted with the assessment at Tufts fared well, and the tool even predicted how they would do in extracurricular activities, Dr. Sternberg says. The Tufts head of admissions during Dr. Sternberg’s tenure didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Dr. Sternberg brought it to Oklahoma State University under the moniker Panorama when he was an administrator there from 2010 to 2013. The school says after he left it switched to a holistic admission process but has continued to use his research on intelligence and creativity to inform application essay questions. It isn’t being widely considered as a wholesale replacement for the SAT.

Play the Lottery

Some college counselors and admissions officers pushing to increase equity in education access argue it is time for a far more radical rethink of admissions.

“What’s the endgame here? We’re raising that question,” says Eddie Comeaux, an associate professor of higher education at the University of California, Riverside, who co-chaired the University of California task force on standardized testing. He is skeptical that a new test will do any better at providing equitable access to higher education, and points to the spike in applications to the University of California this year, when scores were optional, as evidence of tests being a barrier.

Recently, the perennial idea of a lottery has gotten more attention, says Mr. Bello. This would involve choosing applicants randomly from a pool of qualified students, either based on a minimum GPA or GPA and other criteria.

Applications to some of the nation’s most selective schools jumped by 30% or more this year, bringing their acceptance rates to the low single digits. The schools themselves acknowledge that there were far more academically qualified applicants than they had space to admit. At that rate, some parents and college counselors say, why not formalize it as a game of luck?

But a lottery isn’t a panacea, says Dominique Baker, an assistant professor of education policy at Southern Methodist University and former admissions officer at the University of Virginia.

With Michael Bastedo at the University of Michigan, she has run thousands of simulations for a lottery at selective colleges, and says the approach on its own doesn’t create a more diverse entering class.

The admitted classes of a large number of lotteries, averaged together, will reflect the applicant pool, she says. But in a given year, even if 10% of the applicant pool consists of Black candidates, they could still make up just 1% of the class.

Write to Melissa Korn at melissa.korn@wsj.com