Wake Forest University will no longer require applicants to submit standardized test scores, the university announced last week. The move makes Wake Forest, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, one of the most prominent institutions with a "test optional" admissions policy. The university's decision reveals the increasing complexity of the national testing debate. Within higher education, views of the ACT and SAT vary widely, as do opinions of colleges that have dropped them as requirements. Some admissions officials say test-optional policies serve students well, but others dismiss them as tactics colleges use to inflate the average SAT scores they report to the public and to guidebooks. Wake Forest officials said their new policy was an attempt to create a more diverse campus (83 percent of the university's undergraduates are white). Starting this fall, Wake Forest's admissions officials will emphasize applicants' grade-point averages and the strength of their high-school courses even more so than in the past. The university also plans to encourage applicants to participate in personal interviews. Trained alumni would conduct off-campus interviews for some students who could not visit Winston-Salem. And officials also hope to create a virtual-interview option, in which students would answer timed questions online. The changes may create more work for the admissions staff, but officials say the university's relatively small applicant pool (about 9,000 students this year) allows them to enhance their evaluations of applicants.