‘Very good question. Why would a school which wants to test everyone on the same core curriculum do this?The answer is “increasing the number of applicants”’
@nrtlax33 increasing the number of applicants is actually what a college admissions office is SUPPOSED to be doing. No shocker there.
It’s great to examine and all, but there are some cynics who seem more obsessed with UChicago than people who are actually associated with UChicago ;).
Anyway, I’m sure everyone can find info to either support one’s own argument or dispute opposing arguments.
Look at what UChicago spent their resources on; a school dedicated to academics has this:
@JBStillFlying : The [National Review article](https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/university-of-chicago-plan-to-drop-sat-act-scores-wrong/) explains clearly why this SAT/ACT dropping thing is ill-conceived.
I can understand why an open curriculum school wants to drop SAT/ACT requirement. A student might get 0 point in math part but aces in other parts. A writer is not necessarily good at physical sciences. A math genius might be totally dysfunctional at social sciences. But UChicago forces everyone to go through the same core curriculum. The only way to make this SAT/ACT dropping thing works is to water down core curriculum to make it symbolic. If it is symbolic, why not just forget about core curriculum all together? What kind of scores are we talking about? I have seen ACT 29 proudly announce he/she is premed. If someone cannot even come up with a SAT/ACT score, only symbolic core curriculum won’t fail them. I don’t think UChicago has that in mind. UChicago is engaged in PUMP AND DUMP gimmick. With free application, everyone with a SAT/ACT score already participates in the free lottery. UChicago wants to reach out to those who cannot even come up with a score. If those guys can succeed in UChicago, UChicago won’t be UChicago any more. I have very high regards for UChicago’s academics. UChicago’s administrators are so obsessed with one ranking, they make the institution look like a laughing stock. Why is that UChicago is not dropping MCAT requirement for UChicago med school? Because selectivity is a much smaller part of med school ranking formula compared with college ranking’s formula. I won’t be surprise if UChicago would be the fist one to drop MCAT if suddenly selectivity became a big part of med school’s ranking formula.
“Without dropping its core curriculum, do you think those low stats kids have a chance to survive?”
My guess is that Chicago will admit a small number of kids who don’t submit SAT/ACT scores, at least to begin with. If they then require those kids to take one of these tests over the summer, as Bowdoin apparently does, then they can see who those kids are - maybe they are kids with a score near the 25 percentile who would have been admitted under the old system. Whether or not they require summer test scores, they can watch to see how students with unusually low test scores do. They probably won’t tell us how many of these students they’re admitting. (I think they should, but they probably won’t.) Which means they can then keep tweaking how the policy is applied in practice until they’re admitting students who will be successful and not admitting those who will drown.
As far as the relationship between SAT/ACT scores and the core curriculum:
Imagine a student who has a slight math disability. Or a student who would have a very high score on a g-loaded IQ or other test, but an average or low-average processing speed. The student may have timed test anxiety. Or the student may simply not be in a school where the SAT math was well and thoroughly taught. (Our school teaches math terribly, and I know a very smart student who, needing a higher score on the [old] SAT math in order to get a full-ride merit scholarship to the college of her choice, finally did 6 weeks of paid on-line adaptive SAT math course in senior year and brought her math score up 150 points. It wasn’t any special coaching or tricks; she just learned the math that was on the SAT that our teachers had skipped over in their hurry to finish prepping the students for the state-mandated exams that didn’t cover topics like probability. The new SAT is even more geared toward math that kids are (or at some schools, aren’t) taught, rather than the kind of unfamiliar logic puzzles that used to give the very old SAT enough g-loading that Mensa accepts those scores in lieu of an actual IQ test score.) Or there could be a combination of these factors.
Let’s say that student is a really hard worker, and used to spending most of her free time on schoolwork or reading for pleasure. She takes the SAT and gets, say, an 800 on the verbal sections, but gets a score somewhat below Chicago’s current published 25 percentile math score (which, despite the student’s poor high school math preparation and lack of any coaching for the SAT is still way above the median national math score).
The student knows she wants to major in a non-STEM field.
Can the student succeed at Chicago? Well, Chicago actually has a set of non-credit math courses that are remedial (for Chicago itself), that then allows you to take 2 quarters of the calculus sequence for credit, satisfying the core. Or the student could maybe do okay even taking 2 quarters of the lowest level calculus sequence to begin with. Chicago now apparently has free tutoring available to all students. Another possibility instead of calculus is to take a statistics class and an extra (third) non-major biology class. I’m not sure how math-heavy the non-major physical science classes are (my DD’s first physical science class was physics-heavy, but I think some others are not physics- or math-heavy). But in any event, the student could put off taking those physical science classes until second or third year, after she’s filled gaps, if any, in algebra created in high school.
