Definitely hurt my daughter going in TO. She had 5 SAT tests get cancelled and then was able to take one in late October. We naively believed the hype that test optional truly meant test optional and that the admissions offices would do a holistic review. We had no idea that students would be applying to 20-25 schools as we are now finding out in these forums. My D applied to 8 and they are almost all large state schools. Schools that she did apply to are experiencing in some cases double the applications they had in previous years. So this has resulted in admissions offices taking the kids with test scores and waitlisting the kids without because itās just easier. For the most part, the only kids who are submitting test scores are the ones with really high scores. So the statistics are completely out of whack for the kids they are admitting versus prior years. It will be interesting to see what the yield will be for these schools because while the applicants applied to 20-25, they can only choose 1. So if you end up deferring/waitlisting the kids who would normally make up your class, where does that leave you?
How could TO policies not change things? Acceptance rates are uniformly lower at the more desirable colleges. Yields will almost be uniformly lower with a few exceptions. Waitlists are uniformly longer with consequences on financial aid and deposits. Who benefited and who were disadvantaged by TO policies may be subject to speculation, the new student compositions at many colleges are likely altered to various degrees. We wonāt know their effects fully for at least a few years.
Son applied to 10 school, all considered to be a match to his 4.0W GPA and 30 ACT. He was accepted to the 7 test optional schools (where he submitted his score) and waitlisted at all 3 of the test blind schools. It seems like some reasonably desirable schools of past years (CalPoly SLO, UCSC) have become uber selective this year. A likely consequence of them going test blind.
Weighted GPA from many high schools is exaggerated compared to the weighted-capped GPA recalculated for UC and CSU purposes. This causes some students to over-reach in college applications.
D21 applied to 20 schools via the Common App and then some of the UCs. She applied to so many because a) she honestly could see herself at each of the Common App schools as we had visited every single one multiple times prior to COVID (except Kenyon, but she did several virtual visits and really liked it), b) she is homeschooled and that always makes things a bit unpredictable with admissions, and c) she had a 3.98 unweighted GPA and rigor and then some on her transcript (in-person dual credit for two years with 300 and 400-level courses and lots of AP classes) and solid ECs, but she did not have an SAT score that started with 15. Her SAT score was in the 1400s. She had planned on taking it again and she had studied hard, but she never had the opportunity to retest and get that score up into the 1500s.
Many of her Common App choices were reaches for everyone. She did not shotgun, each college was chosen for specific reasons and she liked them all (except the UCsā¦I think that app was a waste of time as I did not see her at any large school and the UCs are massiveā¦but she withdrew those applications and all the others when she got into Hamilton ED2 so no harm done to anyone elseās chances).
There are definitely schools she would not have applied to had she had to submit her 14-something SAT score. That score was her only āweakness.ā She applied to those certain schools without submitting that SAT score. That was about half the colleges on her Common App list.
She did send the score to the other half (she was at the 50th percentile or higher for those schools).
Hamilton accepted her ED2, and they had a test-flexible policy, which meant they accept a combination of different kinds of tests. She submitted a high SAT2 Chem score she had received in 9th grade, plus all her AP scores (4s, not 5s). So I think for Hamilton, TO didnāt affect her admission chances as she had a bunch of solid scores to submit from various tests taken earlier in high school and therefore didnāt need to rely on the main SAT.
She definitely would not have applied RD to most of those extreme reaches that require an SAT score in the 1500s had they not gone TO though. Again, her applying to those schools didnāt end up affecting anyone elseās chances since she withdrew those apps as soon as she was admitted ED2 to Hamilton.
Did Test Optional change anything in your admissions process or results?
This is the questions the OP asked, and should be the focus of this thread. The fact that a thread on test optional/validity of test scores was recently shut down does not mean those topics can now migrate here. We allow some leeway on meandering comments, but not in cases where the topic has been declared dead elsewhere. Off-topic posts deleted
I was severely under the test score averages for UT Austin out of state and was able to get in. Worth mentioning that I applied test optional but I think it was the essays that were really the most important. Was a reach school for me.
I donāt think my son would have gotten in to 3 of the schools he was accepted to without his test scores (1500).