I’ve speculated on other threads that SAT will eventually suffer the same fate. It may not even take very long, as these things tend to snowball on their own momentums.
Would people agree the elimination of subject tests show that test usefulness and college adoption was dwindling or do you think it was more of a result of College Board hardships? Does this say anything about how colleges will use the SAT going forward? Maybe admissions is bolder than some think regarding the elimination of what we think is a key datapoint.
So few schools were requiring subject tests that I think it was a financial decision on their part. Too soon to tell about extrapolating to the SAT.
True, but many more had it as optional. If an optional datapoint shows usefulness over time, it would have stayed more relevant.
The final decision to drop SAT Subject tests is clearly financial. CB needs the economy of scale to make any one of their tests viable. The usefulness of the subject tests always varies with colleges. For some, they may not be useful at all, while for some others they may be important (Georgetown, for example). Regardless, all colleges knew dropping the subject tests would lower the barrier for some students, thus increasing diversity and the number of applications. Once the tide to drop the subject tests started by some colleges, it’s nearly impossible to stop due to its own momentum (i.e. competitions among colleges).
Would the main SAT (or ACT) suffer the same fate? The same mechanism could lead it to its own oblivion. How likely? It’s anyone’s guess. But my bet is that the train has already left the station.
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Maybe true on financial, but they could have easily focused on the top 3 tests that students took and colleges wanted and spread themselves less thin and made $$ with them. In other words, colleges may not appreciate the datapoint as much as we think they do.
I have to say that we had a long back and forth with D about taking subject tests. None of the schools on her list required them. She’s a strong test taker but she flat out refused. There was one school she was considering adding as a reach which she dropped after reading they did want subject tests. It would not have been in her top 3 anyway so we let her steer that ship.
I bet she wasn’t alone in making those kinds of decisions.
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The 3 popular tests, what they are, may be useful for some colleges but not others, so the requirement wouldn’t be consistent and it will deter some students from applying if they have other equally good options.
She wasn’t. A few years back our was going to apply to Georgetown but absolutely refused to take the subject tests that were required. He did great on the SAT and also the AP exams he took but drew the line on taking any more. In retrospect, he was 100% correct although I sort of wished he had take them at the time. He ended up going to our flagship state school, did very well and save us a bundle of money to boot. Getting rid of these redundant subject tests was a long time coming IMO.
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Subject test scores must have provided some value greater than 0 for selective colleges to have required/recommended them for so long. But, with the current arrangement, the equity issues were too great and optional obviously didn’t work.
Subject tests might make more sense if they were given in school, on a school day, as a required end of course test, though I doubt high schools/districts/states would want to take on that cost, among other things.
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If even a single subject test was interesting enough to colleges, CB might have been able to focus resources and keep it going. I believe there was a financial aspect to their decision (and they are truly bleeding BTW), but if schools cared about the test datapoint, the test would have continued. We have moved to an online world and although items (questions) are expensive to create - subject tests are gone because they did not provide enough value to college admissions officers.
Some clearly do, but there aren’t enough of them to stop the tide.
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Besides your first sentence, we are in full agreement. If you changed clearly to somewhat, we got it!
Why not both?
(Seriously. I don’t think it was a single-axis decision.)
Maybe both, but one is likely more.
The most popular SAT subject tests for high school students graduating in 2018-2020 (three years of graduating classes) were:
- 415,203 Math Level II
- 195,628 Chemistry
- 164,266 Physics
- 138,298 US History
- 122,662 Math Level I
- 114,511 Literature
- 108,587 Biology Molecular
- 83,310 Biology Ecological
- 43,423 Spanish
Everything else (foreign languages other than Spanish) was under 20,000.
For comparison, about 2.2 million of the class of 2020 (one year of graduates instead of three) took the SAT. I.e. about 15 times as many as the most popular SAT subject test.
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Compare that to the 4.7M AP tests taken in 2020. There’s been significant growth in AP tests over the last decade, at a higher average cost as compared to subject tests too.
https://research.collegeboard.org/programs/ap/data/participation/ap-2020
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Interesting information. Thanks
Last night, I listened to a college counselor at a top tier private school discuss the future of test optional. I was surprised to hear that his opinion (and the opinion of his peers, he claimed) was that the ivy league, and state schools would definitely go back to tests next year. I do not agree, but it was interesting to hear that perspective. Of course, there was no good reason for his thinking besides the ivy league can do what they want and state schools don’t have the manpower to admit without them. BTW he is probably “pro tests” since his school averages a 1450.
I think this point has some validity. If a state school has many OOS applicants, they can’t just admit on transcripts alone, can they? They can’t process the amount of applications without the aid of test scores, especially when they know TO policy means a dramatic increase in the number of applications.