Next up: “Opt out admissions” ?
@Center - We are going to see the test requirement dropped at a lot of places. It is about student numbers. Nationwide, admissions offices are facing a situation very similar to what they saw in the 1970’s when the last of the baby boom and end of draft deferments with the end of the Vietnam War resulted in the closing of many weaker institutuons, the coeducation of many formerly single-sex institutions, and an overall increase in national marketing aided by the College Board’s own Student Search service. Chicago is just the first tier-one institution out of the gate this time around - Well played Chicago!
UChicago already pretty much killed their “life of the mind” intellectual culture with Nondorf’s drive to improve their rankings. Just on more step in that path. It is a shame, UC was a unique institution. Not really any more.
Perhaps testing will still be de facto required for all but the underprivileged.
I also wonder whether there is some lack of usefulness or lack of precision in the test results that makes them less useful than they may have been a few decades ago. (e.g. at the top end, every 10 points difference on the SAT only represents a single question)
Or perhaps U of C merely wants even more control via holistic admission. It is unfortunate that admission to top schools becomes even more opaque without test scores.
The simple explanation for this may be the best one - that these test scores aren’t the most reliable way of identifying the kinds of kids the U of C traditionally wants for its brand of education. The scores can be easily juiced by all the test-prep courses out there. My son-in-law taught such a course for a while. It was all about cunning strategies for eliminating wrong answers and guessing correct ones without regard for anything one would call knowledge. Scores achieved by that sort of thing are measuring something, but is it more than low cunning? There are better ways than that for identifying kids with the right stuff.
Disagree — UC has historically been MORE focused on high test scores. They wanted the sharpest tack they could find, period. Tippy top test scores were highly valued at UC. This is all about driving their admission %s lower in hopes of scaling the very top of the rankings.
So many schools have gone the test optional route, but when UChicago does it, its for nefarious reasons. There are definitely some haters out there in the forum for UChicago.
Personally I think its a good move to get some strongly qualified, unique applicants who may not apply (due to their test scores) to apply, and I do think most of the other elite schools will follow.
I grew up in the south and had never heard of University of Chicago when I was applying to college. I added it to the list of 5 other colleges I was applying to because I skimmed through the back of the Barron’s Guide to the SAT and saw how high its SAT scores were and figured smart kids went there. We didn’t have a lot of ways to learn about colleges back then. This was in the period when I think about 40% of applicants were admitted to Chicago.
This is just a way to admit certain kids who are not too smart, but whom U of Chicago wants there for various institutional reasons. A few (more) weak bulbs isn’t going to appreciably dim its overall shine, but could really help on its reported test score IQRs. Call me cynical… but this has nothing to do with low income kids. Tons and tons of low income kids score sky high on the tests…
When I was in high school back in the mid-80s, the ACT wasn’t really a thing (at least not in the Northeast where I lived) and you only got two shots at the SAT, spring of junior year and fall of senior year. That was it. Nowadays, kids can take both the SAT and ACT multiple times and cherry pick their best score to use when applying to schools. Some schools even let them superscore. While there may be a few exceptions, if you can’t manage to come up with a good score on the ACT/SAT, you probably have no business going to a school like UC. Or let me put it this way, while scoring high on the ACT/SAT is no guarantee that you will do well at a school like UC, doing poorly should raise some serious red flags.
@intparent and others - You haven’t addressed my critique of the scores. They may once have meant something - before the rich kids began spoiling things for everyone else with endless test-prep courses. They have come to mean less and less - just another proxy for parental wealth. That’s ironic if one remembers that their entire rationale and objective was once to identify merit without those trappings of privilege. But the privileged always find a way to make anything work for them - hence the test prep business. If the U of C once especially valued SAT scores, but less so now, it could be for those reasons.
There is an abundance of free and low cost test prep available. My son did all the free prep and bought a single review book for under $40. No need to be rich to prep for the SAT.
I’m hopeful that this is a return to form for UChicago admissions: taking a chance on students with weaker test scores or transcripts who have that quirky spark.
@milee30 , that no doubt helps. It helps a lot more to take expensive courses.
He managed a 1540 with the free prep. Perhaps he would have increased that with expensive courses, but the 1540 was sufficient to get him into UChicago.
The point remains that free and inexpensive prep is available to all.
Unfortunately a lot of lower income kids are not savvy on the test prep game and don’t have an adult guiding them in the process. Free test prep is available but that’s only 1/2 the battle.
And I’m saying that while there may be some chaff in with the high scoring wheat, that doesn’t make it invalid for trying to find what UC sought. High test scores alone don’t give a measure of intellect, since test prep is more common today, but an inability to achieve them is still an indicator. It is very out of (past) character for them to give up the one common measure across the whole pool of applicants.
If you want to argue about what UChicago “used to do” re: standardized tests, take it from Ted O’Neill’s mouth.
[QUOTE=""]
“How should liberal arts students be selected? These days, so attest the high school counselors, the people with the best overview of what actually happens in admissions, colleges rely much more, and much too much, on standardized test scores. They are easy to use, and seem to promise an accurate measure of something, though no one really can define what that something is. They impress U.S. News (and presidents and, sadly, faculties). They don’t seem to have anything to do with the likelihood that anyone is going to be able or want to devote time and serious thought to whatever we think the liberal arts are. They are coachable, and like so much else in the process, offer families with more money for coaching yet another advantage.”
[/QUOTE]
https://thepointmag.com/2016/examined-life/admissions-failure
@milee30, some level of preparation is available to all, yes, and that basic and inexpensive level was sufficient for your child. But are you so certain that there aren’t kids out there who would have benefitted from getting more than that basic level? Some of them do get it in the form of intensive and expensive courses which enable them to jack up their scores to the level your son was able to achieve without that assistance. Others can’t afford that special instruction. In an admissions world in which the scores are given such high regard the rich will do what they have to do to produce those scores, and the poor will not be able to match their efforts. How is that fair? Or an even better question - how can a school be sure that the score reflects the kid’s abilities and not the tricks learned in all that specialized instruction?
I have a unique perspective on this because I grew up in the bottom socioeconomic tier and have worked my way up to the top socioeconomic tier, so have experienced the advantages and disadvantages of both.
Test prep and testing is, IMO, the least problematic of all the components of the college app for low income students. For students with raw intelligence, the testing and prep is nowhere near the problem gaining access to an acceptable portfolio of ECs is. For low income students in schools with weak GC, the second largest problem is ensuring they’re taking not only the most rigorous courses but also courses that allow them to have the correct prerequisites for the upper courses they’ll need.
Along the lines of opening admissions to low income students, eliminating the interview requirement is helpful but not if they’re replacing it with allowing a video submission. Low income students will be at a huge disadvantage comparatively if all the other students are submitting catchy videos, since students without financial means are much less likely to have access to video equipment, editing software and the general experience to make such videos. Yes, there may be ways to borrow the equipment or use library or school resources to find editing software, but those are huge “ifs” and would require a disproportionate amount of time compared to the project itself. If you’re really worried about low income students being disadvantaged, think through things like the video submission rather than testing.