NMF is harder to manipulate, as it is based on a single sitting in fall of junior year, generally before the majority of test-sitters have done much test-prep. So whatever the value of the test, it would tend to produce results that would be more accurate from a scientific perspective. (More accurate in the sense of less likely to be influenced by practice effects – See http://www.statisticshowto.com/practice-effect/)
“I apologize if those words offend you.”
No need to apologize - I’m not offended. Just pointing out that I agree with some of your positions and believe your assertions would sound more convincing if they didn’t sound as if they were based on personal feelings.
And on the points where we disagree, we can do that without being offended. No worries.
" I think our primary curmudgeon is just arguing whatever, to keep the tension floating high."
And I think UChicago is masterful at purposefully stirring the pot to get free publicity. That’s not fraud, it’s just different than how the other colleges tend to operate. Will be interesting to see how this plays out in the next few years.
Don’t know whether this wsj article from Sunday has been posted it here or not, it offers some interesting points re. Standardized testing in general and UChicago’s decision in specific. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/the-war-on-admissions-testing-1530481487
“Standardized tests are especially important in a time of severe grade inflation, especially in more affluent high schools. That doesn’t mean students who don’t test well can’t succeed, or that students with high scores are guaranteed to graduate summa cum laude. But it’s clear scores are at least as valid a predictor of college performance as a students’ roster of carefully selected extracurricular activities or “personal essays,” which may be rewritten by tutors.”
“@JBStillFlying and how many of those 35,700 made NMF since there are only around 15,000-16,000 if I remember correctly?”
@moscott no clue - my kid was one 
but when you make NMSF you need to vet the PSAT score with an SAT, not an ACT. NMSF actually has state cut-offs which range anywhere from the 97% to well above the 99th. There are plenty of kids in MA or other high-cut-off states who scored well within the top 1% who didn’t make NMSF because they missed the state cut-off by 1 point. Also, the cut-off now is determined by a selection index, not the composite PSAT score, so that’s another complication altogether. Two people with the same composite score might have very different selection indexes depending on how their did on EBRW vs. Math. It can mean the difference between NMSF and missing the cut-off.
It’s like every article assumes UChicago is TOTALLY dropping test scores which is far from the truth, every indication is that they are looking for those NON STEM majors who don’t test well but otherwise have a solid application. So comparing UChicago and MIT/CT doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I mean if you can’t get at least a 30 on the math portion of the ACT they wouldn’t put you in the 15000 or honors calc series. You would be doing a couple levels below that.
I think that the trend toward higher & higher test scores at elite institutions is having the consequence of eliminating an element of diversity from the application pool.
Chicago, just like every other elite private, wants and needs to build their class from a well-established core of students from elite, affluent backgrounds – because all the colleges need/want to have around half of their class be full pay. My guess is that on average, if you include the almost-full pay cohort --you would find that at least 60% of students are either full pay or are attending with discounts that are less than 20% of overall COA. (Because face it, one has to be very well off financially to manage to pay Chicago’s steep $78K COA with even a fairly significant discount). Average need-based grant at Chicago is around $48K - meaning that even among the 43% of students who get need-based aid, the average student is still contributing $30K annually.
The only “fraud” is the claim that all the elite colleges make of being “need-blind” of admissions. It is true that they don’t discriminate financially on an individual basis, but they build their admission policies around the need to attract and admit students who come from privilege and affluence. That includes strategies like ED; all sorts of stuff that goes into marketing and outreach; and in the factors considered for admission, of which high test scores, which are known to correlate closely to economic status, are an extremely significant part of the attract-the-wealth strategy.
But if they want to also offer a quality education, they can’t have their college utterly dominated by wealthy & privileged students. They need to broaden their base enough that they can provide the diversity of experience and viewpoints that can only exist when there is a significant, although fractional, cohort of students who understand the day-to-day life concerns that face the majority of people who inhabit this planet.
So right now they want to up their game a little bit on the financial aid and attract more students who come from a place of “need” — but their other attract-the-wealth policies have resulted in a diminishing pool of such applicants to choose from. Because some kids like my daughter whose ACT scores kind of mirror their parent’s bank account just aren’t going to bother applying.
@Cariño at #716 - thank you for clarifying that - A friend had told me that merit was available and her DC was accepted for class of 2018 and I believe was planning to apply EA so maybe that happened for her as well. Your DD had very strong academics and was also accepted to a lot of other top schools IIRC so her decision to apply EA was wise, and that outcome totally matches what posters were saying about those accepted EA and RD - they are top talent who get recruited with merit. Guessing, as well, that many (though not all) of the NMF’s applied ED
According to @makemesmart 's linked [WSJ article](https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-war-on-admissions-testing-1530481487) … the conclusion at the end of the article…
Finally, someone is thinking the way I think.
