BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - Louisiana State University is relaxing a longstanding policy of automatically rejecting applicants who score too low on standardized college entrance exams like the ACT and SAT.

Jason Droddy, an LSU vice president and executive director of policy, told The Advocate that the university won't disqualify outright for a test score. Instead, the state's flagship university will boost emphasis on recommendation letters, personal essays and activities outside of academia.

Droddy says standardized test scores have proven not to be a good indicator of predicting college success, particularly for low-income students, minority students or students with learning disabilities. The average ACT score for incoming LSU freshmen last year was 26, higher than the 19.6 average score statewide.

For decades, LSU has rejected any applicant who scored below 22, without looking at anything else.