“… On Friday, Yale University said applicants will no longer be required to submit an essay score from the SAT or the ACT. The policy will take effect for rising high school seniors who seek to enter the university’s Class of 2023. Yale’s action comes weeks after Harvard University and Dartmouth College dropped the requirement.” …
I think it’s a big mistake by these schools. Essays on these tests corroborate the quality of the other essays applicants submit. If an applicant submits a beautifully written personal essay and other supplemental essays but the test essay is lousy, it makes you wonder whether the other essays are his/her own work.
SO many kids get help… .and beyond what’s typically thought of as “help” – on their application essays.
I see a real value to seeing how a kid can write when you KNOW that he’s the one doing the writing.
If it wasn’t a timed essay, at the end of an otherwise long exam, I’d agree with above posters as to its value. As it is, I like the decision and hope more follow suit.
^ Perhaps - but I don’t think you can compare an essay written under pressure with limited time for editing to a personal essay that students may spend months writing and perfecting.
I haven’t been able to locate a Yale news article or press release for full context. My question for Yale would be whether this indicates a lack of quality info coming from the SAT essay or whether this is merely another move to increase apps from students who lack awareness and/or who can’t afford it. Or perhaps it’s a combination, that the cost is too great, the loss of apps, either from a subgroup of students or across the board, vs the benefit Yale gets from the info.
I don’t think there’s any comparison between college app essays and the SAT essay - completely different genre of writing.
Timing is an issue. Handwriting is an issue. Scoring is a huge, huge issue, from what I gather - more quality questions for College Board’s work product. I read somewhere that colleges can look at the actual SAT essay, but only if they contract with College Board to do so. That makes a little more sense than going by score.
If the Yale admissions page has been updated to reflect the change in policy, the essay is “optional,” which the common wisdom interprets as still required unless the student is disadvantaged. So perhaps this changes nothing for most students. Thoughts?
^I know a student for whom I think handwriting was a big problem. He has poor fine motor skills but excellent writing skills.
The kid is consistently praised by his English teachers for his writing in class, and he wrote great common app and supplemental essays… but he got an SAT essay score out of line with his other SAT scores.
I saw the SAT essay, since it shows up with the scores online, and IMO it should have scored higher based on the criteria. But it was really hard to read the handwriting. I think the handwriting affected the score.
If the college had read the SAT essay, however, the voice and style would have made it obvious that the essay was written by the same person who wrote the amazing common app and supplemental essays.
He did not bother to retake the exam, on the logic that schools weren’t heavily weighing the essay, which is not reported to US News or Common Data Set. He got into his top choice anyway, so no harm!
^Good observations on hand writing. And in common core states, cursive isn’t even taught anymore as it’s not part of the curriculum. Only being able to write block letters/print an essay under time pressure is a disadvantage.
Back in 2009, the Harvard admissions director did say that the SAT essay was a better predictor of college performance than the rest of the SAT.
However, some test-prep companies apparently have figured out how to game the SAT essay, so it may be of less value now if weaker writers are now using such test-prep to get higher SAT essay scores than would ordinarily reflect their writing skills.
If the issue is handwriting, timing, etc., why not make the test essay completely electronic, and perhaps separate from the rest of the test with an extended time? Actually, in this day and age, the whole test should be electronic.
The problem, in my opinion, is the grading. Why should a school like Yale trust some random reader to evaluate the quality of students? I think a proctored writing sample could be a huge benefit in the application process it the school itself were to evaluate the essay. As it is, I think its pretty worthless and unfair. (My Ds both got high essay grades, so this isn’t personal)
Do the SAT/ACT essay scores have any real correlation with writing abilities of the testers? We have not done the tests but are just assuming that the scores of the essays could be very subjectively graded, and thus might be of less values?
Grading is not the problem. Colleges don’t need to rely on the grade at all; they have the essay itself which they can evaluate using whatever standard they’d like to use.
There has been talk of making the test electronic for years. Most recently, it was part of the plan with the redesign. I guess the logistics are proving to be too much as I haven’t seen any news on that angle since.
My rising sophomore boys would likely perform much better with a typed essay and with two years left, it’s possible, but I’m not holding my breath.
As for the grading, if the grading is not reliable, reading SAT essays would add more evaluation time per app and would be yet another qualitative rather than quantitative factor.
@1NJParent
Are you talking about the personal essays (which grading of course is not part of the equation) or the essays of the standardized testing?
Not only the writing score has little correlation with the quality of essays it probably doesn’t correlate with scores of reading/English sections either. How many times have you heard on CC that a kid with a 36/1580+ wants to retake SAT/ACT because of a low writing score.
I imagine schools like H/Y don’t want kids to spend time training themselves to be “good writers” in the context of SAT/ACT writing test.
@makemesmart The essay itself, not just the score, from the standardized test is sent to the colleges.
@evergreen5
What happened to penmanship? My DS20’s chicken scratch is rather embarrassing to look at, and this is the boy who used to write beautiful cursive when he was a third grader. I am always grateful for his teachers who require them to use pen and paper for homework, alas, these teachers are unfortunately few and far between these days.
My understanding is that the kids are supposed to print the essay, not use cursive. Just fyi, all of the essays on AP exams are also handwritten. S19 definitely complained of a sore hand after AP Lang and APUSH! They laughed that their teachers forced them to hand write multiple practice essays throughout the year so that their hand muscles were ready to go. 
This OP is written as though it doesn’t matter anymore if you write the essay or not. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you have a strong compelling essay written by the applicant in his/her own voice that magnifies the overall application that person is going to have an advantage end of story. Continually pressing for no SATs or no essays or no means at all by which people can be compared statistically is the wish of those who cannot compete. Those who are strong writers and thinkers and those who score highly on the SAT would say bring it on. If you cannot write an essay to get into Harvard you likely don’t belong at Harvard. Are these students going to refuse to turn in assignments as well because they are weak writers. Good luck with that. Honestly some of these posts make me laugh. I just keep seeing so many excuse why people should have an advantage here and there. Yet, the same folks want to be in the best universities with those who have no upper hand. Why?