@northwesty says, about applicants taking tests more often to get higher scores, “But that still says to me that competition is increasing.”
True—for one meaning of competition. Maybe part of the back-and-forth on this thread is because we haven’t actually fully defined what we mean by that word, then?
“If the kid now showing a 32 ACT didn’t take it 7 years ago, but showed a similar % SAT there is not change in the “pool” just a different expression of quality.”
The game is more competitive (even with the same odds and same number of players) if you have to do more to keep up. 15 years ago, a one sitting, no prep, ACT of 31 would make you an above average applicant at Penn, Duke, NW or Vandy.
Today, you need a 34 to be above average. To post a 34, many kids will have to (i) figure out if you are stronger on the SAT or the ACT, (ii) prepping for the preferred test, and (iii) taking the preferred test multiple times. You have to run faster to stay in the same place.
ah, yes, that I agree with. I was speaking of “number of seats for top students” - ie. a HS #1 in 2007 with a 98% standardized score had an easier time/more top choices than a HS #1 with a 98% standardized score in 2017. I don’t think that is neccessarily true.
But I don’t doubt that there is increasing amounts of “strategizing” going on (although my 2020 kid and their schoolmates did a ton already 3 or 4 years ago… Elite schools themselves, as a few of us noted earlier, do quite a bit to encourage that, as they market to kids who will never come close to getting in.
“Sure everything matters and matters more now. But it is pretty hard to make assessments on how much better today’s winning essays are as compared to 15 years ago.”
But it is pretty easy to compare test scores over time.
“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
– Albert Einstein
That’s what’s really going here, as we have a lot of circular posts that are not getting anywhere, I think. The things that are making college admissions more competitive are not really the quantifiable stuff, but more the softer skills. Things like cultural fit, will the student thrive, will they contribute to the community, will they be in leadership roles as a junior or senior, will they tutor freshman who are struggling? Test scores help of course in answering some of the questions, like thriving academically, but that’s it.
Let’s say that adcoms said, only 10% of the increased competition came from test scores, would you still analyze them like this because they were the only things that could be analyzed? Or would you listen to the good professor?
Um, no.
But taking a concrete example of how this have I think actually changed, my oldest got, one month apart on her first times taking each of them, a 32 on the ACT and a 2010 on the (old) SAT. Both above average, certainly, but one much more above average than the other. Back several years ago, though, she’d’ve been likely to only take the ACT given where we live, or if she’d grown up where I did she’d’ve been likely to only take the SAT. Taking both, though, as so many high-stats kids these days do, allows one to pick the better above-average score, and thus appear more competitive (for certain definitions of ‘competitive’).
um yes.
you need a 34 to be an above average applicant at those four schools.
^^ Ah, got it! Your original phrasing was ambiguous.
Similarly, while it’s only anecdotal, one of our kids had taken 3xSAT and were done, then learned one of the schools they were applying to required a different subject test for the program they wanted to apply to, or a 30 on the ACT. Rather than studying for a one-off SAT Subject on subject they hadn’t studied in 2 years, they went for the ACT, hit a 33 in a one-off.
So all of a sudden all the schools she applied to went from having a 2190 SS (98%) applicant to having a 33 ACT (99%). They also, if they took all scores, would have a 2080 “low SS” which would be a 96%. So, did the schools that took my kid admit a 96% or a 98% or a 99%? And if you look at the SAT Subject test, my kid’s 750 Math II is only 62% (of kids who take Math II - which is obvioulsy a more select group than the overall, but still, not the 81% of kids getting 800s.) So those figures are awful squishy, even if you take the position they reflect heirarcy of quality (which I don’t by the way.)
In my day, no one took ACT. In some places, no one took SAT. Now as the stats I provided show, more take both, meaning it’s probable that more often these days a kid actually take both. And kids only submit the best, in many/most cases… so as in my kid’s case, the applicant schools can, if they want, say they admitted a 99% kid, rather than a 96% kid… fwiw.
@Zinhead, according to the ACT, those numbers represent the number of unique graduating seniors in a given who took the ACT at least once—not the number of times the test was taken. And the biggest reason for this growth is that an increasing number of states now require all HS students to take the ACT in either their junior or senior year. According to the ACT, in 2016 there were 18 states where 100% of the graduating seniors took the ACT, plus another 2 states where participation rates were 94 and 96%, and three more where participation exceeded 80%. That just wasn’t true in 2012.
I couldn’t find detailed state-by-state participation rates for 2012, but the data are reported in broad bands. Just eyeballing it, it appears the big growth came not from SAT-dominant states where participation in the ACT remains relatively low, but rather in ACT-dominant states where a higher percentage of graduating seniors now take the ACT, much of it due to state mandates.
@CaliDad2020 , my sense, purely anecdotally, is that you’re right on the dual test takers. I know one kid who couldn’t crack 1400 on the SAT who got a 34 on the ACT the one time she took it and another, who was consistently closer to 1300 who got a 33. Both tried the SAT several times.
The first had extensive tutoring. At some level, the ability to choose a test should bring the numbers up for both. And fwiw, the kid who was tutored is a great kid, but not amazingly smart. Hard-working and strategic. She was devoted to getting high scores and was very well prepared. (Tutored for 2 years!)
In 1997, 956,000 students took the ACT with 74 achieving a perfect 36. In 2014, 1,845,787 took the ACT with 1407 receiving a perfect 36 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACT_test. Far more students are taking the ACT (not sure about the SAT) and are scoring higher on the test. I personally attribute this to more preparation and the better students taking it more often to optimize their scores. The increase in numbers I would largely attribute to a much greater percentage of students applying to college and the increase in international applications. It seems that the averages and distributions are pretty similar but at double the number of students that means more than twice the number of students are in the respective percentiles. A top 5% student in 1997 was one of 47,800 students in 2014 they would be one of 92,289 students. They are competing in a much larger pool.
