You can’t say that in such a sweeping way - you don’t know.
That’s school specific.
And these kids are applying now or next year, not in 8 years when life may be different.
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It is a trend. Check for yourself; I did. Merit is now being offered equally to submitters and non at the large majority of test optional schools. Do a quick sample.
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At some schools - yes. But you are making a sweeping statement.
Again - there are publics with tables that still include test on merit even though they are TO.
And you don’t know why a private gave someone merit - you’re hypothesizing.
And you don’t know how much. Perhaps a kid that’s TO with an identical record to a test submitter got less money.
My point is - you just don’t know -
At this point, the trend might be in that direction but unless a school puts out specific data on the % of TO that got and % that didn’t - and the $ - you can’t know.
And even that wouldn’t be enough - because the TO kid may have had a higher GPA than the non-TO.
I’m simply saying - it’s way too early in the game to make a generalization like that.
One should look at where they are applying - and determine from there.
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I have been told he is good, he is in a major precollege program and has attended competitive camps. Always someone better though!
I am suggesting you check - if you care enough to write on the subject.
Most state schools, in particular, have changed in this regard over the last 24 months. And I bet exactly 0 have moved in favor of using tests for merit during the same time period - if they were not already doing so.
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Picked 2 to check -
Indiana University
U of Delaware
both now offer merit for non-submitters. can i prove no advantage for submitters, nope, but can’t prove no advantage for non-submitters either.
That would not make someone prep in isolation IMO.
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So Alabama, UAH, Murray State and others with a table - you still must.
It may or may not be isolated. Many schools have tables.
My bigger thing is - one just doesn’t know - does it impact actual $$ - back to the we may have the same record but I get more $$ - or heck I get in where you may not.
People are free to do what’s best for them. But I go back to - having a good score (relative to the school average) - may or may not help but it certainly won’t hurt.
I think we killed this one 
Starting this Spring Indiana is requiring all Juniors to take the SAT to graduate
How this will effect Merit for Class of 2026 we will need to see DOE: High School Assessment
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odd to me, but thanks for sharing. i was not aware of that.
I was not aware of this either. I knew some states offered it at school
Delaware requires it as well
https://www.doe.k12.de.us/Page/2717
Apparently there are more and some states requiring ACT to graduate.
In Florida the SAT is given in the spring of your Junior year at school for free.
However, it is not a requirement of graduation and students are not required to take it.
Required in TN during 11th grade to get a diploma but the public colleges are TO.
At UTK scholarships come with a test. However I see they added the Beacon which is for TO.
So they’ve added that option although I don’t know how that student would fare vs a test submitter.
I suggest going to the music major forum to ask about this specific situation. There is a useful essay in the Read Me thread on the music forum, entitled “Double Degree Dilemma” that is really about different ways to study music, using hypothetical individuals.
It sounds like your son does not want a performance BM degree so it is unlikely he will need to audition, and the music supplement will indeed be helpful. I do not think he needs scores over 1500. A 784 isn’t worth more than a 740, as an example, and with high level music and attendance at a well-known conservatory prep, his chances are good. (But music is not a hook.)
It is helpful to understand strategies for testing: whether to guess, whether to skip a time-consuming question to cover more questions, etc. etc. One night of review of math. If results are over 1400, consider submitting, and if not, then do test optional.
If you are after merit, check the schools to see if scores are required.
Here is the best list of test optional schools. FairTest | The National Center for Fair and Open Testing
PM’ed you
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Does the high school report it’s average GPA? I’ve haven’t found many that have. some report the distribution of the grades that the kids get, but reporting average GPA isn’t common. Just curious, since I’ve looked for that data in the past, and it’s not easily accessible.
In any case, I just checked and it seems that Texas high schools are supposed to use only GPA and weighted GPA to determine the top 6%, 10%, and 25%. How a high school which is handing out 4.0s like candy will be able to determine the top 6% is beyond me. All of the trouble that they thought they were avoiding by caving in to parents with grades will be nothing compared to the lawsuits from all the students who will not get the rank they think that the should.
Anyways, back to whether it’s worth prepping for SATs and ACTs.
If only GPA is used for college admissions, why wouldn’t you expect high schools and teachers to inflate their students’ grades?
This is the problem today. The GPAs are ridiculously high. How many people are being aced through without knowing their stuff ?? What’s the point of that ?
