Not sure about Columbia, but at many colleges, applications are divided in such a way that the same AOs would review the ones from the same HS (or similar neighboring high schools), so they can easily compare students from the same HS.
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As tuition costs continue to rise, students increasingly depend on reliable information to make well-informed decisions about applying the colleges. By permanently eliminating the SAT requirement, Columbia University may be contributing to a less transparent admission process. Perhaps Columbia feels that their current ranking of 18 by US News is not reflective of their academic caliber and they are taking steps to improve it.
Yeah, there would be less “fill in the blank” guessing and easier direct comparisons if either everyone submitted a score, or nobody did.
“Well, Applicant A and B both have a 3.9. A also reported a 1500, while B did not report a score. I wish they had, so we could more directly compare them!”
Because – they can’t presume the non-submitter had a low score, right? Maybe they couldn’t/didn’t take the test.
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That depends upon the demographics of the student. For middle class students from good schools, I think there will be an expectation that they could have, and likely did, test. URMs, low income, first gen and rural will have more leeway.
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Good question. Colleges won’t release such data. It is not a good look as is…“we are pro socioeconomic diversity while over half of our students pay the full sticker price.”
The AO never answered his own question and then changed topics. The audience was very large and no one asked him to clarify what he had just said. I guess everyone understood what he meant. I’m also guessing that almost everyone in the group had already taken a standardized test or were planning to take it in the near future because a lot of individual follow-up questions to him after the tour was over were about standardized tests as well as what classes to take next year.
I think Columbia always has an eye on the rankings, but in this case I don’t think this will improve that metric. I think their student caliber is already very high. But I’m wondering if they are eyeing the upcoming SC decision and looking to bolster up getting a wider applicant pool.
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Columbia is not permanently eliminating the SAT. Test optional means that students can choose to submit SAT scores, if they wish to do so. And the college will use those SAT scores in evaluation of admits, when submitted. It’s similar to the testing policy currently used at all other Ivies, Stanford, Chicago, and nearly all other similar colleges ranked above them in USNWR.
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Wow similar story, similar score, college advisor was more realistic saying this is the 25% for these schools and somebody has to be in 25% why not submit…did and did get into IVY (not all that applied to but some). This is another good example of the mess TO creates. Either require them or don’t. One more gaming the system variable that is now created by TO in a system that is totally filled with uncertain variables. FYI never believe the “expert advisors” and go with your gut. You are the only one who knows your kid.
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Interesting thought but why? As mentioned in my OP the current wave of TO was based in the pandemic on the assumption that people could not take the tests. At this point all should be able to take the tests (not getting into the issue of SES and test prep or test bias) so there should not be any “leeway”. At this stage TO in most cases comes down to students who either don’t want to take tests or take tests and don’t want to submit scores because they ( or an advisor) feel the scores are not good enough, not because they cant take them.
Test optional helps colleges admit a racially diverse class with less risk of lawsuits which otherwise might rely upon a significant difference in test scores to substantiate a claim of racial bias in admissions.
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So you’re saying TO has as much to with protecting themselves against racial bias lawsuits as it does to actually setting standards for evaluating students for admission? So like in many aspects of life this comes down to CYA against a litigious society? Interesting view but the litigious aspect exists if it were test blind (the disadvantaged kid who does well in an underachieving school is hurt) or test required (the kids who are hurt by not having the resources to prep or test bias).
In the end colleges need some arbitrary standard or cutoff to determine admissions to differentiate the process from a lottery or random drawing ( which I suspect in many cases essentially happens in the admissions room when equal candidates are being considered). Multiply that by thousands of applications. The idea that a certain student is a better “fit” for a particular school is in itself a random concept depending upon the AO thinking.
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Litigation isnt solely the driver. Many colleges wish to preserve their current degree of racial diversity or even possibly increase it. If that is the priority, then test optional is an essential element to get to that goal if race can no longer be used as a factor ( per the expected SC decision).
I would expect that at many elite schools, the racial breakdown won’t actually change much post SC-decision, if the school utilizes test optional. If the school doesn’t utilize test optional, it will be much harder to preserve existing levels.
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So this is a veiled attempt at establishing or maintaining diversity? Hmm without considering racial background (bc of pending SC decision) a no more fair but probably less stressful way for students or families would be to consider state or zip code of an applicant or their last name (I’m sort of kidding as these are no better methods but may be less stressful than having kids take a test) . In reality we know that these type of things maybe not overtly admitted already exist.
And if that difference appears between test optional and test required schools, after controlling for other factors, that could be the basis of the next lawsuit.
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One could consider socioeconomic status. But other than very broadly ( Pell grant level) schools do not do that to a fine degree. They do, however, publish detailed racial breakdowns which they do not wish to change. Test optional is one way to keep those levels. Other tactic-Elite schools are known to dive deep into recent immigrant communities which value education to shore up existing numbers. At one Ivy that I know of, a high percentage of the African-American population is composed of recent Nigerian immigrants, not the generational descendants of the enslaved.
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No doubt those who wish to keep URMs out of elite institutions will not stop filing lawsuits even if the current ones are successful and race is eliminated as a factor, but how does this work, exactly? Is the Supreme Court supposed to compare the ratios of URMs at different schools and determine that if URMs aren’t being sufficiently squeezed out at certain schools, then it must be because the white and Asian American students are being discriminated against?
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I’ll assume we’re done discussing race and college admissions here, since almost all the recent posters know there is one place on College Confidential to discuss that topic, and this isn’t it.
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Generally yes, if you are on the ball and register in advance… but it isn’t quite as simple as it may seem. Last fall, my kid had intended to retake the SAT after some actual prep, but had difficulty getting registered for test dates in our area (within a couple of hours drive), and then had three separate test dates cancelled. In the end, he could not retake in time for the application season, so he went with his earlier unprepped score. I could see how a naive applicant who planned to take the SAT in summer or fall of senior year might fall through the cracks completely through a sequence of bad luck cancellations, etc.
If a student doesn’t have transportation to distant test sites, it can be more complicated when local test sites fill up (this was the case with some of my son’s classmates).
They could have asked their own school to register as a test center.
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