Obviously no one really knows, but I’d be interested to hear people’s thoughts. Will kids who deferred admission this school year mean less opportunities for the Class of 2025? How will lack of SAT scores affect applicants? In our area the August SAT has been canceled nearly everywhere. I know they say they are optional, but if another kid took them before things shut down, won’t that disadvantage kids who don’t have a score at all?
Any college that says they are test optional means it. No, the kid who wasn’t able to submit a score isn’t at a disadvantage.
I expect that MIT, like many colleges, allowed a certain number of students to defer. Those students will be filling some spots, for sure. Yes, admissions might be even tougher for the upcoming cycle due to those students and other factors. They are probably going to have to make even harder decisions than usual.
My advice this year: have a very well thought out list with matches and safeties that you really like, can afford, and will be happy to attend.
87 students deferred enrollment but MIT did not go to the wait list to fill those spots. So my guess is that they are looking at the class of 2024 plus 2025 combined to equal twice their target class size of ~1110. So I don’t expect the number of acceptances to drop by much… However applications may increase due to test optional, leading to a lower acceptance rate.
I don’t mean that they would look at the application and go ‘They didn’t submit a test, that’s bad it must be because they are hiding something’ and score them (or whatever) lower.
I mean that when considering two students with similar qualifications in terms of GPA, ECs, etc and one has a perfect SAT score and the other didn’t submit one, that the first student would have an advantage. Basically the same reason why they went from test optional on SAT subject tests to not considering SAT subject tests at all.
I have always found MIT to be very honest and straightforward. I cannot say the same for all colleges. So if MIT says you will not be at a disadvantage, then you will not be at a disadvantage IMO. But more to the point, what other option do you have? Believe them or don’t believe them. But if you can’t take the test, then you can’t take the test.
Since MIT won’t be the only school you apply to, if you can take the test, do so. Because for those colleges, no test is not a disadvantage, but a good score could (emphasis on could) be a very slight advantage.
Even during the halcyon days (pre-covid) high scores were NOT enough to get you in to MIT. Hence, the absence of the scores doesn’t put your application in the “shred” pile.
This means two things- As Ski Europe points out, take the test if you can. And as Linda points out- you STILL need a well thought out list, whether or not Covid has an impact, whether or not test optional has an impact, etc. Thousands of fantastic kids get rejected by MIT every year no matter what else is going on, and that is not going to change this year.
I think MIT has a very solid sense of what it is looking for when building the class. I have had friends tell me that their kid is a “shoe in” at MIT because “she loves computers but hates to read, just like everyone else at MIT.” No. My kid (and his friends) were really well rounded, read books in their spare time, performed just as well in their history classes in HS as they did in math and physics. Or the old “how could they not accept little Charlie? He’s a legacy (MIT doesn’t care) AND a real computer game nerd”. You don’t major in playing computer games at MIT- you need to show some affinity for a few other elements of intellectual engagement, whether they are math/science or other.
Make that list- reach, match, safety, and try not to outgame Covid. The virus always wins anyway.
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Ok, let’s imagine your scenario @kutter .
Susie lives in Westchester County, NY. Sally lives in the Bronx. If they present with the same everything, except Susie has an SAT score and Sally doesn’t, I’d give the nod to Sally.
Between Susie and Sandy, who lives in Orange County, CA, assuming Sandy wasn’t able to take her test, I am guessing that even then Susie won’t necessarily get the nod. They will probably look very closely at course rigor, teacher recommendations, and essays, as well as a bunch of other factors. They can’t favor Susie just because she has a test score. Here is why:
I live in a well-off suburban area about an hour from a major city. I’m a test prep tutor. I can tell you that which students have been able to take their test and which have not literally seems to be luck of the draw these days. The students are completely at the mercy of the school district where they signed up to take their tests. I have three kids who were/are taking the SAT this weekend. Two have had their tests cancelled. One has not.
MIT and all the other colleges who are test optional right now (most of them) know this. They are not going to favor a student with test scores right now. They can’t.
But MIT never engaged in “Oh, she’s got 1580 and he only has 1560 so he’s a reject and she’s in” type of enrollment management. So the absence of scores doesn’t change things on the ground for any particular applicant. The enormous likelihood when you apply to MIT is rejection- that’s what the numbers say. And this year will be no different.
Don’t worry about things you can’t control. You can control neither the number of students who take a gap year, nor any cancellation of standardized tests. Would these factors impact admissions this year? They may. This isn’t a normal year for anything. Do the best you can. If you can take the test, take it. If not, there isn’t much you can do. Some opportunities may disappear, but others will emerge in the midst of disruptions.
I haven’t seen MIT publicize their number of sophomores who took a LOA this year, and will end up in the class of 2024 (instead of 2023.) I suspect that number is large enough to account for MIT not going to their waitlist this year.
