Thanks for sharing the article, @mynameiswhatever.
CC got a mention at the end of this piece, with whatâs likely to be a prescient call by MITâs Peterson if this thread takes off:
âThe admissions process is messy, Peterson, of the MIT admissions office, reminded me. His first job there involved monitoring the forum College Confidential. That experience answering questions about MIT on a website where misinformation and anxious chatter about admissions run rampant taught him that no single measure of merit, no metric of achievement, no amount of information about how someone ends up in the acceptance pile will satisfy students and their families. In the end, Peterson said, what they want is to âmake the admissions decisions themselves.ââ
What is even more likely to establish test optional as a permanent policy among highly selective colleges is the U.S. Supreme Court, which recently heard arguments in two cases challenging the constitutionality of race-conscious admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Given the Courtâs 6-3 conservative majority, the expectation among admissions deans is that it will end the use of race in admissions, a precedent it set more than 40 years ago and has repeatedly upheld since. According to Deacon, Georgetownâs admissions dean, being test optional could give colleges greater freedom in shaping a class with diversity in mind because test scores for applicants and admitted students are often used by plaintiffs in such cases as evidence of discrimination.
This.
Here you go, College Board: you can use this question on the SAT math section free of charge. Youâre welcome.
In 2020, colleges went test optional, and only those students who perceived themselves to be above the 50th %ile submitted scores. The following year, the new distribution of test scores for the 2020 season were published for each school, so now only the students in the top 50th %ile by these new numbers submitted their scores. How many years will it take for this process to become utterly ridiculous?
Many colleges went test optional long before 2020. For example, Bowdoin went test optional in 53 years ago, in 1969. How many years after 1969 did it take for Bowdoin scores to max out at 1600 with nobody submitting as you suggest?
The answer is this didnât happen, The majority of students in every matriculating class submitted scores, including the current matriculating class of 2026, and average scores have always been well short of perfect. During the period for which Bowdoin only reported scores of submitters (not all students), there was a slow and gradual increase in scores, not unlike similarly selective colleges that required scores.
Q: What does an SAT score mean?
A: How well you can do on the SAT.
Well, if you didnât cheat. 
I am sorry @UnsentDementor, that line of reasoning is already copywrited by Jack Welch of GE. He wanted to fire the bottom 10%.
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Wait. There are people that pay you for reading this site?
@MITChris Where do I send my resume? 
I heard there will be a vacancy at Harvard admissions office next year after the SC decision. 
Do you not see any indication that standardized scoring results pertain to academic performance, as was the conclusion of MIT (as stated in the article):
Sure, if you cannot do SAT math, you are unlikely to be able to do MIT math required in the GIR.
However, the inverse is not necessarily true, and the applicability to other colleges is not necessarily true. For example, SAT math may not have much correlation to academic success of a humanities major at an open curriculum college.
The job I had doesnât exist anymore! I was the first/only person to hold the âcounselor for web communicationsâ position. Once I moved off the comm team, they never formally relisted or filled it, because they knew that there could only be one highlander, so to speak.
I remember, though, that David (now our director of admissions) made a joke like that to me. As part of my job application, I had to write a few fake collegeconfidential responses to real posts, and make a video in response to a post. I had never heard of collegeconfidential and I didnât know anything about MIT but I had spent my entire adolescent and college life posting on a million different forums so my Posting skills were well honed.
If we were hiring, though, Iâd hire you skieurope. Though itâs not very much money â you might be better off doing whatever youâre doing now and posting on the side, which is effectively what I do nowâŠ
Well, since ski has raised forum moderation to an art form, I suppose an obvious way to monetize that is to set up a patreon etc page that would allow the continuation of this artistry unimpeded by financial constraints. 
At the risk of this post being moderated out of existence as a demonstration of that artistry, Iâll return to the topic at hand: the utility of the SAT at predicting anything. I have to confess that I read this VERY long article, but I am not really sure what the point of it was. Stated briefly, I guess itâs that some institutions donât like the SAT, some do, and many are taking a mid-range position (i.e., test-optional) that seems to complicate everything, especially for students.
I am absolutely no expert, but I find it hard to believe that the SAT is predictive/indicative of nothing substantive. As a parent, the specific worry that I have is that there appears to be rampant grade inflation throughout US high schools (and beyond). Iâve always thought the standardized test should be A factor, but not the only factor. Itâs just one more input that an institution can consider as it looks at the totality of the applicant.
It is obviously predictive of how well one does on the SAT and similar tests like the PSAT. It may also have more predictive value for other high stakes tests that have some similarities (e.g. LSAT, GMAT, MCAT). Hence, a good student who is a poor SAT taker may want to reconsider whether professional school requiring such a test is realistic.
The SAT does have some correlation to college academic performance, although a weaker one than HS GPA (even in College Board studies). The SAT math may be predictive in a negative sense, in that lower scores predict worse likelihood of success in a math-heavy major, although higher scores are no guarantee of success in a math-heavy major.
For test optional, the key question is not whether the SAT is predictive/indicative of something. It is more what the SAT adds beyond the other criteria and metrics that would be used to evaluate the test optional applicant.
For example, a post above mentions that if you cannot do SAT math, you are unlikely to be able to do MIT math. That does not mean the SAT is essential in admissions. One also needs to consider, whether a test optional applicant who cannot do basic math would be admitted to MIT? I expect that students who cannot do basic math would generally not apply to MIT. Among those who do choose to apply, I expect most would be flagged in another part of the application. Itâs unlikely that an applicant who cannot do basic math could receive straight Aâs in math up to a calculus+ level, have a glowing LOR from math teacher, excel in math related ECs out of classroom and/or have math awards/AMC, etc.
Considering additional criteria and/or evaluating applicants in different ways can put extra work in AOs, which contributes to why some colleges come to different conclusions than others. For example, Caltech chooses to remain test blind. Another poster mentioned that faculty evaluate applications of admitted students at Caltech. This level of review may not be practical or desired at most colleges.
There are also a variety of different colleges that use math in different ways. For example, many highly selective colleges require all incoming students take a math placement test, and offer a variety of different starting points and rigor levels of freshman math. This gives students from weaker HS backgrounds a chance to catch up and get a strong math foundation before moving on to more rigorous in major courses. Furthermore, at other colleges, most students major in fields that are less math heavy than typical majors at MIT.
The end result is test optional works well for many colleges, even if it does not work well for MIT. At selective test optional colleges, test optional admits and test submitter admits usually average almost identical graduation rates and cumulative graduating GPAs. Test optional admits to selective colleges are not a high risk of failing out, as the article implies.
The Uc system did a big study on the usefulness of standardized tests. The takeaway was that even controlling for demographics, test plus grades better than grades alone in a statistically significantly way for predicting college success. https://www.ucop.edu/institutional-research-academic-planning/_files/sat-act-study-report.pdf
Of course, the uc regents then ignored these findings completely and decided to go test blind.
The California First District Court of Appeal likely helped influence the decision by the Regents of the University of California
you could honestly set a watch by your posts being correct, itâs incredible