Dont schools evaluate rigor based on what’s offered? So if AP is not offered at their school, it’s not counted against a student?
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Than what about those who take AP classes but not AP tests? For some students, they are cost prohibitive. For others, there may be scheduling issues or health issues or other factors that prevent them from taking the test. Would it then be assumed that they didn’t take the test because they were unprepared (and therefore their good grade is surely inflated)? Just seems problematic to me to place so much weight on something that is, after all, entirely optional. I guess the cost issue is particularly problematic to me - doesn’t that again penalize lower-income students (yes, I know that sometimes there are subsidies available, but not all students who need the assistance get it or get enough of it to make multiple exams affordable for their families). Well, I also don’t like the idea of giving the College Board any more power in college admissions by making test submission a requirement. Just my opinion.
If anything, perhaps state testing scores could be more equitable than AP test scores, although that would also not be without problems.
swapping out SAT scores for AP scores makes no sense to me. how is this more fair?
and teachers I have spoken to say they HATE AP tests because it forces them to teach the best and most interested kids for a test instead of for intellectual pursuits. this would only be worse if AP testing was given more weight.
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And this is precisely why some schools are doing away with AP classes altogether - it unties teachers’ hands to develop their own curriculum, rather than teaching to a test. The current trend seems to be away from APs rather than toward, starting with the elite boarding schools, down to some of privates, and even into competitive publics (such as my daughter’s public high school which limits APs in part for this very reason: they want their talented teacher to teach how they see fit, not how the College Board has decided is best).
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But the reality is that this is not how test scores are understood by potential applicants. People assume that a student with a 1500 is a better applicant than one with a 1400, despite the different context. It is part of the myth that using supposedly standardized measure somehow transcends context.
And when a prospective student with a 1400 sees an average score of 1500+, that student probably doesn’t even bother to apply, even if that student might be stellar, given the context. So the school misses out on the very students that the schools are trying to attract; students who excel despite a challenging context. Take away the baggage of requiring the test, and that student is more likely to apply.
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I don’t think this is a good argument. it is up to the colleges to use the scores in context, and it is not hard for them to do that.
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It’s not difficult for AOs to evaluate an applicant without a test score and parse out who will succeed and fit at their school.
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How can the colleges use the scores in context for the students who don’t apply?
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Speaking of student self selection when applying to schools, there’s also the opposite effect where students look at a low average SAT at a school, and assume they don’t belong there. “My SAT is 1500+ (or even 1400+), so I won’t find anyone who is my intellectual peer at that state school with a much lower average SAT.”
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Either way, prospective families place way more weight on these test scores than do the schools, and give them way more attention that they are worth. They just don’t have the value to these schools that some families insist they should.
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This would be easy enough to counter by calling it something different, like test aware or some such, and explaining that schools are expecting to admit students with lower scores than current averages.
I think plenty of people are skeptical of the claims that schools can pick applicants just as well without test scores when gpa and rigor can vary dramatically among schools. I’m attaching an article from an area public magnet where the average gpa at the school is a 3.93. https://www.swwrookery.com/post/hugely-inflated-are-pandemic-era-grading-policies-doing-more-harm-than-good It sadly isn’t an anomaly in our part of the country. We will all know more in a few years as many schools have begun tracking TO applicants to evaluate whether this is true or not in the current environment.
If they do this, then many of the same parents will still be outraged. ‘Why is X State telling students with 1300 SAT to apply when they won’t accept Jr. who got a 1510? It is outrageous!’.
Why would the colleges want this grief? Why should colleges jump through these hoops (which may or may not work) when the TO policy seems to be reaching the prospective applicants who the schools are trying to reach?
That’s the goal here. Reach qualified students who wouldn’t otherwise apply.
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Because the schools are struggling to make decisions with the amount of data they have with test optional, and application volume is getting out of control. Burnout in Admissions offices is a real issue.
What exactly is the hoop they are jumping through? Schools communicate with prospective students constantly. And evaluating test scores was the norm until two years ago., nothing new there.
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Sounds like a staffing problem as much as anything else. Casting a bigger net means more sorting through applications.
One hoop is convincing test obsessed families that the tests don’t matter nearly as much as some families believe they should. Going back to test required would work against this.
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Note that this is a weighted GPA, so it’s 3.93/5.0 . The article mentions most students at the selective magnet have a weighted GPA above 4.0.
There are plenty of studies that compare the actual performance at test optional colleges between admits who submitted test scores and admits who did not submit test scores. All such studies I am aware of at selective colleges show no significant difference in GPA and graduation rate between admits who submit scores and admits who do not.
This does not conflict with the earlier claims that test scores + GPA in isolation is better at predicting academic success than just GPA in isolation. The selective test optional colleges that are regularly discussed on this forum consider more than just GPA in isolation. Test optional selective colleges don’t just admit all UW 3.95+/4.0 kids and rejected all kids who are 3.94/4.0 or lower. Instead they consider course rigor, harshness of grading, which classes had the lower grades and how relevant they are to majors, LORs, relevant ECs and awards, essays, etc. The relevant question is how much test scores add beyond the combination of these other metrics that are used in admission, not how much test scores add beyond GPA in isolation.
For example, the study at https://web.archive.org/web/20181012020332/https://www.ithaca.edu/ir/docs/testoptionalpaper.pdf compares how much predictive ability is lost with test scores removed at Ithaca. The author finds:
Full Admissions Model Including Test Scores – Explains 44% of variance in cumulative GPA
Full Admissions Model Without Test Scores – Explains 43% of variance in cumulative GPA
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I don’t believe the 3.93 is a weighted grade as anyone with an average above a 3.8 graduates summa cum laude at this school. That would not make sense on a 5.0 scale.
The full quote is below. It mentions that the median grade (not average) was above 4.0, and AP classes have a maximum grade of 5.0.
The junior class at Walls has an average GPA of 3.93, a number school counselor Kathryn Moore called “very high.” She also noted that the median GPA was over a 4.0. That means that well over half the class had a GPA above 4.0 at the start of the 2022-23 school year. This number will likely only increase, as juniors take on more AP classes, which are graded on a 5.0 scale.
Yes, I saw that. The same articles states that the summa cum laude cut off is a 3.8 and the honor society a 3.5. It also describes how it is basically impossible to get below an 88 in any class and the lowest grade a student can get is a 64 if they hand in an assignment and a 50 if they don’t even hand it in. The article is written by a student and doesn’t do the best job distinguishing between weighted and unweighted averages, but most of what is discussed does appear to be unweighted.
The quote from the counselor about a 3.93 average GPA appears to be talking about weighted, as the same quote mentions median GPA is >4.0 and maximum of 5.0 GPA for AP. The school profile mentions the same grading system with maximum 5.0 for AP. Having honors thresholds below the reported average/median doesn’t discount any of this. . I expect a large portion of students receive such honors.
Hard to tell, in any case, it is, according the students at this highly regarded magnet, nearly impossible to not get all As at this school, and the students themself realize the grades are in their own words “highly inflated” in part due to policies adopted during remote learning that never reverted back. There are schools in nearby Montgomery county where more than 25 percent of students have 4.0 unweighted averages.