But if the school is test optional, then making a broad application decision based on reported test scores is unnecessary – all you need to know is whether your kid’s test scores are good enough to be worth reporting. And, as I’ve pointed out above, for that determination you are better off knowing the score range of submitters, because those are the scores you would be competing against. Essentially that is a very honest way of the school telling applicants something along the lines of, “if your scores are not in this range, don’t bother to submit them.”
Otherwise, by definition, if the school is test optional then there is no score, no matter how weak, that would make admission unlikely – because the school isn’t going to know what the score is. So the score is by definition irrelevant for admissions. If you don’t submit, then the score simply is not relevant to ascertaining admission chances.
I mean, a dozen years ago my daughter applied to U of Chicago with a 27 ACT and was accepted. Chicago admissions has gotten a lot tighter since then, and if a student in an identical position were applying today she might be deterred by the single-digit admit rate – but now that Chicago has gone test-optional, the test score itself shouldn’t be a problem. It’s just that in today’s admissions climate, I assume no applicant with that level of ACT score would submit it.
And I assume that in today’s admissions climate, a student needs to be more special in more ways than my daughter had to be back in the day … but there probably are plenty of students who meet that criteria, and obviously Chicago wants them to apply.
Anyway, this is the source of my skepticism about the question. How can test scores possibly be relevant for gauging chances of admission at schools that don’t require the scores?
I think that the scores of the students who don’t submit them are lower than the scores of those who do, so the score ranges reported by TO schools are most likely higher than they’d be with all the scores. How much lower can you go compared to the reported scores? If you want to be safe, pick a number not much different than you’d pick for a TR school.
High test scores aren’t the sole reason for college acceptances. There are other achievements. Don’t get lost looking at numbers. I think you’ll find more helpful information on the colleges’ websites. Assessing reach vs likely involves more than comparing scores.
Out of curiosity, I assume some of the posters also discounted the value of test scores when selecting high schools and neighborhoods? At least for most public schools, admission was guaranteed by residence, so fit based on reported scores wasn’t important to you? Or it would be ok if the high school only had the best students take the tests, and then reported only those (There are schools that do just that with AP tests). The tests are just one small piece of evaluating the whole school, and besides, aren’t always reflective of the talents of the student body? Real estate values across the country would indicate most people value accuate scores.
^ interesting point. Our local HS (neither kid attended but both went to other public schools) actually had AP teachers telling their students NOT to take the AP exams IF they felt they would score less than a 3, as they didn’t want their numbers to reflect a poor pass rate. Amazing but true. Actually is a reason (one of many) that we decided the school was not a good fit (and it’s in a very affluent part of town).
Yes, some public schools do that to boost their own rankings and prestige, including in the USNWR high school rankings (based in part on AP participation).
I think an intelligent consumer always knows the context of the numbers. It’s not like test optional schools hide the fact that they are test optional.
And having toured a slew of small LAC’s the quirky intellectual vibe has been pretty strong at many of them including some test optional ones. It’s an option who don’t think their academics are reflected by their test score. Sometimes the difference between a 29 and a 33 ACT is just speed and ability and time to prep.
Nope. We looked at the quality of the hs education options in other ways that mattered to us. Ironically, much the same as what I wrote above. Later, we never even logged into Naviance. It’s not our style of evaluating. We knew our kids’ strengths and where not strong and what environment they were likely to thrive in. It was never about others’ stats. And D1 stated firmly that she wanted a college that stretched her, academically, intellectually, and in the community (local and wider.)
Why would there be a limit to “how much lower you can go” for admission to a TO school? By definition the test scores are not considered in admission decisions among TO applicants. In theory a TO applicant who had a panic attack during the SAT, left the test blank, and scored a 400 might be a likely admit, if the rest of the application was stellar.