@lvvcsf the increased numbers is also true for SAT.
And clearly there was an increase in # of US students applying to college from 1997 - 2009/2010 or so.
But the stats are pretty clear that the # of US HS students applying to college from 2010-present have flat-lined or even slightly decreased (basically flat as trend-line).
So, if college competition is getting more competitive (at top schools) since 2009 it has to be due to (aside from increased international, which is a contributor at some schools) a wider US based geographical trend (ie. more Fla tops students going to/applying to Harvard/Stanford rather than just UofF or Duke, perhaps.) or kids getting better at test taking, or all of the above plus others.
But I think it’s pretty clear from various stats collectors that the # of US 18-24 attending 2 and 4 year colleges has leveled since 2010.
The distribution of ACT scores is presented on page 14 the profile reports.
http://forms.act.org/newsroom/data/2012/pdf/profile/National2012.pdf
In 2012, 781 out of 1,666,017 or 0.047% scored a 36.
http://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/Natl-Scores-2014-National2014.pdf
In 2014, 1,407 out of 1,845,787 or 0.076% scored a 36.
https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/P_99_999999_N_S_N00_ACT-GCPR_National.pdf
In 2016, 2,235 out of 2,090,342 or 0.107% scored a 36.
The number and percent of 35 and 34’s increased dramatically as well. That is why when you see average ACT scores at universities change dramatically over the same time period; the increase is a function of the expansion in the total number of higher test scores, not necessarily that they are getting more competitive.
Zin – do you know if that data is for unique test takers? Or is it just the number of ACT tests?
If kids are taking the test more often and prepping more, you’d expect that the number of high test scores would increase. That behavior would still be a sign that competition is still keen. If it wasn’t keen, kids could still get admitted to their target college with the good old one-and-done like in the olden days.
But you are right that there’s about 6500 more 35 scores in 2016 than there were in 2012. And 9,000 more 34 scores in 2016 vs. 2012. So maybe the prepped/multi-sitting 35 circa 2016 (10,993 scores) is the new one-and-done 34 circa 2012 (9,604 scores).
At the high end, it does seem that things have escalated. You may have the same overall chance as before, but you have to do more to have that chance.
@northwesty - The heading on the table on page 14 states “Graduating Class 2016” and “Total Number of Students in Report”.
Page 2 states “This report provides information about the performance of your 2016 graduating seniors who took the ACT as sophomores, juniors, or seniors; and self-reported at the time of testing that they were scheduled to graduate in 2016.”
I asked this question earlier, and @bclintonk stated “those numbers represent the number of unique graduating seniors in a given who took the ACT at least once”
Right, it has—but the number of US citizens aged 25+ attending (full- or part-time) college has increased. It occurs to me that this fills up seats at the open-entry colleges—so has there perhaps been pressure from beneath? That is, a chunk of kids who would have gone to noncompetitive-entry schools as a default get frozen out of those, and so aim for minimally-competitive-entry schools, freezing out some from those possibilities, so the ones frozen out in turn have to aim a notch higher, and so on.
I have no idea, really. But if it were to turn out that competition at the highest end is fed even slightly by competition on the utterly noncompetitive side, I would be having amusement gigglefits for weeks.
“The number and percent of 35 and 34’s increased dramatically as well. That is why when you see average ACT scores at universities change dramatically over the same time period; the increase is a function of the expansion in the total number of higher test scores, not necessarily that they are getting more competitive.”
Well it could be both, if you have more kids applying with 34 or higher than in the past, you’d have to think at the top-end it’s getting more competitive. BTW, I think California which was a pure SAT state if you will, now has many of the top test takers taking both and then possibly taking one of them a second time, a point brought up earlier. It would be interesting to see how many of the additional 1500 perfect scores came from traditional SAT states - Cal, NY, Mass etc…
The ACT provides this information on a state by state basis. For 2012, there were 72 36 scores in California. In 2016, there were 319.
https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/P_05_059999_S_S_N00_ACT-GCPR_California.pdf
http://forms.act.org/newsroom/data/2012/pdf/profile/California.pdf
I would have to agree with a few earlier posters about the increase in test scores being directly related to the number of first and second generation Asian and Indian populations in CA. There are many schools in the tech hot spots around the country with the same phenomena.
These kids are highly motivated to put it mildly. They take multiple SAT ACT and subject tests, hire private tutors and in many cases consider anything less than a perfect score(especially in Math2 SAT 2) a cause for despair.
At many of the local public and private schools the average scores are above the 95th national percentile and math courses beyond Calc BC are fairly common.
Nothing against these kids and their families but it is a real issue in the pressure to achieve higher and higher profile applicants for top colleges.
I grew up in this area and this is relatively new-last 15 years or so.
I think this gets back to the definition of competitive. If there are the same number of UCs, and the number of 36s has gone up without the test changing, then it is more competitive to my mind. Doesn’t matter if it is because of increased test prep, more test sittings, more fanatical families, if the bar is raised, it is more competitive.
As I’ve said before, I think this can happen without an overall change in the number of students, simply by having more students being really aimed for the top. This is clear in the Midwest, where the student population has changed less than in CA, but where the top state flagships and few top privates have seen dramatic increases in their ACT ranges, while almost everyone else - mid-level state schools, and most privates have been flat.