It seriously disadvantages poor students in poor school systems. Not their fault if the school lacks AP courses. There may be few resources for ECs, and LoR’s from overburdened teachers may not be enough. Stellar test scores in a poor environment really stand out.
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Both MIT and Caltech have been studying the impact of their respective TO/TB policies. It’s likely that the impact was greater and felt more quickly at MIT than at Caltech, because of the differences in their applicant pools (a greater degree of self-selection among Caltech applicants) and in their admission processes (greater involvement by Caltech faculty in the process to ascertain applicants’ academic qualifications). It also should be noted that Caltech has only extended its TB policy but hasn’t made a final decision, which presumably will be made when it has more data (i.e. when its first class admitted under the TB policy graduates).
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IMO, it should be a one time exam, like an AP test. Yes that makes it more high stakes but then there is no super score gaming going on.
That just sounds like the way Oxford and Cambridge do their exams and it’s incredibly high stakes.
Imho, having an exam you can only sit once would be a high stakes all-or-nothing deal. I don’t think that would be good for anyone’s mental health - it could mean that one day where you don’t get enough sleep and your entire college prospects would have changed.
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Have those percentages changed since test optional? Are far more full pay students going test optional?
This was one of the reason’s why MIT reinstated the tests, to identify such students. Students from poorly funded schools who meet the threshold (whatever Math score that may be at MIT) would have a strong case for admission.
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MIT has never admitted many test optional applicants, so they have little impact of test optional at MIT information to study. For example, a comparison of percent submitting test scores in 2021 at different colleges is below, copied from an earlier post. While MIT’s official policy in 2021 was to allow students to apply who did not have access to testing (not the same as test optional), they seem to have admitted very few students under that policy – less than all peer colleges.
Fall 2021 Admits: 100% - % Submitted SAT - % Submitted [ACT]
Caltech – 100% not reported (test blind)
Northeastern – 58%
Barnard/Vassar – 49%
Hamilton – 48%
CMC --47%
Middlebury/Smith – 46%
Tufts – 45%
Emory:Oxford / Tulane – 44%
Vanderbilt/Brandeis – 43%
WUSTL/RPI – 42%
Haveford/Wellesley – 41%
Harvey Mudd / Swarthmore – 40%
Cornell – 39%
…
Stanford – 21%
Brown/Penn – 19%
Northwestern – 18%
Chicago – 16%
Harvard – 15%
GeorgiaTech / Yale – 11%
Princeton – 9%
MIT: Negative 4% (some submitted both)
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That NE number is surprisingly high.
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Most important post so far; how much of the class admits actually did not submit scores. Given Barnard’s numbers, perhaps Columbia’s announcement is to be expected.
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Not surprising to me, considering that they explicitly tell their applicants not to submit below-average scores.
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I’m not sure that’s the right conclusion to draw. Here’re the test score submitters enrolled at MIT each year:
| SAT | ACT | SAT+ACT | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 76.50% | 44.60% | 121.10% |
| 2019 | 75.00% | 48.00% | 123.00% |
| 2020 | 77.00% | 42.00% | 119.00% |
| 2021 | 70.00% | 34.00% | 104.00% |
If we assume the percentage of admits who submitted both SAT and ACT remains about the same, it would appear to show that MIT may have 15%+ non-submitters in its freshman class in 2021.
Our high school occasionally sends kids to MIT – including a current freshman there. Of my son’s friends who are planning on studying a science, only one of them applied to MIT (or even considered it). The rest of them aren’t interested in that environment so they didn’t apply, including one total superstar who would have surprised no one were they to be admitted.
ETA: This is also true for my son (engineering). He was entirely uninterested in MIT and other elite schools. He briefly considered applying to one T20 due to proximity, but quickly decided against it.
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I have some sympathy for this feeling. My kid dropped MIT from #1 to #4 after visiting. Eventually ended up not applying.
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Or average scores apparently.
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What was it that turned him off?
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Given covid conditions in 2021, this is far from a safe assumption. Given that people were clamoring to take one test in 2021, why would you assume the percentage who managed to take and chose to submit both would be unchanged? A safer assumption is that, as a result of covid, less applicants would submit both.
MIT was really quite clear on this. MIT was never test optional. MIT instructed applicants that those who could submit a score should submit a score. Accordingly, MIT did not and does not have the data to conduct the comparison between test optional and test required. Fudging the stats to create the impression that they accepted a bunch of students without test scores doesn’t change this.
This is my experience as well. Some parents/posters on CC tend to consider MIT as the Holy Grail of STEM, but rightly or wrongly many talented STEM students don’t see it that way. There is something about about the perceived culture/environment that turns them off.
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He was a decided CS kid by that point, but had significant liberal arts interests. We were told that of the 1100 that matriculate to MIT, about 500 explicitly major in EECS, and another 20-30% minor in CS. He thought that felt claustrophobic. He asked kids what kind of inter-disciplinary work happens at MIT in CS, and they mostly described work that was at the interface between subfields of CS rather than CS and fields other than CS. He also wanted a student body that had humanities interests. Also MIT has more of a maker culture amongst the engg student body that was not to his taste. So MIT got pushed to RD below PSH in that order. After EA to P, he applied RD to S with a 30% odds of matriculating there if they offered – more of “if I am CS, I am supposed to at least look at S, even if the outcome eventually is that I’d stay at P”. P was intensely academic with no commercial pretensions, and is a broad and deeply intellectual place. Thought S was too commercial anyway with a frenzy about startups. H was too weak in CS – did not apply because he had friends applying there, and thought the odds of picking H over P were less than 10%, and therefore not polite to apply. S did not offer – so that decision did not need to be made.
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The assumption that the percentage of MIT matriculants who are test submitters of both SAT and ACT remains about constant over the years is at least as good as the assumption that they were nearly non-existent in 2021. Therefore, it’s a real stretch to assume, based on their non-existence, that MIT didn’t accept in 2021 applicants who didn’t submit test scores. MIT stated that it had done its internal analysis and you’re free to choose not to believe them.
Yes. Strangely, 2 kids from my son’s class were accepted to both Harvard & MIT last year and both picked Harvard. That surprised me a bit - especially for the STEM kid who was a real superstar.
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Yes. Strangely, 2 kids from my son’s class were accepted to both Harvard & MIT last year and both picked Harvard. That surprised me a bit - especially for the STEM kid who was a real superstar.
56% of kids faced with the same Harvard vs MIT decision choose Harvard.
56% of kids faced with the Harvard vs Stanford decision choose Harvard.
Harvard clearly is doing something right that makes kids want to go there over other universities.