Depending on the reasons that the student got a low score on math SAT, relative to other Chicago students, she may have to spend more total time on academics than other students. If Chicago admissions has selected well, she’s a student who’s used to fighting through adversity and she’s okay with that. She may be counseled to or choose to take only 3 courses during the first year, while she’s catching up on math. This would certainly be a good idea if one of her courses is the non-credit remedial math sequence. 3 courses is a full load at Chicago (quarter system), and even a student without AP or accreditation credit can take 3 courses for half the quarters at Chicago and graduate on time.
Fortunately our student may be a deep reader and maybe even a fast reader, so she’s not at a disadvantage and may even be at an advantage in the many reading- and writing-heavy courses in the core. She’s also very interested in these subjects, and enjoys the time she spends on them, so doesn’t feel burdened, over all, by the amount of time she has to spend on academics to shore up her math skills, or to keep up in math, despite a lower processing speed.
Maybe she understands Spanish and decides to satisfy language requirement by taking Spanish classes and learning to read and write Spanish and speak it better. Maybe she is fluent in Spanish, has studied a different romance language at her weak public high school, and decides to study that language at Chicago to fulfill foreign language requirement, finding that her general verbal facility puts her at no disadvantage there.
Of the 18 required core classes, if someone doesn’t feel strong in science, they’re looking at: 1-2 math, 2 physical science, 2-3 biological science, and 12 verbally loaded classes, including foreign language.
Maybe our student’s grades in her 1-2 core math classes and possibly in her 2 non-major physical science core classes aren’t the best, but she passes them and feel accomplished for having done something difficult for her. Maybe she realizes, talking with a friend at a different college, that she could, with a a lot of hard work, even be majoring in math had she gone to a different college; knowing this increases her sense of accomplishment for what she’s done. But she’s never wanted to major in math, so it’s not as if she’s been thrown off that course by Chicago’s admitting her. And even though she’s not planning to pursue a math-related career, she feels competent at learning it, and that will be reflected in how she talks to her children about learning math some day.
Maybe she engages in few or no extracurricular activities, at least for the first year or two. But even with the extra tutoring in math and the extra work she’s putting in (the lowest level calculus sequence requires extra time, in order ot catch kids up on precalculus material), she still has time to hang out with like-minded friends at the House table, talking about classes and giving an intellectual spin to most of the other stuff they talk about.
She gets to spend 4 years surrounded by other students who love most of their core classes, love to learn, and love being with other kids like themselves.
Even with low grades in 1-4 math-heavier quarters of the core, she can still even graduate with a high GPA, depending on her aptitude and the amount of work she puts in.
Will this be a common scenario? I think it will be an uncommon one. I’m not really sure why Chicago couldn’t have done the same thing simply by admitting her with the lower SAT math score.
People like exacademic say that this move to go test-optional will help because it will encourage kids with lower test scores who incorrectly thought they didn’t have a chance, to apply. But milee30 says “(I) would hope that low income students aren’t dissuaded from taking SATs because they’re no longer required at a dream school. I remember when the SAT test fee was real money, that taking the test meant some other essential went unpaid.” I don’t know who will turn out to be right, whether the test-optional policy will be helpful or harmful, net, in terms of getting more of these intelligent and intellectual students who could still do fine at Chicago to be admitted. I guess Chicago can’t know the answer to that, unless it experiments, as it’s doing.
^Suppose the lopsidedness goes the other way? Slow reader, high math talent?
I imagine this policy change is much ado about nothing, that a very high percentage of applicants, even lopsided ones, will submit scores anyway. Perhaps the policy change might encourage lopsided students to apply - and even submit scores?
@UofCparent You are correct. Many have no direct experience with the school other than a positive one in my situation.
Do you suggest that no one with any applied
experience should engage and to comment on anything unless they are directly involved?
College Confidential would have to shutter the doors. As well as pretty much every reporter politician or social commentator.
I get it that these broader questions are putting a unwelcome light on a school many people love. Believe me. u of c can handle it. And they will thrive and grow.
But this discourse is how things get discussed in society.
There’s no special animus or personal history at least for me. Just an interesting broader topic.
I have seen people with 29 ACT scores buckle down in college and get accepted to medical schools. People can grow and change a lot in four years.
