A shake-up in elite admissions: U-Chicago drops SAT/ACT testing requirement

Applying to College
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Should a student go to the “best” school such as UChicago (s)he is admitted to? With SAT/ACT retakes or whatever preparations, finally a nod from UChicago, an admission, a welcome letter. But should you go? I am sorry all my examples are related to premed but take a look at [this one](http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/21578447/#Comment_21578447)

We are talking about elite universities where true geniuses are everywhere. I am deeply moved by [this article](http://www.browndailyherald.com/2018/05/25/michelle-zabat-dad-jokes/) in Brown Commencement Magazine 2018 …

I am so glad she recovers. But some can’t. Admission to a college is not your end game. You need to strategically position yourself for your long term goal. BTW, I have found those prep-school-primed peers are no match to some kids from some public high schools.

George W. Bush offered non-honor students at Southern Methodist University some words of encouragement during a commencement speech in 2015: C students, you too can be president.

If your goal involves your GPA, you really need to think hard. Otherwise, you might need to change your career goal to become president after a year or two. I have repeated advised you not to take the offer most prominently put in front of you, just like in a supermarket, the freshest stuff is at the back of the racks. (unless you are shopping at Walmart where the freshest stuff is at the front of the racks)

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Schools that except home schooled and “unschooled” candidates already do exempt the transcript to some degree. (I understand that some home schooled kids have transcripts — but others have only evaluations, etc). I know several of those schools are test optional but not for homeschoolers. What this indicates to me is that the schools understand there are a variety of ways to evaluate a candidate. They don’t need ALL of them for each candidate, but they need some usable combination. I don’t see why this is so controversial. U of C knows what, and how much it needs to evaluate an application.

@nrtlax33 I think you are spot on. If a high GPA is an important goal in college, you need to think long and hard about where you will best be able to achieve that. There is no shame in that, although sometimes it is looked down upon. I have told the story before about our family friend who is a chemistry professor at a CUNY school. He sometimes tutors students from nearby Columbia. He has told me that the difficulty of what is expected of the Columbia students is far, far above that expected of the CUNY students. Yet, his top students get into top medical schools all the time. There are students who crave and need to be pushed by high achieving peers and there are students who will do far better being a big fish in a smaller pond. An honest self evaluation is absolutely crucial.

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Statistically, there isn’t.

It’s essentially within the MOE of the test, which averages about 1.5 for each of the subtests. (Since the MOE can be either up or down, that means that a 3 point differential within two test scores is within MOE – that is, simply random chance could account for the difference between the 32 and 35 for a student whose testing ability level would be at 33.5.

Superscoring simply magnifies the MOE effect, because allows the subscores to be recombined in a way that always favors the high end of MOE.

Additionally, score point differentials are more significant in the middle than at the margins.

That’s one more problem issue with norm-referenced tests. People who don’t understand statistics assume that the ratio between a 20 and a 22 is the same as between a 33 and a 35.

But a 33 composite is 99th percentile. As is a 35.

A 20 is 50th percentile. A 22 is is 63rd percentile.

The percentiles are evenly distributed – that is 100,000 students take the test, then each percentile should represent 1,000 students. So that would put a distance of 13,000 students between the subject with the 22 score and the one with the score of 20 — but only only 1000 subjects overall with scores of 33 or above.

It’s a little more granular than that because of the way the composite is calculated – the actual scores are fractional, not the whole integers that are reported – but the point is the same.

For reference, I’m getting my numbers from these sources:

ACT Score Conversion Chart: URL not allowed on CC, Google: “ACT Score Percentile Chart: Score Percentiles”

ACT Margin of Error: https://www.fairtest.org/act-biased-inaccurate-and-misused

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^^ Homeschoolers are typically required to submit subject tests in addition to SAT/ACT. For example, at Bowdoin they are required to submit two or more subject tests and must include the Math (I or II) and a science, in addition to the SAT or ACT. this requirement also applies to those getting written evaluations from their secondary schools.

I suppose one can make the argument that a standard secondary school transcript is just as good as all these other tests - or perhaps home schools and non-standard transcripts just aren’t uniform enough to provide relevant information on their own.

