Holy cow, following up on the Economist article about Harvard, I never thought of the issue raised by an earlier poster—that going test optional could be a way of de-emphasizing the testing strength of a minority group (today, Asians) and thereby legitimize a lower admission rate for that group than the “complete” academic profile would deem fair.
Think about it—if a school does not want to admit a 30%+ Asian class but is facing a discrimination problem because the academic profiles of the applicant pool suggest that this should be the result, going test optional would produce enough applicants without test scores that you could justify not relying on test scores to the same degree in admissions decisions. Most of the applicants choosing not to submit test scores are presumably in the cohorts with lower test scores (or they would submit them). These are the applicants who are purportedly taking the admission slots belonging to better academically-qualified Asian students, but because these applicants did not submit test scores the school could argue that it was “fair” to emphasize the holistic review process and factors that were discriminating against Asian kids in the first place.
A conspiracy theory, sure, but certainly a possible outcome or byproduct of a test-optional policy.
The redesign of the SAT was twofold: 1) testing “college readiness” rather than aptitude (to the extent that the old test did so - and I think it still did) meant that the test could be marketed to a higher number of buyers, including districts and states using the test for the grad standard; and 2) the new SAT was supposed to be a lot more “preppable” than the old one; along with progression in your standard college prep curriculum and Kahn Academy, you could expect to make in improvement of around 80 points, on average, between the PSAT and SAT. I guess we could also include 3) the ACT was more popular and the SAT wanted to mimic the ACT but w/o the time pressure. So it’s like the old SAT but w/o the little tricks and strategies required to nail a high score on the old test (speaking generally).
The old SAT was definitely learnable but, having had my kids take ACT, old SAT, and new SAT, I do believe it was more g-loaded than the current revised version. The revised version can have a wicked nasty curve, but it’s still more straightforward than the old one.
The acceptance rate for the Class of 2021 was 8.7 percent – so I gather that 27,694 * 0.087 = 2409 were accepted for the class size of 1735. So how do they arrive at 72% yield? Well, one possibility is that UChicago actually matriculated 1635 at EDs and only 100 slots are left at RD. Out of those 774 accepted at RD, only 100 chose to attend … or it is so undesirable that it only lefts ONE spot available at RD, out of those 675 admitted at RD, only one chose to attend.
So UChicago boosters, it is to your advantage to convince UChicago to release the number of students admitted at EDs. Otherwise, you can’t prove the calculation above is wrong. Using new invocations to attract more applicants can only do so much. The public should be aware that they have a very slim chance of being admitted to UChicago at RD. (Well, most people probably take the free application offers anyway – UChicago is among the most aggressive at offering free applications.)
It would be great to have a little more clarity on how the elite schools really view standardized test scores. For example, MIT has stated that any subject test with a 7 in front, is fine. If the schools are using the tests as thresholds, I’d love for them to give out those numbers. For example, Harvard could say, don’t bother retaking anyhthing over a 34 or 1500 — or whatever score they consider to be the threshold. They could say that beyond those numbers, there is no incremental benefit. They could also break it down by subject matter.
I think this would go far in stopping the madness for retakes. Students with 1540 SATs who plan to retake until they can get to 1580.
I am very much in favor of holistic admissions. I don’t believe that test scores are everything. But I do believe that schools have certain minimums which they believe are prerequisites for success. If they let us know what those were, it would be really helpful.
@gallentjill I would be in favor of holistic admissions too IF grade inflation and social engineering influencing grade inflation werent such enormous problems. Unfortunately, a standard test of some rigor is the only way to validate grades.
I believe holistic admissions includes testing. It’s not holistic by its very meaning if you remove part of the whole.
And for everyone saying testing and ranking shouldn’t be the method - everyone appears to agree with that point. There’s no argument.
There isn’t a single post (in general) other than discussing - further or enhanced tests -positing that at all.
It is simply a specious argument to say tests aren’t indicative of success as answer for eliminating them completely.
What individual component is in of itself wholly determinative?
Gpa. Not with school and grading variation at 37000 USA high schools and international schools above and beyond that number.
ECs? Multiply the 37k times the 25 to 50 options or more per school. Which are good and meaningful. No way to tell.
Essays. They can be coached ghost written or basically a piece of fiction created to appeal to a set of college admissions officers.
Recs. Now we have a hundred different teachers and guidance counselors per school times the 37k. Talk about variation.
All can add up and a good score can help solidly defend the other components. And the components support the score. If there is a poor writer the score helps. A poor test taker the writing helps.
I think eliminating the legacy hook and sports hooks beyond revenue producIng sports is a reasonable idea at elite schools Top 50 lac and RUs. Offer scholarships or not but meet the same criteria as everyone else. Some of these seem out of touch with today’s world.
Big donors, everyone gets it. They help build dorms and support scholarships and faculty chairs. But that number is tiny.
Not many selective schools saw their applicant numbers dropping last year.
Never mind if SAT/ACT has its own merits. UChicago is a good school. Playing more and more games to try to boost its “ranking” and make it look more “selective” can only backfire. It might eventually become a laughing stock.