@nrtlax33 - totally agree with most if not all the points made by both Pinker and the NRO article. I suspect that many academics would agree with these points (certainly many in the more mathematically rigorous disciplines where stuff like Math GRE’s determine your acceptance to a PhD program). Unfortunately the Testmania genie was let out of the bottle a few years ago and it would be very difficult to put him back w/o other schools agreeing to do the same. Given that they are all competing for the same type of students (including more low SES) that’s probably not going to happen - or it will in that other schools will also go test-optional.
Even given superscoring, testing obviously matters when you compare schools. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t see what we clearly DO see when looking at, say, Harvard vs. BU. The more selective the school, the higher the test scores - particularly at the 25th percentile.
@Lea111’s scenario sounds about right. 30+ years ago with a Core of 21 courses and a much more narrow range of options for Math and Science, this social experiment couldn’t have happened. While the primary mission of the College should be to get the smartest kids it can and provide them with the best education (as the NRO writer states), do we think that UChicago is NOT doing just this? The jury is out on how all these significant changes will impact the quality of the institution, say, 10 years down the road. ED turned out to be huge, and test-optional is potentially huge as well. However, the biggest and most disruptive to the university community was, of course, tripling the size of the College to restore it to numbers it hadn’t seen in decades. Has that move been associated with graduating kids of less quality than, say, 30 - 40 years ago?
No fan of UChicago becoming an expensive summer camp for a lucky few because undergrad. ed. no longer matters. NEVER want to see a talented prof. like Pinker at Harvard face a half-empty lecture hall because everyone’s too busy with their improv. group to attend class. There are easy fixes to that - requiring attendance at your lecture, for instance, and/or grading on class participation (if that’s too difficult with a large lecture-style, change the structure to a smaller, seminar format and open the section to 1/2 the number you did previously). Universities should never abandon their primary mission to educate the brightest kids with the best resources available, but they can certainly experiment a bit to find those brightest. Willing to see what happens here and hoping it doesn’t set the College off on what might look like a shiny new path but, in fact, turns out to lead into some murky areas with little hope of getting back on track.
@nrtlax33 I read that National Review article last week and was screaming in my office about how wrong it was.
1> The author really doesn’t get the purpose of a private research university. It is not there for the students, the students are there for it. The mission of every single one of the private research universities is to grow the body of knowledge to the benefit of global society. They use students to accomplish this both directly and indirectly. The author of the article (an intern at the National Review) actually states in the middle of the article that the mission is to educate undergraduates.
2> The author seems to think that doing good on a math test is going to help them survive the Core curriculum. While that may be true for a great many people, UChicago believes that there may be some other way to show success in the Core. The logic in the author’s statements is somewhat a slippery slope fallacy. Student doesn’t sumbit SAT/ACT scores, Student must have done poorly, Student must not be smart, Student will struggle in College at an elite university. There are problems with this chain of thought. The UChicago admissions office believes that they can look at the entirety of the application to make that determination. They believe that they can look at essays and recommendations of a select few students that might show that they are brilliant, but because they were not offered a Princeton Review SAT prep course, or they went to a school that does not offer test prep classes, or that they had to work multiple part-time jobs and didn’t have the time to self study on the Kahn Academy website, or that they were too poor to own a computer and felt uncomfortable going to a public library to access the free test prep course, or that they couldn’t afford to take the test multiple times to get a righteous superscore and therefore, felt that their 1310 SAT was outside of the median 50% and not bother to submit an application.
This whole UChicago is gaming the rankings talk needs to really look at the evidence. If UChicago’s acceptance rate would drop from 7% to 3 1/2% by getting twice as many applications their ranking might go from 3(tie) to 3(outright). I really don’t think the UChicago cares if it is 1, 2, or 3. I also don’t think USN&WR will allow Princeton/Harvard/Yale to not end up in the top three without re calibrating the algorithm they use to calculate rankings (my opinion, not a fact.)
Read the entire Empower Initiative. This is about trying to get the best students that UChicago believes will help them complete their mission.
Correction: I wrote: “Of the 18 required core classes, if someone doesn’t feel strong in science” - meant to say “math” there, not “science”.
Some might be interested in this: https://www.chicagomaroon.com/article/2016/10/28/generation-x-brief-history-dropouts-transfer-stude/
As I mentioned previously, Chicago students’ SAT scores in late 70s were very high, high enough to catch the attention of a high school student who’d never been anywhere near that area of the country and hadn’t heard of the school. For whatever that info is worth.
Catching up on this thread, bit by bit.
gallentjill wrote:
“It may be that what GPA measures well is not necessarily mastery of any individual topic but the ability to understand, and do what it takes to succeed. It measures the ability to show up, turn in assignments, navigate the system, stay out of trouble, resist peer pressure, defer gratification etc.”