If you mean the threshold at which a student should not submit scores for a test optional college, it’s not a simple as submitting only if you are above nth percentile. It should be based more on how the score fits with the full application. That said, if the college doesn’t publish stats on non-submitters, why would you expect admission decisions to be based on how your score compares to a group that the university does not include in their published stats and may not have scores for?
Has it ever occurred to you that it’s the other way around? That the schools in areas where real estate values are higher have better scores because the students come from wealthier families?
One, true, reliable thing about aggregate test scores is that they are tied closely to family income.
They are also tied to sociocultural, ethnic & racial factors. (As are real estate values, unfortunately).
I chose to buy a home in a neighborhood that I could afford. Which pretty much ruled out all those ones with the higher real estate values.
Oh I am certain that scores are correlated to wealth. But a good part of the reason that home values are high, and remain high in some places, is because the local public schools accurately report the average SAT of all students, and there is demand for home in districts with high testing schools. If schools didn’t report those test results, or reported only some of them, we woild see demand skip in those areas.
Oh, you’re still putting so much stock in stats reports. They aren’t representative of what your kid’s hs scores might eventually be. We hope they represent the level of education and striving. But even at top high schools, there’ll be kids above and below a median. You aren’t paying for guaranteed test results.
This is shown at exclusive preps. Not all seniors are headed off for top colleges, despite inflated score numbers in the class as a whole. Nor all kids at Stuy or TJ.
You are aware that all high school students do NOT take the SAT, right? So when your local high schools report scores, that is only the scores of the college bound?
Maybe where you live its not an issue, but where I live the majority of high school grads will go to community college if they opt for college at all. Others go to the military or take jobs straight out of high school. No particular need to take SATs or ACTs. So definitely not a profile of the whole student body.
Typically most public high schools have different tracks for different students. There are the kids who are in the honors and AP classes… and then all the rest who aren’t. The kids who enter on an accelerated math track, and all the rest who don’t. So it makes a lot of sense to look at curriculum and course offerings, not so much at aggregate test scores.
My town has high property values despite middling schools. People stretch to live here because public transportation to several areas with great job opportunities (and high salaries) make commuting easy; the quality of life is high (very walkable, you don’t spend your entire life in the car), although the price of a house/condo or renting is higher than elsewhere in the region, property taxes are lower because there is a robust business and industrial base.
It’s a LOT more complicated than “high property values exist because of high test scores”. Sure not the case where I live. There are expensive areas with mediocre schools, just as there are less expensive places with strong schools. You are trying to draw a direct line with very weak evidence.
The fact that property values and test scores have extremely high correlation is beyond debate. The correlation is not 100%, of course, so there will be exceptions, but exceptions don’t disprove the high correlation.
Actually calmom, in some states all public high school students do take the SAT or ACT. Paid for by the state. And I didn’t suggest that only those tests were relevant to property values. Almost all public schools have some type of year end standardized testing mechanism, with scores reported publicly for accountability purposes. If you don’t look at them, that puts you in a very small minority of parents. They make headlines in many local newspapers. Realtors monitor them closely. Everyone realizes their own child’s performance may vary, of course, but the results are used as a quick proxy for the quality of the school.
Looking forward, why do you call the prep school scores “inflated”?. For the schools you are talking about, assuredly 100% of the class took the SAT/ACT, and the results are reported as such. The results might be quite high (which makes sense if kids were chosen for those prep schools largely by SSAT scores), but they are not inflated. If everyone took the test and all results are reported, then the scores are accurate for that class.
If the tests were given one time only, to all students at the same time, with no opportunity to prep for the test… then they might have some comparative validity. The reason prep school scores are “inflated” is because the schools are built on curriculums that prepare for the tests; the students have strong incentives to score well and often have extensive prep and tutoring as well; and students can retake scores until they have a score they are satisfied.
A student who scores 1350 on the first sitting and 1550 on the third isn’t smarter by virtue of the 1550; that student is just better prepared.
Sll the above is true for many public schools as well. If you prefer to use some state standardized test score for comparative test purposes, that works too.