MITsaid a leading 7 before the new SAT, on which many colleges found kids score higher. So that line notched up.
Why should H tell you? I mean it. It’s the wrong focus.
The absolute bar that I know is lower than 700. But you need a LOT of strong personal traits to overcome that. Why? Because the competition is that stiff. If you don’t have the full goods, a 1600 won’t work miracles. If you’re under 7-something, without the rest of those traits, forget it.
And all this talk about minorities being less qualified- how do posters know? In addition to scores, are you so convinced lacrosse and a couple of hs titles are all it truly takes?
As for grade inflation, no adcoms can do anything about that. What you can look for is kids who strived best in their context- and the other traits.
I know the complaint is , but we don’t know the traits… Who’s taken a look?
Similarly, who’s seen more apps than their own kids and maybe a friend? The bigger picture. What makes you so sure minorities can’t be super candidates. (Back to scores? Even though you should know by now that scores aren’t all of it? And who has seen, say, Hispanic score trends among the top colleges? Not to mention, ECs?)
@privatebanker love your post but eliminating legacy and athlete hooks is a terrible idea. First many legacies overlap with donors. And if you eliminate athlete hooks you will be upsetting the Title lX balance for sure. Womens sports produce no revenue. I have no issue with legacy --or athlete hooks–thats the beauty of the academic index. In fact one might discover that athletes are pretty darn competitive at the Ivies because of the AI. Keeping in mind the AI is factored for all students but only applies to athletes for admissions purposes. No minimum AI for any other category of applicant…
If you look in the other thread, someone posted a link to Harvard’s own legal exhibit. This isn’t an issue where people need to speculate anymore or take the word of anonymous posters. The evidence is conclusive, based on Harvard’s own analysis.
@SatchelSF , you seem to be saying that something like a pure test of intelligence would have a democratic effect in that kids of lesser parental wealth would benefit disproportionally and that this would be a corrective for all the culturally-inflected attainments and characteristics that holistic admissions and even SAT/ACT tests bring into consideration - characteristics which disproportionally benefit the higher SES kids. You suggest that that’s the reason we won’t see any such test. Have I understood you correctly?
If so, what is the source for your assumption that intelligence has little or no correlation with social class? My own unscholarly sense is that there was little correlation in the early and even mid-twentieth century - before “the great sort” on meritocratic principles began, leading ultimately to the ascendancy of most people of high intelligence to the upper-middle or higher classes, where they marry similarly situated intelligent spouses and have children who are statistically more likely to have higher levels of intelligence than the general population (though not necessarily their parents), and so on. In short, though I would agree that there was once a time in which many intelligent people were to be found in humble occupations, married to spouses of high intelligence and with children of high intelligence, that situation has, I believe, ceased being statistically representative.
I myself was a product of the working class, privileged in having very smart parents, who were simply trapped in poor jobs in a way that I and my cohort were for all kinds of reasons not trapped. Though it pains me to say so, I believe there are now far fewer people of high intelligence who remain stranded in the working and lower classes. That was not the case when the SAT was designed, which was for the very democratic reasons you now advocate for a purer test of intelligence - as a way of correcting the distorting effects of privilege and identifying intelligence sprinkled equally among all classes. But if the SAT no longer quite has that effect, what makes you think any purer test of intelligence would?
You know, and I know that Harvard doesn’t owe me anything. However, Harvard itself has said that it is troubled by the academic arms race and the increasing pressure that kids are under. I remember an article that was extensively quoted here on CC about elite universities looking to focus more on “kindness.” One of the rationals mentioned was the desire to take some of the pressure off of today’s kids.
There is no way that these elite schools could or should tell us exactly what they are seeking. But they could tell us what they are NOT seeking – not because they owe us, but as a kindness. I have read in many places that these schools do not want students wasting their time studying for AP tests in classes they haven’t taken. This is good information. They would rather students spend their time on other things. They could do something similar for the standardized tests. They certainly wouldn’t need to set a lower limit and could retain the ability to accept whoever they choose. But they could say that there is no extra benefit to retaking tests above a certain point. They could free up students to spend their time elsewhere, just as some of them have done with the AP. They could post these things on their websites so the information could be available to all.
“I believe bowdoin has a higher yield than some other schools exactly because it is test optional. The other schools in its league that would attract the same type of accomplished gpa and ec type students but require tests.” @privatebanker at #344
Using the Parchment tool for cross admits, you can see that Bowdoin actually has a lower cross-admit yield than Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Middlebury, and Pomona (Wellesley too but that’s a special case). So if these are all “in the same league”, then in general students choosing between Bowdoin and another peer are more likely to choose the peer than Bowdoin. Beginning with Carleton, Bowdoin seems to dominate the cross-admit comparison (didn’t go beyond Colgate on the US News list).
For the most part, these schools happen to have a lower overall yield than Bowdoin - only Pomona/CM (two CA LACs) have higher yields (source is College Navigator entering fall 2017). Yield is determined in part by ED but IIRC all these elite LAC’s have ED.