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@nrtlax33 – college GPA’s are far more dependent on factors such as study habits, motivation, internal discipline, ambition/competitiveness, etc. In fact, many students who are very bright and test very well struggle in college because they attended high schools where they could get A’s with very little effort, and never developed the study habits they need to succeed in a more fastpaced and competitive environment. So they can be overconfident and assume they can slack off and get A’s in college because it worked so well in high school… only they can’t.

There is also an overall personality thing which I think most parents should be able to observe. Some people thrive under pressure and are internally driven & competitive, so will tend to rise to the occasion and will often do better in a more competitive environment-- whereas in a less competitive, easier environment, that person might actually do worse because boredom might lead to loss of motivation. (Something of a why-bother attitude). Whereas others wither under stress, and do a lot better in situations where they can take a more relaxed approach.

So yes, choice of school can matter a lot, but it is tied much more to those EQ factors.

I’d add that less prestigious schools are not necessarily easier on the GPA, especially in STEM fields. Public flagship universities or notorious for “weeder” courses and they often lack the resources to provide support for students. Whereas many elite schools are pretty much committed to making sure their students succeed, and some are also rather notorious for grade inflation. It has been reported that the median grade at Harvard is an A-. (But I agree that U of Chicago is probably not one of those types of schools where the hardest part is getting in).

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If you are hinting at choosing the school where you will have the highest GPA, note that schools with a large portion of stellar students doing ‘A’ quality work tend to give a large portion of ‘A’ grades in their classes.

For example, suppose a particular student is looking for the college that will give him/her the best chance of getting a 3.5+ for med school. In Harvard’s senior survey, 86% of seniors reported meeting this desired 3.5+ cumulative GPA threshold. Staying out of the bottom 14% of students at Harvard is quite a realistic goal for the vast majority of those who are admitted to Harvard. I’d also expect the vast majority Harvard admits whose test scores are lower than most at Harvard, yet have a history of getting ‘A’ grades in challenging college level courses taken during HS, will have no problem staying out of the bottom 14% cumulative GPA. Instead I’d expect extreme hooks with weak academic stats across the board (not just scores) to be notably over-represented in the bottom 14% such as some recruited athletes, Z-list admits, certain Dean/Director special interest groups, etc. Well-prepared kids who have are primarily focused on things besides academics may also are likely over-represented in this low GPA group. These other focuses might include their girlfriend/boyfriend, partying, out of classroom ECs, mental or physical health challenges, problems at home, working enough hours to be able to pay for college, etc.

In contrast, in the example you linked above, a mom recommended going to UCR. The less selective colleges in the UC system tend to report average GPAs below 3.0. You likely need to be near the top of the class to meet the 3.5+ cumulative GPA goal. Is it easier to be near the top of the class at UCR or out of the bottom 14% at Harvard? I think the answer depends on a variety of factors, including characteristics about the specific student.

UoC has a reputation for having less grade inflation that HYS… and similar peers, so getting a 3.5 GPA at UoC may be more challenging that certain other alternatives. Nevertheless, I’d expect the most common grade in typical UoC classes is is an ‘A.’

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Actually, I looked it up and while Harvard is fond of the A- , it appears that grades at Chicago are more likely to center around the B+. (“Looking up” means googling & relying on mostly anecdotal data, but I have no particular reason to doubt these numbers).

I think grade inflation is driven partly by the expectations of the students, so the most selective colleges are also filled with students who think that a “B” is a crisis and a “C” is a disaster… so probably tend to give profs more grief over grades than at a public university (where, you know, there are actually students who actually feel grateful if they manage to eke out a B in organic chem)

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@gallentjill pointed out

I can’t agree more with your statements.

@calmom : Each student is different. As you pointed out, study habits, motivation, internal discipline, etc are very important and will drive long term success/failure as time goes on. Some kids who got into top schools have senioritis. Those are the ones most likely to fall behind in college, plus those who are pushed by their parents all their life.

If a student graduates from a highly competitive HS and gets admitted to a top school, the chances of them encountering problems in the first quarter/semester will be lower than those who graduate from less competitive HS … the students from those less competitive HS is the target of the latest UChicago propaganda campaign. Those students need to be very careful not to become a lamb in a wolf pack.

I think the best predictor for how well a student will perform in college is to take a look at how similar students from the same high school perform in college. For examples, the top kids we know from my kid’s highly competitive high school do very well in college no matter where they go. College admissions is unpredictable but their performance in college is very consistent. With holistic admissions, admission to a college does not mean a student will have a good experience there.