Well, maybe, so long as “navigating the system” includes being willing and able to cheat; to suck up to teachers; to sacrifice valuable activities in order to “color within the lines” (literally, in the case of many of the core “honors” classes at DD’s high school, which had a lot of fluff elementary school-type craft projects, and a puppet show assignment in which “creativity” was 25% of the grade in an accelerated math class); to memorize a lot of rote material short-term for tests, in order to get the 100 on the test that will maintain you in the top 5% of the class instead of the 96 that will drop you into the top 15%; to put down on a test “facts” you know to be wrong, because the teacher had them written that way on the study guide; to do all of the extra credit busy work, even though it’s a complete waste of time; to reread assigned literature books multiple times with a pen in hand to write down all of the most minor facts and minor character names and then memorize them, to ace the multiple choice test that will ask only about these (because their purpose is to check to see if student has read the book rather than Spark Notes, not to see if the student has thought about themes or aesthetic value or anything fancy like that); to attend optional tutorial frequently to make sure teacher knows you’re hard-working and diligent you are, even though you don’t need to because everything at school except for tolerating the boredom is way too easy; and to suppress any hint that you’re Jewish, so that your born-again teacher who leads prayer during tutorial doesn’t ding your grade (acquaintance’s child attending DD’s school).
Oh, and ideally have parents who are willing to go in and fight for your grades, both fairly (when a disorganized teacher loses your paper and gives you a zero for it, or refuses to let you take a make-up test when you were out for mono or a school-sponsored trip), and maybe unfairly as well. Because the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and a squeaky parent has more waaaaay clout than a squeaky student.
There’s research showing that teachers, on average, dislike creative kids. There’s research showing that teachers, on average, are not able to recognize profoundly intellectually gifted kids (too quirky), or moderately intellectually gifted kids from a different demographic group. If you’re worried about bias on the SAT, is there any reason to think that bias among teachers is lesser?
Hebegebe wrote: “I was that kid who was just outside the top 10% in what I already said was a rotten school system. Why? Because I was bored out of my mind. It was only after I found my peers in college that I performed to my potential. This is actually a very real issue. Intelligent kids often underperform in poor high school systems because they have no academic peers with which to engage.”
Yep, yep, yep.
gallentjill wrote:
“If I were the AO, I would prefer the straight A kid with a lower test score over the high SAT kid with a low GPA. Of course, there are extenuating circumstances, but as a general rule, I would rather take the kid who has proven himself over time, day after day, year after year.”
Well, there goes the “quirky” kid. Let’s hope Chicago doesn’t veer off in this direction. Colleges and universities do not have to be the same, but let there still be ONE place where the very intelligent and intellectual kid who loves to learn for learning’s sake, but not to wring every last percentage point out of some high school teacher giving nonsense multiple choice exams and requiring cut-and-glue poster projects, can get in and thrive.
People are always talking about the correlation between SAT scores and/or high school grades with college grades. Well, to the extent that high school grades are a reflection of intelligence, then there will probably be a correlation with college grades. To the extent that high school grades are a reflection of actual interest in academics, there will probably be a correlation with college grades. And to the extent that high school grades are a reflection of all of the factors mentioned above - the willingness and ability to “play the game”, to suck up to teachers, to get all the extra credit points no matter how useless the work, to take easier courses to get a good grade in (without being savvy enough about doing this not to put “rigor” points too much at risk), to put aside both other valuable things in life and in intellectually learning and creative production based on that learning, in order to get maximize grades, then that may be correlated with college grades as well. If one of Chicago’s highest values is educate students who don’t care that much about grades per se, who want to be intellectually challenged and learn for learning’s sake, then I don’t think that perfect high school grades are necessarily the greatest way to judge that (and are probably worse than a combination of SAT scores which show you can do the work plus non-grade proof of intellectual curiosity and desire to follow that curiosity where it leads).
I agree that the degree to which the SAT has compressed scores at the top makes it difficult to discern differences among students that would be relevant to the most selective schools. I would certainly not argue that U of C should fill its class with perfect scorers to the exclusion of all else, because there’s a confidence interval around the score, because it would put way too high a premium on speed, and and because other factors certainly do matter.
But test scores have never been the sole factor for admissions in the US; in fact, so far I as I can tell, all of the selective private universities say that GPA and course “rigor” are more important than test scores.
I’m not against making the school test-optional, as an experiment, to see if it will draw in a few more of the kids who could thrive at Chicago and add to the lives of others at the school. As I said, I would expect only a small number of students would be admitted without test scores, and I hope Chicago will disclose how many.