It’s interesting that there is this discrepancy: Bowdoin has the highest overall yield for a non-California LAC, but comes in something like 6th for cross-admit yield. Why should this be? Well, there may be something special about Bowdoin that attracts those who wouldn’t apply, or be accepted, to those other top LAC’s. That’s where “Test Optional” might be a particular niche for Bowdoin, boosting its overall yield by opening up new pools of applicants, but making it less competitive or desirable when compared specifically to peer LACs. Its also important to note that this might not be much of a “niche” - Bowdoin, after all, has a higher overall AND cross-admit yield than the #8 school Carleton. It also has a notably lower admit rate. So its higher ranking relative to this school is likely secure.
“Folks, if you read this, you would know the reason for UChicago to decide to drop SAT/ACT requirement is
The College received 27,694 applications, the article said, which marks a decline from the 31,411 applicants for the Class of 2020.
Not many selective schools saw their applicant numbers dropping last year.”
@nrtlax33 UChicago’s application numbers for Class of 2022 were something like 32,000 so it has returmned to it’s prior numbers. The drop last year was odd but perhaps explained by the fact that they had just rolled out completely new admission plans at that time. In any case, it’s possible that UChicago internally believes it can’t get much higher than 32,000 total applications so needs to tweak its admissions policies once again in order to access new pools of kids.
Edit to add: it’s also possible that UChicago wants to expand the class size over 1,740. We’ll know more this fall. But if they increase admissions, they need applications to increase in order to keep the school at the same level of selectivity (currently around 7.2% for Class of 2022), assuming that ED admission percentage are unchanged.
roeth- less qualified or some degree of lower stats? That’s what I wish people could understand.
And that how you construct your app says a lot about your thinking. Of course, also, what record it shows (not just academics, but activities. There’s a real difference between kids who stretch here and those who think superficially.)
How would you “show” intellectual curiosity? If my kid had applied to UChi, that’s one of the first questions I’d ask her to think about. “Show, not just tell.” Ironically, for any very top college, the whole dang app package is a test of sorts. A test of understanding, judgment, awareness, smarts, perspective and more. Not just stats and some innate intelligence, as measured by “in the box” tests.
Likewise, why should they tell you what they’re NOT seeking…when what they want is kids savvy enough to go looking for it and put the pieces together, think critically and self assess? Seriously. How can one be H material if they want guidelines spelled out? “We don’t want another paid trip to visit the orphans in Africa.” Does the level of kid they want really need to be told? Put another way, they’ll end up with 6000 finalists who did NOT need to be told.
I share a lot between the lines and people tell me, “Nope!” Nothing I can do about that, lol.
You misunderstand me. I’m not saying they should do this to help kids get in. I think they should do this for the benefit of the 30,000 kids they are going to reject. The kids who are capable of getting in don’t need the help. But Harvard has said that they care about the pressure on today’s kids. I assume they care about the kids killing themselves going off in the wrong direction. There are kids who will spend their entire summer cramming to take the SAT one more time in hopes of a few extra points. Harvard could help them.
If you look at CC in general - the two measures one will see quoted nearly every time regarding “which college is better” or more “prestigious” or which one “ should I choose threads” quotes one of two data points.
USNWR rankings or admissions rates.
I rail in a nice way to stop with that - especially us parents. Admissions rates are one measure but many schools have built a machine to generate applications. Many for justifiably great reasons. Access to urm and rural schools etc. but it still can obscure true selectivity. If 40k applicants apply and only 5k are truly in the running that’s the real candidate pool. You are not competing with the other 35k applicants. The exact same 5k could apply to a school that is less broadly appealing, a religious affiliation or a state school. Or perhaps a more intricate application process or not in common app etc. but the same 5k students apply to all then the only diff once is quantity and not really in the considered pool IE Georgetown, UVA UNC Smith and BC. Many of the same students may apply to all. That’s the pool you are duking it out with for a spot. Does anyone really believe more than 30k of the 100k that apply to UCLA are qualified to attend. How many apps does H get that are simply to appease a parent or just to say you applied? This drives that figure and it also provides fuel to the usnwr machine as well.
Schools are well aware of this and so perhaps if we stopped this practice of jumping to the nearest data point it might help.
Let’s observe the admitted students profiles. The ultimate long term success of the grads in a real way.
Let’s look at the experience of the ultimate consumers with real survey of grads on the way out.
Let’s not fight each other in a constant “whose best” and change the dialogue.
Let’s look at just how lucky we are to literally hundreds of great institutions of higher learning available. It’s remarkable the educational opportunities our kids have at this time In history. And despite the flaws more inclusive than ever.
A lot is working but the cost factor imho.
Let’s tell these kids how great all of these options are and they will stop looking to “getting in or not “ as their validation as a good person with a bright future.
It’s all too hot and contentious.
If we start to bring down the heat with our experience in life to help guide these decisions perhaps this might cool the arms race a bit.