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@nrtlax33 – I can’t tell you about “chances” but I know that my daughter did not come from an academically competitive high school (though competitive in other ways - it was an arts magnet, so definitely producing students with excellent training in music, dance, theater, etc. But, for example, the school did not offer a single AP in STEM, unless you count Psychology as a science. (students could take AP calc online if they wanted, but no one ever passed so it was understood to be a waste of effort). In fact, I think a major reason my daughter’s math scores were so weak is that the math teachers at her school were horrible.

She did find that her peers at college generally had better preparation in high school. And yes, better test scores. But they weren’t better students. She had better grades than most, pretty much from the start. Graduated summa cum laude, phi beta kappa.

Here’s the part that I think you are missing: it wasn’t an accident that she was accepted at schools that seemed like super-reaches on paper. Because the schools had other info - they had her transcripts, her essays, the LOR’s – and the overall picture of what she had done in high school that was different from the norm.

You think this is fluke – but then there is the post from @Poplicola - http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/21591847/#Comment_21591847 – Chicago class of 2012, SAT reading below the 10% level, – phi beta kappa, followed by combined PhD/MD at a top 5 med school

This is not about broad statistical correlations – this is about college classes that are composed of individuals, and how the colleges go about selecting those individuals.

When a college pulls a high-performing kid from a high-performing high school, they are usually getting a kid who is a product of their environment. Yes, the kid has done well- but that kid typically has done what parents and teacher expected from them.

But the kids that Chicago is looking for from the less competitive high schools are kids who have risen above or apart from the rest – they probably show qualities of leadership or independence or initiative that signal that they have reserves and potential above and beyond what others have instilled in them. These are students who have shown themselves capable in other ways of rising to a challenge, or creating their own challenges.

And I think that may be a reason that many end up doing quite well in college. Because of who they are and what they can accomplish is not a function of what has been given to them, but what they are able to do for themselves.

And that’s why a school like Chicago wants those sorts of students. They aren’t “similar” to others from their high school – they are students who have distinguished themselves in one way or another.

And I think Chicago looked at its student body and its admission pool and decided it wasn’t getting the number of applications from those type of students that it wanted-- and figured out that many were being deterred by the SAT requirement. Precisely because Chicago probably still wants students like Poplicola. Hence the decision to go test-optional.

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@nrtlax33 I’ll assume the top students at your highly competitive high school are sorted by GPA…not test scores.

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@calmom : Actually upstream on this thread I have taken a look at @Poplicola 's case, she is not a native English speaker (TOEFL exam) which is the main reason she got a low test score. She must be very good at STEM. Most domestic students are exactly the opposite. Med school is mostly about STEM GPA/MCAT, not English comprehension. Plus she is in Class of 2012. A look at [historical admissions data for Ivy League schools](https://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■/ivy-league-statistics-by-college/) , you would know since her admission year of 2008, at least in 6 Ivies, the number of applicants has more than doubled. I am not saying that for domestic students, her case is no longer probable. I am just suggesting that each student needs to evaluate his/her own situation and know what lies ahead.

@CU123 : Last year, my kid’s high school has close to 30 NM Finalists and close to 40 kids finish multi-variable calculus in HS. (Now you know why some Princeton kids from Midwest get Cs in math class.) Nobody talks about test sores. Those tests are too easy. They can’t distinguish top students. Actually, it is impossible to distinguish them academically. Those who got into top schools are due to other parts of their applications. These days, whatever GPA/scores just prevent your file from being thrown out within minutes.

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There a so many different kinds of kids who can present with seemingly similar objective stats. A while ago there was a thread about a family where 4 out of 4 kids were valdictorian of the high school. The article had one line about how the parents had been managing their children’s homework. There are kids whose parents have micro-managed every step of their journey through high school. Parent’s who stay up late to edit their kids’ papers and know exactly when every test and homework is due. Then there are the kids who are extremely self motivated and succeed on their own with very little help and guidance along the way.

This is not a post meant to condemn activist parents. Some kids need the help and guidance and will mature in their own time and in their own way. But while on paper, those kids might look similar, deep down, we all know they are not the same. Just because a family pulling together can, through joint effort, get a kid into a very competitive school doesn’t mean that kid should attend. As a parent, its important not to be blinded by the resume you helped build.

