More Colleges Backing off SAT and ACT Admissions Rule

Applying to College
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“But SAT/ACT line up with income more than just about anything…”

We keep hearing this over and over. But of course correlation is not causation.

It’s changing, as many people have noted because the SAT in particular has become increasingly focused on “achievement” rather than aptitude, but the single biggest factor in explaining scores is intelligence. There is a weak correlation with income, much higher with parental education.

For everyone who thinks it’s income, take a look at places like Stuyvesant High School (where approximately 20-25% are national merit semifinalists) and where upwards of 40% of the kids are eligible for free lunch. Or look at Davidson Academy, where 70% of the kids are national merit. Both those schools screen for high intelligence - Davidson seeks to admit only 145 IQ and higher.

I know a number of kids who recently scored 1500+ on the SAT and who were under 13, including at least one who was under 12. No tutoring so far as I know and for a few of them I know with certainty, obviously no curriculum preparation - they were all in public middle schools. There are dozens of such kids every year, usually discovered through the SET program.

Once you control for race, income becomes almost irrelevant as an explanatory variable for scores.

Parental education, again once you control for race, is significant. But this is to be expected. Until recently (perhaps), higher education implied higher intelligence, and so the kids of higher intelligence parents have higher genotype intelligence. Hence the correlation between scoring and parental education. It’s not the home environment that is provided, or the schools, it’s the genes these parents provide that make the difference.

The truth is that environment has little to do with intelligence - at least the researchers have not figured out what environmental factors increase intelligence. Reading to kids, having books around the house, intense schooling, etc. seem to have no effect on intelligence once kids are into adolescence.

I can’t embed the link, but if people are truly interested in reading, google the “random critical analysis” blog, specifically the post on “no, the SAT is not measuring income,” and read through all the linked sources, and then read their sources, and come to your own conclusions. Then let’s have an informed discussion.

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Everyone insists that the SAT is racially biased, SES biased, can be gamed, doesn’t correlate with academic achievement and so on. You can say exactly the same thing about GPA :weak schools easy to get a 4.0, hard schools may artificially depress grades, then there are the politics of public school principals and superintendents who have been tinkering with GPA algorithms to goose their graduate rates and college matriculation rates for the benefit of their own pockets and longevity. Does no one want any consistent objective measure? Even if imperfect, it is still the same test being taken millions of times.

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However, poor environment can certainly limit how much one can develop intelligence, even if good environment cannot increase it.

If environment did not matter, why would parents be concerned about finding the “best” K-12 schools for their kids? Or why would anyone be concerned about getting into the “best” colleges?

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@SatchelSF

I don’t think much of what you write is borne out by stats:

“environment has little to do with intelligence…” Well, perhaps, but environment has been shown to have strong correlation to high SAT and ACT test scores:

Environment like income, parent education level, even # of books in the home…

Again, all this arguing for test scores as if they are consistently the “savior” of Dorothy from Podunk or Innercity Eric. Those are the exception. In the VAST majority of cases SAT/ACT work for MY kids: (Kids who are fortunate enough to grow up in a post-grad, relatively high-income, book heavy environment.)

If someone wants to argue for a test being a “great leveler” first the test should actually be a great leveler, not a “there are a couple of outlier schools in the US” so the exception proves the rule leveler.

Anyway, folks positions are pretty entrenched. It’s interesting how many would rather the SAT admins make bank than 1.6 million kids get 3 or 4 extra Saturdays a year.

As for GPA @center sure, you can “say” it, but folks actually study it. And it is in colleges interest to understand how to compensate if any of the things you write are true. 800 or some colleges now believe they can do it. But we’re sure they’re wrong?

It is in their INTEREST to have kids graduate, succeed and thrive. Bates is tiny. You think its rep is going to survive long if the students it selects can’t graduate or can’t get into Med School, Law School, MBA programs because it can’t tell a jobbed GPA from a strong GPA?

I think one of the issues here (and something I notice in general on CC) is that parents think college is something to be “won.” That there is some mysterious ranking someplace and their kid has a number and it is “wrong” for a kid with a “lower” number to go to “higher” school.

But for colleges, what they are concerned about is not so much your kids “rank” in the world of applicants, but will your kid “survive and thrive” while at the same time contributing to the college culture.

If all schools wanted was “top ranked” appicants, Brown would not accept only 25% or whatever of 800 SATs. And wouldn’t take half the class as sub-700 scorers.

But Brown does not have a graduation problem. Or a “thrive post graduation problem” even with 50% of the class scoring less than 700 on at least one of their SATs.

