I think that is an interesting perspective and I would have agreed 100% - but my daughter has received merit scholarships from more than one college, without the tests. I guess she may have gotten more offers/$$ if she took the test - who knows? Maybe if there are no COVID limitations in future years, that might be a more common university strategy. Interesting perspective!
Fwiw, itâs not simply that The Gatekeepers is old, itâs that processes have evolved. And the volume of applications, plenty from top performers. The former snapshot may not apply in the same ways.
Thatâs one reason it pays to vet pro counselors (or websites) who tout, eg, that their staff includes former AOs. However long theyâve been pros is at least how long theyâve been out of direct college admissions. Eyes wide open.
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We saw that this year, where students applying without SAT/ACT to the University of Alabama can only get competitive merit scholarships, while those with high enough SAT/ACT and HS GPA can get automatic-for-stats merit scholarships as well as competitive merit scholarships.
Btw. A univ can rewrite the standards for a scholarship/merit.
Too soon to know what will happen.
Maybe the processes have evolved but the way applicants are evaluated havenât really changed, yes the standards are higher now but if a college like Wesleyan values diversity, academic rigor and test scores, why would that change with more applicants. Similarly Harvard has always loved athletes, legacies ,wealth, why would that change. The biggest change is actually on the affordability side. Most families that could afford Harvard when I was applying (early 80s) canât today.
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However, such things do change. There was a time that applicants who were very specialized (in terms of ECs, coursework, and the like) were preferred. It then shifted to a preference for more âwell-roundedâ applicants. Similarly, preferred essay styles have apparently moved in meaningful ways. Those are pretty big shiftsâbut even in the absence of big shifts, when you have an applicant pool that is only individually distinguishable at the margins (i.e., high grades, high test scores, compelling essays, meaningful ECs and leadership experience, and so on), very small differences have an outsized effectâand the small differences that are important are likely to change from year to year and even from week to week as an individual incoming class is built.
(Which is why trying to game the system by crafting oneself or oneâs kid into the âperfectâ applicant is a foolâs game, but whatever.)
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I have a friend who employed a very large number of private college counselors. Back then, they wanted each person to have admissions experience because it sold well, but not so much to cloud the magic of a student story and how that might influence an admissions officer. Anyway, I tend to agree that admissions has not changed a whole lot over the years. Some colleges have definitely evolved, but that can be researched. An innovative application theme from 20 years ago might now seem more common these days, but there will always be that next creative way to position a student if he/she spent time to accomplished something of value and substance.
Harvard (and many other colleges) use more of a sliding scale, with increased FA. The sticker price is higher, but the cost is lower for a large portion of families. After FA, Harvard would be near ~$0 cost to parents for ~half of American families. Harvard claims that they are less expensive than state schools for 90% of American families. In the 1980s, I doubt that either statement would be true.
In an earlier post, I compared the inflation adjusted average cost after FA at Harvard across all attending students. There was little change in inflation adjusted average cost over time, even though the sticker price for wealthy kids was increasing faster than inflation.
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You really canât look at this as some whole set of points that continue in some absolute way. Ime, even from one year to the next, things change- on both the college side and in what the pool seems to offer.
And itâs hard to convince folks just how much this is not about stellar accomplishments or spike or innovative/unique. A huge amount is about conformity. That is: to what the college wants to find. Even that can shift.
There are high expectations by elites- stats, rigor, the right balance of the right sorts of ECs, etc. That may not change. But, as ever, itâs more than that.
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Youâre only looking at the kids that apply when itâs just as important to look at kids who donât apply. Back in the 80s, you only applied to the ivies/top lacs if you were top 5% or 10%, had rigor, and over a 1300, now itâs 3.9, rigor and 1450. MIT, Cal Tech, Stanford wanted the best stem students then, they want them now.
âAfter FA, Harvard would be near ~$0 cost to parents for ~half of American families. Harvard claims that they are less expensive than state schools for 90% of American familiesâ
Sticker price drives perception and the perception is that Harvard is not affordable ($280K cost), while back in the 80s the total price was $60K (oir.harvard), or 15K a year. Perception wise, thatâs a lot more affordable. Second, you have to get in to get the FA, most people donât think they can, rightly so.
Are we getting OT?
" âŠwanted the best stem students then, they want them now."
The definition or perception of âbestâ has changed. The pool has changed. Lots of stats/rigor top performers. Lots more opps for kids to, eg, get internships (-its own form of corporate/institutional support.)
More AP or DE involvement. So thereâs some element of cherry picking.
But also, ime, a more rounded or relaxed view of what breeds âsuccessâ at a TT. What success is. What âbestâ means. What it means to facilitate a young adult âmaking his markâ post grad.