As @calmom said, Those kids who have an inner drive to succeed above and beyond what is expected of them, regardless of SES or what high school they attend, are likely to succeed in the next difficult environment. They may be less prepared academically, but they will know to take advantage of the resources available to help them catch up. I assume that U of C is going to be liberal in provided those resources and publicizing them or they truly won’t be doing anyone a service.

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@calmom at #562 you misunderstood my earlier example. A tester who repeatedly pulls off a composite of 32 is most likely not going to deviate much from that overall score. To assume that he/she must be hitting the lower end of the distribution sounds very encouraging but is probably a bit too optimistic.

Yes, underlying section scores might swing 3 points from one test date to another - but composite scores will be far less likely to. If they do, that’s a highly unlikely event, more akin to a “happy accident” (assuming it swings the right way) than any indication of reality. Metrics can only be useful if you are using a reasonable range around the mean, not the far end of the curve.

Speaking of “happy accidents” - that’s exactly what superscores are catching. If someone generates a section score of 32 on one test and 35 on the next, how does the 35 reflect overall testing ability? Given that the underlying distributions for both scores intersect north of 32 and south of 35, isn’t it more likely that “true ability” is somewhere around there? Let’s say it’s 33.5 as you suggest. That sounds like a reasonable way to compute section scores from the data provided by the applicant. A reconstituted composite based on section averages is going to look a bit more sober - and perhaps it won’t vary much from a superscored composite for some candidates - but at least it can serve as a more relevant metric for academic quality. After all, colleges don’t superscore your midterms or papers.

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Test optional at a highly selective college admits kids who have test scores that are inconsistent with the rest of the application – stellar grades while taking a high level of course rigor with amazing essays, LORs, out of classroom activities, yet test scores are not as high as would be expected from the rest of the application. You might be surprised how often there is an explanation why a student has ltest scores inconsistent with the rest of the application, like your explanation above. In addition to not being a native English speaker students can have test anxiety while taking a 3 hour test that they believe will determine their life, issues with staying up all night studying for the exam, sick that day, etc. For a variety of reasons, many of these kids will not continue taking the test until they have a result that reflects their best performance. For many, it is one and done.

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@JBStillFlying maybe it was indicative of what UChicago has thought of tests since they started super scoring (since the validity is not there let’s give the lower scorers a better chance by super scoring)

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@CU123 that could well be. As posted earlier, dropping scores as a requirement is more honest than superscoring.

Here is what UChicago’s Admissions page says:

“Your transcript shows your academic record in the context of your school, but, since one school can be very different from another, it is useful to see evidence of academic achievement that exists outside of the context of your school. This is why some colleges ask applicants to submit an SAT or ACT score. For many applicants, an SAT or ACT score can reflect their academic preparedness in this broader context.”

And then this:

“The SAT, ACT, and other standard measures can continue to be an important part of the University of Chicago’s holistic admission process for students electing to send scores and are a required part of the application process at many other highly selective schools. These tests can provide valuable information about a student which we and other colleges will consider alongside the other elements in a student’s application. We encourage students to take standardized tests like the SAT and ACT, and to share your scores with us if you think that they are reflective of your ability and potential. Given that many of our peers do require testing, we anticipate that the vast majority of students will continue to take tests and may still submit their test scores to UChicago.”

Finally this:

“Students who attend high school in the U.S. and choose to submit SAT or ACT scores may share either official or self-reported SAT or ACT scores. These students will not be required to submit official score reports unless they are admitted and choose to enroll. You are able to self-report test scores through the Coalition or Common Application. You will not need to superscore your own results or recalculate your scores in any way; send your scores exactly as you receive them.”

There’s a suggestion that they will continue to “superscore” but that’s not entirely clear. Perhaps the Admissions blog has additional information.

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^^ Addendum to above: UChicago clearly believes that there is information in test scores. Whether there’s information in superscoring might be another matter. So @CU123 if you meant the latter, I agree. If instead you meant that they superscored BECAUSE they believed that test scores had no validity, there’s overwhelming evidence that they thought (or continue to think) anything but.

Not even the ever-cheerful and optimistic Dean Nondorf believes that a 32 is statistically no different from a 35, especially if multiple tests are submitted by an applicant (as the standard error will decrease for both subsection and composite scores with each test submitted). When they publish scores on their webpage or use scores to brag about the quality of their students, they provide composites, not superscored sections.