I’m hoping the class of 2024 doesn’t end up too large in the future, to afford those students the usual opportunities.
@Lindagaf can you please explain what you mean by comparing students with the same application quality but from Westchester, Bronx, and OC? I’m assuming that Westchester is mostly wealthy, like much of OC is, and Bronx is not? So you were saying that hardship will be more important this year than MIT would otherwise normally consider?
I am of the opinion that it would be a shame to not consider the scores of kids who took the SAT or ACT last fall. That was not due to luck but instead to the student being someone who showed more initiative than your average high school junior. Isn’t that exactly the kind of student MIT would favor? So I think it’s great that MIT is test optional and not test prohibited like the UCs just announced. That just seems unfair to the go-getter kids who knocked the test out of the park in the fall of junior year.
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I actually hold the opposite view. If the goal of these achievement tests is to objectively measure how much a student has learned in a given subject area, then these tests should be given nearly simultaneously, and ideally without preparation for the sole purpose of achieving better test results. The current tests are already nearly useless in differentiating among top students in a school like MIT. Why would it value some applicants achieving high test scores through early and undue preparation?
Note that for a significant percentage of MIT applicants , these tests don’t require much prep at all. Students strong in math or English are often taking the SAT much younger, before age 13 in particular, in order to qualify for talent searches such as Hopkins CTY and SET. Most of these students can walk in as juniors and get a 1500+ without any addl prep beyond what they do for PSAT.
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@sherimba03 , given two otherwise equally qualified students, but one with test scores and the other without, yes, I would expect that the student from the low SES town might be admitted before the other. However, we all know that holistic admissions is the secret sauce and we don’t know what ingredients each college values most.
Being realistic, there aren’t many occasions in life when hardship gives an advantage. Is it possible, especially in this probably very competitive cycle of admission, that a clearly qualified applicant who lives in a low SES area might have an advantage, in this particular instance? Yes. Notice the word might.
Does this mean that a good test score won’t be noticed? No. But they can’t give preference to the kid with the good test score over the kid with no test score. Notice again the rest of my post above: kids are at the mercy of high schools who are cancelling tests with little or no notice. (And btw, the third kid mentioned above had his test cancelled Friday afternoon, the day before the test. He had driven to a town four hours away and had a hotel booked. That kid is a go-getter.)
I have literally been working with students since November who planned to take the March SAT. Their tests have been cancelled three or four times. How does that make them not go-getters? Those kids played football or simply wanted time to practice the test. They had no time to take the test before. This issue is not about go-getters versus slackers.
This is a lot of angst over a college from which you have a 98% chance of getting rejected. MIT is going to assemble the class it wants, regardless of whether or not applicants have test scores. You can argue why test scores matter all day long, but if MIT wants more URMs this year and X number of students from Europe, you having a better test score than any of those applicants means zip.
Put forth your best application. Don’t hold back your good scores as they are a data point in your favor. Realize, though, your chances, without being a recruited athlete or child of a major donor, and whether or not you have a great SAT score or don’t submit one at all, is only 2%, which is why you shouldn’t put all your eggs in this basket.
I agree that some gifted students won’t need any prep for current versions of these tests. The older version of SAT, because of the breadth of its vocabulary uses, do require some prep even for these top students to achieve perfect or near perfect scores, especially for young test takers (some 8th graders do achieve perfect scores even on those older SATs for CTY). I know some schools/parents encourage their students to prep for PSAT, I think that practice should be discouraged beyond getting students familiarized with the test format, as prep defeats the purpose of the test. National Merit Scholarship program and colleges that award such scholarships perhaps should find some other ways.
In our area, March SAT tests were cancelled the day before at some locations, continued to not happen during the rest of the cycle, and were cancelled at many of the same locations for the August test.
I do think that testing did happen at some schools in the area (since they were not on the cancelled list), and that those schools are considered highly-ranked ones. The thing is, requesting that school doesn’t necessarily get you assigned to that school, so the cancelled tests have kept happening, depending on where a student has been assigned.
What will happen with the PSATs in October?
The discussion of amount of prep needed for the SATs or what will happen with PSAT, while interesting, is off topic for the thread and belongs in a separate conversation
No problem. Moving on, since March not just tests but sports and in-person ECs have been through considerable upheaval. That includes science/tech ones. For those applicants with well-stocked living arrangements (decent computer and internet access, for example), some things have moved online. For other students without the same situation, even having a district laptop at home may not have been as good (due to controls on school computers that limit access to many sites).
So the disparity in opportunity - how will it reflect on applicants? How much leeway will be given for students that found a way to still learn and do community service work? While others may have not?
Interesting to know what admissions officers will pivot to consider this year, and for how long extenuating circumstances are considered just that.
@Groundwork2022 the odds are actually not 2% but are instead about 10% for female applicants, 4% for male applicants, and 50% for recruited athletes.