Meanwhile. CC is still stuck fretting over college GPA, how many hours a kid prepped, other old ideas.
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The claim was that most families who could afford Harvard in the 80s cannot today, not that most families canât afford the sticker price before FA or that they are unaware of the substantial FA for middle income families.
I think the sliding scale FA approach with reduced cost for lower/middle income families (after FA and inflation adjustment) and increased cost for upper income families has a lot to do with legislatures complaining about Harvard not spending the endowment. There were some key complaints from congressmen, shortly before the original transition to no loans, large grants for lower/middle income.
If FA payments come from endowment, and increased tuition from wealthy families recovers the FA payments, then the net revenue from students is the same, but endowment spending goes up. It also theoretically makes the college more financially accessible for lower/middle income families (as discussed, knowing about the FA is also important), and looks good for PR. It seems like a win-win model, so long as the bulk of your admitted students is composed of wealthy kids who are enthusiastic about attending, even if the sticker price is $280k. Harvard and most other Ivies fit this type of description. Most state schools do not.
Going back to the original thread subject, test optional could hinder this model. At test optional colleges, test optional admits almost always average lower income than test submitters. If a college admits more kids from the test optional pool, then the % of student body who are wealthy sticker price kids is expected to decrease. In order to keep average net cost after inflation adjustment the same, sticker price needs to go up even higher. The smaller % wealthy kids need to pay a higher sticker price to balance out the larger % not wealthy kids.
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@lookingforward i hope you can see that there is much for me to learn. I had to reread this 3x just to understand it! How do you know test optional will result in average lower income? I tend to agree, but am not sure because of how widespread TO has become.
I think this was intended for me, rather than lookingforward. There have been several published studies or reviews that compare some measure of income between test submitters and test optional admits at test optional colleges. Every one that I am aware of found a lower average income among test optional admits. For example, the review of test optional colleges at https://www.nacacnet.org/globalassets/documents/publications/research/defining-access-report-2018.pdf analyzed 21 test optional colleges. At all 21 of them, the enrollees who were admitted test optional had a lower average income than the enrollees who submitted test scores. When they looked at full pay kids specifically, test submitter enrollees had a higher rate of full pay kids than test optional enrollees.
This result is not surprising to me since test scores have a greater correlation with income than most other components of the application, including grades. Test scores are more likely to be a relatively weak point in the application among low income kids than high income kids, so low income kids are more likely to be admitted test optional. The author of the review linked above writes, âThe SAT, while showing solid correlations with cumulative GPA for Submitters, continues to most strongly correlate with family affluence.â
Early indications for the class of 2025 at new test optional colleges suggest a similar pattern. For example, Dartmouth writes, âThe percentage of accepted students from low-income households is almost 26% and the projected percentage of students who are eligible for federal Pell grants is 18%. The percentage of Pell-eligible students (the grants are offered to U.S. citizens and permanent residents from the lowest socioeconomic level) is up from 14% last year⊠* Also a new high, 16% of accepted students will be the first in their families to attend college.â
Harvard, writes, âThe percentage of students accepted early action from first-generation college backgrounds increased by nearly 7 percentage points â from 10.1 percent last year to 17 percent this admissionâs cycle.â
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the start was for her and the question was for you.
Practically all admission factors (including test scores) are positively correlated with wealth. If a college eliminates any one of them, the composition of its student body in terms of wealth would change. If it eliminates more of them, the composition would change even more. Is that where weâre heading?
besides diversity in most instances
I believe even those whose admissions were helped by diversity criteria at elite colleges tend to be wealther on avarage in their respective categories.
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i was guessing, so you may be correct on that.
If âhimâ refers to me, Iâm a âher.â
If youâre referring to my post about âbest,â my observations come from my experience, my view. Thatâs all.
I sometimes drift off when threads turn to so much analysis. I understand the desire to prove out via studies, one way or another, but holistic is not about strict analysis. And studies tend to examine some slice, some aspect, some snapshot, looking for some correlation. Itâs just not always on track or revealing about process.
Eg, this focus on income. Itâs interesting. But we still need to, at some point, ask what matters. Some kid with borderline scores may be lower SES. So be it. What matters more, imo, is how he/she presents in the app package.
IF a poster assumes stats reign, I think they can be blinded by the certainty lower stats are some handicap. (Weâre not talking low stats, but slightly lower than the top averages.) And then go looking for some explanations, (âWell, theyâre lower income, they donât have the privileges of richer kids.â) Imo, that misses how holistic can look at the sum total. And overemphasizes the part played by some of the so-called privileges wealth affords.
And so on.