Scores aren’t everything, and there are may be valid reasons to conclude that someone with low score(s) will add a lot to a class, including intellectually (just as there may be valid reasons to think that someone who failed some classes or got a 3.0 GPA in high school may add a lot to a class, including intellectually). But they are not meaningless.
From a mom in a family with 3 members who’ve so far attended the U of C between late 70s and now.
I read an article long time ago that Emma Watson got everything 100 on her A-level test, which is more like IB, except for like 2 subjects which she got either 98/99. Although her test scores are not known, I am sure she would pass any standard test with flying colors. She would be a good candidate to not taking SAT/ACT. I am not sure core curriculum would benefit her in any way, A spike in one area should be the main reason not to submit a score. But that must be supported by open curriculum. The greatest poet might not be able to pass the most basic calculus course. The most brilliant math genius might have reading disability. That is the reason the combined scores quite possibly filter out students who have a spike in a certain area.
It is hard to believe a student would only apply to test-optional school. To broaden the school selection, the student probably takes a test. Again, a zero point at math part is a big problem and it will be a problem if the student decides to go the UChicago. The student will be fine at Brown. She/He could just take 32 English classes to graduate.
We are actually more interested in schools which have the LEAST amount of graduate students. LACs mostly feel like high schools (too small). Only a few top schools in US which put their focuses on undergraduate students. Those advanced researches arefor graduate schools. We have one PhD, two M.S. in the house, from three different STEM majors, from a tippy top research university. My advisor did not have any business with undergrad. No teaching. No advising. Nothing. My spouse’s advisor got his PhD from Caltech and strongly advise anyone NOT going there for undergrad. During spring break one of my kid’s best friend said its MIT Chem professor is the WORST teacher it has ever seen (Nobel Prize winner). Let’s focus on teaching in college, not jumping ahead too quickly.
What’s a “zero point at math part”? Do you mean the minimum score on the math portion of the SAT? If so, why do you think Chicago will be admitting a student who did or would get that score?
Uck. I wrote: “without being savvy enough about doing this not to put “rigor” points too much at risk” and I meant “while being savvy enough”. 0.2 points off my GPA!
Brown wouldn’t admit a kid with one extremely low score (your example, in math, for humanities.) Nor a kid who stated an intention to only take, say, English courses. Not their point.
If you accept that it takes more than perfect stats to get in (and you should,) consider the value of that “more” to an intellectual college. Now ask yourself why you assume a kid who nails the “more” would be dumb enough to have scored on an utter fail level. Doesn’t work that way.
I do think some of you who revere scores, to the exclusion of other factors, should realize scores alone don’t give a kid smarts. Not at all.
It seems quite possible that having a free application for those who do all of the work of filing for financial aid may increase the number of applications Chicago gets. Giving good financial aid also increases the applications that colleges get and their yield. Does that mean these are bad things, if one of the goals of these colleges is to get students who are good fits for them even though those students don’t have a lot of money?
Not everyone is a STEM student, but if you think that other elite universities don’t admit low scores then here you go, just the facts.
Stanford
ACT 24 - 29 (fully 9% of the admitted class)
MIT (as pure a STEM school as you can get)
ACT 25-27 (1% of the admitted class)
Princeton
ACT 22-26 (2.3% of admitted class)
These are just two of the schools that actually publish these stats so I am just sticking to factual data but I’m sure these are similar to others.
“Most people want to have fun at college.”
My kid at Chicago is also having a lot of fun. Doing three extracurriculars (different ratios in different quarters), doing almost every activity with her House that doesn’t conflict with an extracurricular, hanging out with friends. She took 3 classes first quarter to make sure she’d have time to make friends and get involved (she’s shy), found that too easy, took 4 classes for each of the next quarters, and plans to keep doing that so long as it’s working out. She’s busy, but not overwhelmed or stressed. She enjoys most of her classes, but not to the exclusion of everything else. Her grades are fantastic; now she was one of those kids who had perfect SAT scores in junior year, and an SAT score with a 7 in the beginning of it when she was 12. Her friends, whose SAT scores we wouldn’t know, are also happy and involved in lots of things too. Everyone takes the academics seriously, though; it’s like a full-time job (a little more during exam/paper time), which is fine by them.
My impression of the kids who aren’t happy at Chicago is (1) kids who are majoring in something they don’t enjoy in order to get high-paying jobs later; (2) kids who feel like they must have a 3.9 or something for med school or law school and can’t do that without working all of the time; (3) some kids who are naturally anxious and perfectionistic, got perfect grades in high school, and can’t tolerate a B+ now.