Depends how you define huge. Per the data from the Common App about 100,000 kids apply to 14 or more schools. So that ‘tail’ in the chart at the link below would all compress down to whatever threshold you set. (Note this excludes the UC app). So basically kids would do slightly less T20 shotgunning. That might help somewhat. Not sure the difference would be ‘huge’ TBH.
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But the studies show that test scores do add value, when combined with gpa, in a statistical significant way. Meanwhile, studies are also finding that gpa is losing significance as predicator of college success due to grade inflation. The combination of the two, schools to determine the weight, is the best way to compare students from different schools. Colleges can also increase the meaningfulness of test scores by refusing to super score and only looking at the first two sittings.
While I believe in grade inflation I haven’t seen the studies that show gpa is no longer a significant predictor of college success. In any case, I don’t think most schools are going to return to test required any time soon. Certainly, I don’t expect elite schools to do so (if they haven’t already)- particularly if the SCOTUS strikes down the ability to consider race in admissions. At the end of the day, most colleges accept most applicants. People seem to mostly care about the test/test optional issue when it comes to a small group of hyper competitive schools. I don’t buy the argument that these schools can’t enroll highly qualified applicants with or without a test - they have an overabundance of hyper qualified kids applying (most of whom will be rejected). Even prior to TO these schools enrolled some students with much lower test scores - they seem to graduate nearly everyone nonetheless.
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Do you have a link to these studies that show statistical significance?
As I’ve said in other threads, I don’t understand why people believe they know better what data are meaningful for a given school and their institutional priorities than the school’s President, Board, and enrollment management professionals.
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For one, the uc study. It also talks about grades becoming less reliable as a predictor of college performance in recent years.
Do you mean the UC faculty senate study? Again, we know what happened with that. Not even their own president gave that the time of day (and not just due to politics). Pres Napolitano could’ve chosen test optional rather than test blind, but didn’t. Why do you think she made that choice?
She made that choice due to a lawsuit pending against the uc system. And politics, not research based as it went directly against the recommendation of the advisory committee.
Honestly, I don’t think you can talk about the data in a meaningful way without reading the uc study, which is a pretty comprehensive summary of the outstanding research. And recommends keeping the testing requirement as correctly pointed out upthread.
Well, I think you are right that most kids admitted test optional will graduate. But I think the argument is a different one, should colleges be rejecting students whom the data predicts will do better academically in a statistically significant way than those that are admitted? It all depends on how views merit in college admissions at elite schools.
Test optional has led to schools evaluating applications with less information and has created more incentive for further grade inflation at the high school level. Ultimately the pendulum will likely swing back to the colleges having more information and still maintaining holistic admissions.
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I have read the UC faculty senate study. I understand she was under political pressure, but seems she could have chosen TO rather than test blind, no?
Regarding the data, why do you think other schools haven’t used it to inform their testing policies? Serious question, I’m not trying to be difficult.
Because test optional allows them to accept some students who are institutional priorities that they wouldn’t accept if test scores were provided. However it also makes the whole system increasingly untenable due to the overall number of applications. It’s quite possible one or more of the uc schools will hit 200,000 applications in the next few cycles.
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Admission to elite schools has never been entirely merit based and if they return to test required that will still be true. Even if these schools used a rack and stack methodology (they never have) there would still be too many applicants and too few seats - if you take out seats allocated for recruited athletes, children of donors and legacies the available number is even smaller. In terms of predicted outcomes, the Bates data (over 20 years) shows there was virtually no difference in academic performance between kids who submitted test scores and those who did not.
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Adding the DePaul and Ithaca data too.
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No school could admit every qualified applicant but not sure that is argument for decreasing the value of test scores and gpa.
I’m wary of historical data about gpa given the rampant grade inflation of the Covid era. Further, there is going to be huge pressure on high schools with historical grade deflation to switch course under the current admissions model. Very quickly, gpas are going to become uniformly high.
One final thought, test scores could be more useful in holistic admissions if colleges moved away from the goal of having the highest possible median standardized test scores. Evaluating a student’s test score relative to the average score at their score more meaningful than comparing students by absolute scores.
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Did they ever break it down by major?
I wish all of our kids had more time to do nothing. Kids are so busy. Activites are great, but nothing can be a pretty good thing to do, too.
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One way to minimize grade inflation is to require applicants to submit their AP scores (if AP is available)
(I edited this post based on the reply below).
What about students who are unable to take the AP tests (for example, due to cost), or students who simply do not take AP classes in the first place (for example, who attend schools which offer few to no AP classes, or who simply are not interested in AP classes)? I think this would actually end up leaving out a huge number of students (I honestly don’t know, but what percentage of high school students have AP test scores to submit? My guess is that it’s a minority, but I could be wrong.) I realize the idea wouldn’t be to penalize those students without scores, but seems like it would end up doing just that since then they are open to speculation that their grades could be inflated.
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It’s assuming they can take AP tests.
At the top schools, “rigor” is always listed as very important and yet there are kids who took 10+ AP classes that either dont take the actual test or submit them because they got 3 or lower and yet still have 4.0 GPAs.
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Sure, but then what happens to the applicants who can’t - how can they be fairly compared to those who do, when the scores are used a litmus test for grade validity? Personally, for all the reasons I mentioned, I much prefer to keep AP test scores as a “nice to have” rather than a significant element in the admissions process (of course, as it is, different colleges weigh that in different ways and some do place a good deal of value on those scores, whereas others sort of just hold onto them for potential credit once admitted).