Unfortunately public education is very uneven in our country. Some straight A students from other states have struggled to keep up when they first get to our school system (we’re in MA). My SIL’s kids in Louisiana (nice middle class town) have not had the same level of rigor - judging from what they do for classwork, some is a grade or more behind in terms of what they are doing. And this is in a “good” community. I can’t imagine what it is like in other places. Frankly, the disparity in quality in K-12 is a much more serious problem than what privileged kid gets to go to Harvard.
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This is why, I personally, believe in standardized tests.
Maybe these aren’t about what you know but about how to excel - but even that shows a level of knowledge.
Because the truth is an A student in one school, as you say, itsn’t an A student in another school.
How many TO applicants - whether from inner city or wealthy cities - are 100% good for the schools that take them? Yet you look at the high end privates, etc. with 90 - 95% grad rates.
I always wonder how that could be? I personally don’t think it’s possible without a lof of false lifting at the collegiate level too.
Why should they? It’s only the private high schools which are competing for wealthier students, and public schools in wealthy districts which are competing with these private schools, have the need for there to be a very large number of students with inflated GPAs, because they use “we have so and so students who were accepted to Ivy league colleges” as advertising. Even among those, there are many schools which are comfortable enough with their reputations that they see no need to inflate their grades.
For the schools which mostly serve the 80% of the students who are not looking to apply and be accepted to colleges which accept fewer than 60% of their applicants, there is little reason to inflate grades. Fewer than half of all students in the bottom 80% by income attend any college, and, of the ones that do attend college, more than 60% attend an open enrollment college, whether it’s a four year college or a community college. Perhaps 5% of the graduating students of these populations end up in a highly selective college.
Those 5% are the students who are very smart and very driven, and do not need grade inflation, and their parents are generally not pressuring teachers for higher grades. Similarly, at least 5% of the kids in wealthy schools do not need grade inflation, and, for selective high schools, it’s likely more. However, in schools which serve mid and low SES kids, those 5% are the only ones who are highly focused on attending a highly selective college.
At high schools serving the wealthy, at least half of the students, and usually a lot more than that, are focused on getting into highly selective schools, so, for the reasons stated above, these students are being given grades which are far higher than their school work and mastery of the material would justify. The dual pressure of parents who want their kid to attend a prestigious college and the high school administrators who both want to appease these parents and to advertise the school’s ability to place students in prestigious high schools
However, again, this is not what is going on in the majority of the high schools and for the majority of the students. So, for the majority of high schools, there is little benefit in handing out As like a religious nut hands out flyers.
That doesn’t mean that testing solves the problem. Imagine that we’re trying to see which person is the best marathon runner. If it becomes too easy to take short cuts, and coaches are not being honest about the time that it takes runners to finish those 42.125 km, you try to standardize training and enforce rules for timing runs.
What you don’t do, is you don’t test them by having them compete on a 400 m run, just because you can see and time the entire race. You especially don’t use the 400 m run when only some can train for 400 m run, and runners have a wide range of footwear based on what they can afford, from running barefoot to expensive shoes which provide a boost of speed, and you allow the wealthier runners to have their own private drugs testing.
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I don’t disagree that the well-known high schools don’t necessarily feel the need to inflate grades. However, there’re many more high schools where some of their students (and their parents) are vying for elite colleges, not just privates but also public flagships. For example, in CA, since HS grades play such an important role in admissions to UCs (and likely soon, CSUs), a typical high school there would be under a lot of pressures from everyone, including students and their parents, to inflate grades to compete with its peers, would it not?
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Again, only at high school which serve the top 20% by income are there a substantial number who are even applying to schools at which a 3.95 is required in order to be considered.
From the Chetty article, you can see that fewer than 3% of the students in the bottom 80% by income attend a college which is “highly selective” or more selective than that. Fewer than 40% of students whose family have above average income (60%-80% by income) attend even a “selective” school.
So, at high schools which serve 80% of the population, the idea that students “MUST” have an A in every class is not something which occupies the minds of either parents or students. If the choices that most students are considering require a GPA of 3.3 or lower, with half being open enrollment, parents are not screaming at the principle that the A- that their kid got will “ruin their life”.
Most grade inflation in these schools are not the result of A’s being given to anybody who actually showed up to class more than 70% of the classes. It is because students are getting Ds instead of Fs. Parents are putting pressure on administrators not to fail their kid, but even more pressure is coming from the School district to keep graduation rates higher.
[aside]
THAT is why the low income high schools are eliminating Fs and Ds. Instead of giving a failing student a D and sending them on, they will send them back to try again.
[/aside]
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