@suzyQ7 I have asked a few adcoms at info sessions and the Fulbright fair (all top universities/lacs) and no one told me that they were following concordance. This makes sense for top 30 schools who have an holistic review process anyway.
The way that I look at it, if DD’s new SAT score “drops” by 50 points when “concorded” to the old test, so what?
I can’t see that making or breaking her application given her strong grades, ECs, leadership, etc.
Also this whole issue goes away next year anyway for the class of 2018 as most kids will have only taken the new SAT or ACT.
The students that were well informed avoided the new SAT in favor of the old SAT or ACT. If the informed students were generally stronger than uninformed students, that alone can explain the difference.
@hebegebe ^ “The students that were well informed avoided the new SAT in favor of the old SAT or ACT. If the informed students were generally stronger than uninformed students, that alone can explain the difference.”
Good point! I agree that this has a lot to do with the scoring differences.
That’s speculation. And why would someone who was well-informed avoid the new SAT? Most of S’s classmates, all “strong” students, took the new SAT rather than the old due to timing. Many also took the ACT.
S was well informed and took both the new SAT and the ACT. The corresponding converted scores were nearly identical.
“And why would someone who was well-informed avoid the new SAT?”
Seriously? Because many parents/students who were well prepared and/or informed could easily speculate that there would be some teething problems with the new SAT. (Which was a spot-on assumption!) Many of these kids have engaged private college counsellors. Many of the larger college counselling firms have blogs or websites where they have been consistently recommending that kids going for top schools should avoid the new SAT and do the ACT and/or old SAT. I am highly confident, based on what I have read here and elsewhere, that many of the “Tiger Parents” have had their kids take the old SAT as there was a much more established body of test preparation materials.
Of course teething problems were expected. Doesn’t mean anyone could have predicted the resulting concordance differential. And there is no empirical data that supports your contention that the “stronger” kids migrated en masse to the old SAT rather than the new, at least not at this point in time. No doubt some kids took the tact of taking the old SAT has a hedge against the unknown, maybe even a bunch of those who follow CC; we evaluated and chose not to, but also chose to take the ACT, as did many other high-performing kids. Using your theory, one could also argue that a strong student would have a better chance at scoring higher on the new SAT, what with all the “weaker” students that would be taking it.
In our local high school, about 20% of the kids make National Merit Commended or Semi-Finalist each year, including my D this year. It was common knowledge among these students to avoid the new SAT.
You completely misunderstand this. The SAT score is not a percentile among the test takers on a particular day. I will leave it as an exercise to you to figure out why.