Not what was intended.
may not have been the intention, but common sense would have told them the obvious result. Heck, they coulda easily learned it from cc as we have had plenty of spirited discussions on this very topic.
The ironic thing is that test optional will encourage more applications across the social and economic spectrum. As a result, AdComs will have hundreds/(thousands?) more really interesting applicants to consider – only some of which will be low income and/or minority.
I wonder if it would help if these schools were not just test optional, but completely test-blind, as in, “don’t send us your scores at all.” Just throwing that out there.
When the tour guides at these schools are telling prospective applicants - you should send your scores in if they are good, because they can only help you, why would anyone expect anything different?
Social justice warriors tend to be simple-minded
Even at test-optional schools, scores are often needed for merit scholarships.
I never knew the purpose of test-optional admissions was socioeconomic diversity. I thought it was for candidates whose scores did not reflect other strengths that might make them good contributors to the mix on campus, including those who might be strong in academics but not test-taking.
^^In reality, the intention of TO is to boost rankings and appear more selective. Period.
(Before TO, clearly Adcoms had the ability to ignore any scores of students that they really wanted, such as filling institutional goals like solo-economic diversity. But if they did so, they’d take a hit on rankings.)
Maybe the real problem is that a low income minority student is rarely in the position to even hear about, let alone understand the benefits of, a school like Bowdoin?
One of the issues that was raised was that students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds faced a challenge when they simply cannot afford the testing fees - let alone fees for multiple attempts at taking the test. So the do-gooders extrapolated to say they didn’t need to look at test scores, to remove that hurdle. What they failed to recognize is that there are so many other hurdles these kids face, that affect how they do in high school. The standardized test scores are generally correlated with income, but there are of course exceptions.
When some states started offering and paying for the SAT for all HS kids, they narrow-mindedly expected underprivileged kids to miraculously start doing better than they had done in school. But it doesn’t work that way.
The net they are using had too many big holes in it, so they’re not catching many more fish.
Yeah, I get that was one of the arguments, but like a lot of things with education, an argument not based on facts. Indeed, what facts we have support the contrary position.
For example, California requires SAT/ACT scores for UC and Cal State admissions, and both college systems have a huge proportion of low income students. The test requirement has not hindered them from applying. (Granted, not sure how many low income state students take the test “multiple” times.)
I think there is evidence paying for the SAT for all HS kids does have a positive effect. Not sure about the linking rules, but… https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/upshot/how-universal-college-admission-tests-help-low-income-students.html
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@bluebayou, TO schools DO take a hit in the USNews rankings unless they submit the scores of non-submitters. Seeing as those scores are bound to skew the school’s stats lower than those of peer schools I would expect that any advantage in terms of higher numbers of applications would tend to be cancelled out by either lower reported scores or the USNWR penalty.
We went to an admissions event at a well known test score optional LAC (highly ranked). Of course I went in knowing that test scores get you merit aid and that schools like high test scores because that is all they have to report. People with lower scores do not submit them. I actually felt bad for my D because the AO went on and on about don’t kill yourself taking AP courses, we don’t care about your SAT scores etc. Pretty much against everything high schools push kids to achieve. My D came out feeling like a total villain for having done well on SATs and taken challenging courses. And I know this speech was disingenuous. It left a bad taste in my mouth. Kids being shamed for doing what they have been told to do over and over again. Mine has worked hard…blood sweat and tears for 12 years and someone in a position of authority told her it makes no difference on acceptance. What a bummer of a college tour.
It may not be, for many of the small LACs with limited financial aid budgets.
Uhh, not quite. USNews makes a decrement to the test score rankings metric only if a school has more than 25% of its entering class as test optional, i.e., no test reported. Otherwise, the college gets the bang for the non-test buck.
Per USNews:
In other words as long as they have 75%+ of test reporters in the matriculating class, a college could ignore the bottom quartile (at the extreme).
Unless you’re accusing schools that have a sizable proportion of the class applying TO of cheating it would be pretty hard to manipulate the stats to come out that way. The schools either collect the data retroactively or they don’t. They don’t get to choose which of the TO students’s stats they’ll report.
Of course all schools could just chop off the bottom 25% percent of scores and report the top 75%. Again I think that would be seen as cheating.
I guess some schools that aren’t really serious about being test optional could manipulate their admissions process so that they never take more than 25% of the class TO but that seems like a stretch to me.
I don’t think that consequence was unintended.
Until this article I’d never heard “attracting low income and minority applicants” as a reason given for a school going test-optional. It seems they generally say something like “some brilliant kids don’t test well and we might want them here” or “SAT/ACT do a poor job f predicting college success”.
As an aside, the article in the OP is very, very similar to this article from 2015. If I were a college professor I’d be running it through a plagiarism filter.
http://hechingerreport.org/the-real-reason-that-colleges-go-test-optional/
Applications have nothing to do with it. It’s matriculants that matter.
And since a recent study showed that 30% of acceptances at TO schools did not have a test score, I would easily surmise that it would be a rare TO college that would have 25%+ matriculants who did not have a test score.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/education/edlife/the-test-optional-surge.html
OTOH, I’d love to know if a school like Wake Forest reports it’s athletes’ scores. 
I would actually expect TO applicants to matriculate at a higher rate than submitters because their ostensibly lower scores would hold them back in the admissions process at non TO schools of similar quality.
^^depends on financial aid/merit money. And those at the bottom of the applicant pool, aren’t likely to be richly rewarded, at least with merit money. (Yes, Bates/Bowdon meet full need, but plenty others do not.)