Anyone with low test scores who achieves high accolades at college clearly was a smart choice. If Test-Optional means that UChicago selects applicants such as @calmom’s DC or @Poplicola then there’s no reason to be critical of the policy. These students are “exceptional” and not the typical applicant who would prefer that his/her test scores be overlooked. We’ve seen in the past just from CC threads that there are a lot of kids out there who love UChicago but who were worried about their sub-30 ACT. In the past these kids still overcame their worries and applied anyway. That type of applicant may now get lost in the rush to apply sans test score.

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“As posted earlier, dropping scores as a requirement is more honest than superscoring.”

Well, who knows? I don’t know what the data about schools in general shows with regard to superscored versus average scores. It might be that Chicago’s data shows that superscored results correlate better with ability to thrive at Chicago than averaging over all scores does.

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I don’t think Chicago or any other elite college ever made decisions based on which submitted ACT/SAT was higher. I think superscoring is and always has been about benefiting the college by drawing in the highest possible number for reporting persons. The one place where I’m certain they are happy to drop everything but the highest scores is when calculating and reporting midrange.

The place where I think “superscoring” might actually make a difference in the admission equation is the lower end. Because it may demonstrate that, to the extent that scores are seen as meaningful, a particular student is capable of doing better than whatever might otherwise be viewed as being below some lower end cutoff. (Which as we have seen from Chicago’s own published admission data is way lower than what most CC’ers would expect. Chicago is fairly unique in publishing the full score range of admitted students on its site – most colleges are very happy to pretend that the lower quartile doesn’t exist – but perhaps the choice to publish that information was in itself an earlier effort to counter the score-inflation that was deterring students from less privileged backgrounds from applying).

But on the upper end, I think that the Chicago admissions department is very much aware of the limitations of the test and the conclusions that can be drawn from it. And if the Chicago ACT score range is 32-35, anyone who thinks that an applicant with a 34 has any particular advantage over an applicant with a 32 just doesn’t understand how the admissions system works, particularly not at Chicago.

Actually, the changes that would cause such loss happened years ago, when Chicago started accepting the common app — and again, more recently, when they added in an ED option. Dropping the score submission requirement is just a way of drawing back the students they’ve managed to deter from applying over the years-- students who were applying because they truly wanted to attend Chicago vs. the large volume of high-state Ivy wannabees who are adding Chicago into the mix because no good reason not too, as well as the generally high SES students who are willing to commit early in exchange for higher chances of admission.

Back in the day, there was no statistical benefit to applying EA over RD at Chicago (admit rates were the same for both groups) – though my daughter certainly realized a clear strategic benefit from having gone the EA/deferral - RD route.

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“Well, who knows? I don’t know what the data about schools in general shows with regard to superscored versus average scores. It might be that Chicago’s data shows that superscored results correlate better with ability to thrive at Chicago than averaging over all scores does.”

@Lea111 Or it could be that schools including UChicago understand that a superscore of a certain value is “good enough” to give the candidate a close look since it means they’ve demonstrated some minimum capability in the underlying subjects and should do fine in the college. If they spent 200 hours and six tests to achieve that it’ll show up as a lack of other things on their application. In this case, there’s not much difference between a one-and-done of 34 and a superscored 34, except in the fact that the one-and-done had more time to pursue other interests.

"Dropping the score submission requirement is just a way of drawing back the students they’ve managed to deter from applying over the years-- students who were applying because they truly wanted to attend Chicago vs. the large volume of high-state Ivy wannabees who are adding Chicago into the mix because no good reason not too, as well as the generally high SES students who are willing to commit early in exchange for higher chances of admission.

Back in the day, there was no statistical benefit to applying EA over RD at Chicago (admit rates were the same for both groups) – though my daughter certainly realized a clear strategic benefit from having gone the EA/deferral - RD route."

@calmom actually when I first started tracking UChicago admission rates in 2015 or so, EA had better admissions chances than RD. The RD rate including all deferrals reached 4% in spring 2016. This was before ED.

The Class of 2020 had about 31,000 applications and that was the highest ever. This was before any announcement about ED. The following year, application numbers dropped but then rebounded to 32,000 this past admissions cycle which was the 2nd year of offering ED. This is approximately the same number of applications that Yale and Princeton receive.