I have no problem with any school deciding to manage it’s own affairs. Chicago is and will most likely always be great.
It’s just the frequent suggestion that scores are easy to attain. A little prep here and a little money there and voila. 1600. The numbers speak for themselves. Ok so maybe another 5000 or ten thousand round super score to a 1500 or 34. So 47k out 2mm. That’s not so many. There’s 37k high schools. Who who knows how many overseas. There’s 72k++ Val’s and sals alone.
That still leaves us only with 15k at 1550 or above.
Chicago must have it’s reasons. But it’s not rampant score inflation and a ses equalizer. I think perhaps it may tilt the scales more towards the fancy ecs and witting assistance more than the tests do.
“UChi is not a school specilaizing in engn and CS with “Institute of Technology” in its name.”
- So if a school IS specializing in engineering and CS with "Institute of Technology" in its name it tends to encourage and attract higher overall test scores? Why is that?
BTW, while UChicago is a liberal arts College, STEM and bio have both been increasing in popularity for choice of major, and when you add Economics with its very heavy math and theory emphasis you are already looking at over 50% representation in the College.
The ACT & SAT are not IQ tests. Students who score well are generally very smart, but many extremely smart and capable students do not score well. (If “well” is defined as maximal scores vs. the test design, where 1280+ is 1 SD above mean, and so would be generally considered as doing “well”)
The ACT & SAT are also not comprehensive tests of academic content or achievement. They only test a small subset of the areas of subject-matter knowledge and skill that are required for academic success.
So it’s not a question about whether the scores are “easy” to attain. The question is whether the scores serve a meaningful function in evaluating academic preparedness for college.
I think they do, but at a much, much lower entry point than what CC parents are looking at.
And this goes back to the whole test design and norm-referencing and statistics. These tests, by design, lose accuracy at the outlying the farther out the score is from the mean. The score range of 695-1471 represents all students within 2 standard deviations of the mean.
If your job was to design a test to accurately distinguish students at the upper tail end of the curve… then you would need to design a test that was a higher level of difficulty, with more complex or difficult questions or problems. Not because it is “easy” to score high, but that the measurement far less accurate at that range. There can often be scores that are perceived as representing large differences that are actually the result of a very small number of questions-- and given that there is no penalty for guessing, there’s the added element of luck. Typically on almost all questions it’s fairly easy to narrow down possible answers to 2 out of the 5 options provides, meaning in most cases there is a 50/50 chance of guessing right. That’s not going to work well as a strategy for students scoring in the close to the mean… but for that outliers? Definitely the strategy of guessing has the potential to pay off, which is why test prep organizations do indeed teach guessing strategies.
Maybe the standardized tests are better at reflecting ability in math then in the humanities.
You don’t know that it’s attracting higher scores, only the selection, which again rest on more than stats. At this point, plenty of kids still want engineering. Not all holistically qualify.
@lookingforward - you are thinking that 2/3 of UChicago applicants could have scored in the 34 - 36 range? That could be - although its likelier not to be. MIT provides very specific breakdowns which have to influence applications. Conversely, anyone with a 32 - 33 interested in UChicago will take encouragement from it’s mid-50 range. And there are a lot of 32’s and 33’s out there (60,000 nationwide at least). With 40% fewer scores available in the 34 - 36 range, it’s odd that a sizable number of applications are concentrated there for any school - even a top school. It’s no accident that MIT provides this level of detail. Not that 34 - 36 gets you in. But for the most part you do need it (at the very least because it means you may have done other extraordinary things with all those brains).
@gallentjill Was wondering the same thing or whether strength in standardized testing was somehow associated with higher theoretical or abstract reasoning abilities.
In all fairness, MIT also requires the math and science subject tests and has a science-heavy core, so they tend to see a highly specialized group. There’s a wider diversity of subjects and levels of intensity at UChicago - it’s natural that standardized test scores might be a bit more spread out and don’t factor into the admission decision in quite the same way.
What’s clear is that STEM programs see stronger overall scores. CMU, for example, has test score ranges in the School of Computer Science that are very comparable to MIT’s numbers and higher than those at Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences - even in EBRW and ACT English. Higher GPA as well so it’s not like it’s all about scores. Both metrics might indicate an overall stronger academic ability associated with STEM.
“Also, I don’t know what Chicago currently promises to its students, but there is a huge difference between the availability of “internship and externship opportunities” and a college “finding” an internship for a student. I’d certainly hope that Chicago students are smart enough to be able to find internships on their own, with or without the help of their college career office.”
@calmom the way it worked for the DC of our friend is that he was guaranteed payment by the College for whatever internship he procured. That way he could pursue something of interest w/o having to worry about whether it paid or not. Not sure what he’s doing this year but last year he ended up doing something research-oriented. Edit to clarify: not sure if this is offered to everyone who receives a merit package and it might be possible to apply for this type of funded internship even after matriculating.
@JBStillFlying - Thanks for the info but I was not particularly interested in what Chicago may or may not offer students for internships. Many colleges have internship placement programs and/or funding for internships; it’s a nice perk but certainly not unique to or restricted to elite colleges. I was responding to the question directed toward another poster (“did UChicago find your daughter a summer internship as you expect ?”) which, given the context, I interpreted as being disingenuous and seeking personal information in an inappropriate context. I felt the “find your” phrasing was particularly condescending in tone.
Actually, with a little Googling I found that Chicago does indeed describe its merit aid on its website - https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/cost-aid/scholarships/merit-scholarships. A Dean’s Scholarship includes “funding for an internship, a research experience, or graduate-level coursework for one summer.” A President’s Scholarship provides similar funding for two summers; and a Provost’s Scholarship provides funding for three summers. There are also some other internship programs describe on that page.
But again – it’s great that the college does that, but other colleges have similar programs – sometimes but not necessarily tied to merit aid or financial need. So not at all relevant to the topic of this thread.
“Maybe the standardized tests are better at reflecting ability in math then in the humanities.”
That’s not true for the (pre-1990s) SAT taken in 7th grade. What the Vanderbilt researchers found was that people who had done extremely well (top 1 in 10,000 for age) on the math section had much higher rates of PhDs and high level productive work in STEM-type careers, and the people who had done extremely well on the verbal section had much higher rates of PhDs and high level productive work in careers requiring verbal gifts, and that this was true even when the person was also top 1% scorer for age on the other part of the SAT.
The research I’ve seen has suggested that math section is more “coachable” than the verbal section. A strong correlate of the verbal score has been lifelong reading, though I guess causation could go either way on that (you read a lot for pleasure because you’re verbally gifted and then score better on the SAT verbal, or your lifelong reading directly hepls you score higher on the SAT verbal).
Also, I’m not sure if the research on coachability I’ve seen was about the SAT before the 90s or not, because the SAT math has continued to change to become more like an achievement test and less like an aptitude test. Not clear to me which would be more useful for a school like MIT, or if they both are.
It’s also true that there’s much less head room in the verbal sections than there used to be. A 730, 740, 750, 760, 770, 780, 790, and 800 on the verbal section in the 80s is the same as an 800 on the verbal sections in 2015, and the post-2016 SAT scores are even more inflated than the pre-2016 scores. Similarly, a 630 or 640 on the SAT verbal (forget which) was at the top 1/10,000 level for 12-year-olds in the 80s. Now you need a score over 700 to reach the same 1/10,000 level. Which could mean missing just a handful of questions, and reflect some random luck in guessing.
One thing that’s annoying is that they keep switching things around rapidly, without regard to the fact that students may be relying on announced policies that they then change. The taking away of guaranteed National Merit scholarships, and the reduction in the amounts they did give for NM, after students had committed to the university, is one example. Same for huge changes in what AP scores get you, for both the Class of 2021 and again for the Class of 2022; students could commit to the school, expecting that they could double major or take a year abroad or take a bunch of desirable electives, in accordance with the stated AP credit policy; pay for, study for, and take a bunch of AP exams senior year; and then find their plans dashed when policies completely changed.
Sure, fine: be more like the top Ivies: cut or even get rid of NM scholarships, require higher AP scores and give credit for fewer of them. But it won’t kill you to announce the new policies and then wait until the next year to apply them, to maintain your credibility in the future.
Policy changes that affect students and their families in large ways need to not be retroactive. Posters have been snarky about the fact that Chicago’s Empower Initiative just encodes prior financial aid policy. That might be true, but making the policy explicit is extremely valuable; a student can be more confident applying ED if there’s an explicit policy about financial aid. That value is lost, however, if the school feels like it can change policies retroactively. If I were relying on that policy, I’d get in writing that any change wouldn’t be applied retroactively to my student.
@nrtlax33 My daughter started meeting with her Metcalf advisor in January. He gave her a list of possible companies that would meet her preferences and interests. She applied to several (from that list, and others that she found by herself), was interviewed by 4, accepted in 3. In the end, she decided to work in an institution that she applied to but was not in his advisor list.