Ditto other schools. Of course GPA can be jobbed. And international students have been found - on very rare occaisions - cheating on the SAT. As have kids in the US, even paying others to take their test. Some take SAT prep classes starting summer of Freshman year. What does that tell anyone?

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@Data10 @CaliDad2020 Perhaps because the point I’m making is so small, you’re not really addressing it. Let’s assume podunk-HS Dorothy is unquestionably brighter (use your own definition) than boarding-school Jared & they both apply to Stanford. If you remove tests from “Tests, HS Record, Support (LORs), Non-academic, Intellectual Vitality, Self-presentation, and Reader’s Impression” then his built-in advantages grow even greater.

IMHO, it’s not enough to appeal to the failsafe holistic hermeneutics of the mystically omniscient Stanford adcoms. It would be better for Dorothy, who is smarter, to be able to show it. In this case, since the prevailing wisdom is that the prep-school boy should have a good score, her victory will be all the more clear. I acknowledge Satchel’s point that the SAT has not been helping matters as well as Data10’s point that there are many ways a truly bright teenager can demonstrate intellectual vitality. I’m just noting that in an already asymmetrical power game, removing the tests may well worsen the asymmetry, at least in some parts of Kansas.

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About poor environment limiting intelligence, sure if you are talking about starvation and severe malnutrition or other organic issue, then yes. But if we are talking about school quality, reading to kids at home, school curriculum, no that is not going to matter much. Don’t confuse knowledge with intelligence. Your doctor is almost certainly no more intelligent than when she was 14 or 15, maybe 16 or 17 if the doctor is male, but of course you don’t want a 14 year old as your doctor, doogie howser notwithstanding.

About parents wanting the best for their kids, of course who wouldn’t? Doesn’t mean the kids will be any smarter, regardless of what the parents believe. Best colleges is easy. It can be a piece of cake to get extremely coveted jobs if you’ve got the HYP pedigree. At least it used to be!

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Of course, even the older SATs that were advertised as “aptitude” tests and which some consider more direct attempts to be IQ tests depended considerably on knowledge (of English vocabulary, algebra, and geometry).

Even in the absence of malnutrition, would you say that a kid who reads books in the library and attends a well funded school with attentive teachers and a challenging curriculum will not develop his/her intelligence any better than an identical twin who watches television and attends an underfunded school with teachers distracted by discipline and other non-academic issues and a curriculum that falls grade levels behind? If not, then why should parents worry about what K-12 school their kid attends?

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May well be irrational behavior fueled by emotion. Why are billions of dollars spent every year on diets, anti-age creams, etc. with little to no actual evidence any of it actually works? Why do my parents and millions of other people believe that going outside in the cold without a hat or gloves will get you sick?

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@SatchelSF

We are having an informed discussion. Perhaps you can show us the study where the SAT is shown to be the great leveler, the test that allows a signficint number of otherwise overlooked students to be IDed by universities that would otherwise miss them.

I’d love to read that study.

Because every study I’ve read indicated, for the great majority, the higher a parent’s income and education, the higher a kid’s SAT score. And the great majority of kids of high income, high education parents are not in Podunk without any way of getting a college to contextualize their GPA.

The world really does not work that way. Again, maybe an outlier or two. But for every 4 GPA in Podunk who deserves an IVY education and is indentified by their high SAT score, there are 5? 10? 15? Suburban Sallies and Stans who go to schools that know how to help goose their SAT while they get their own 4.0s - and take all the college spots.

Again, it’s really not rocket science. Go to the NM lists. Search for the Podunk schools. They ain’t there. Freemont is there. La Jolla is there. Needles is not…

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“Test optional” generally means students have the choice to either submit tests or not submit tests. If Dorothy thinks her test score enhances her chances, she can submit it. As I mentioned in my earlier reply, SAT/ACT are marathon, curriculum focused tests, not IQ tests. Dorothy may be unquestionably brighter, yet may still get the lower test score. Maybe the small “Podunk” HS didn’t cover the SAT/ACT material as well and isn’t focused as much on SAT/ACT test prep , maybe taking the test multiple times and choosing best score between ACT or SAT is uncommon in “Podunk”, maybe Dorothy was nervous about a big test determining her future and didn’t get a lot of sleep the night before, maybe Dorothy has a short attention span and doesn’t do well on 4 hour tests, maybe Dorothy learned English as a 2nd language and is slow on the CR, etc.

It’s also not a given that a student in boarding school has advantages in all of HS Record, Support (LORs), Non-academic, Intellectual Vitality, Self-presentation, and Reader’s Impression categories. As a simple example, there have been many recent reports of students attending top high schools being very competitive and stressed about achieving top grades in such an environment. Had they attended “Podunk” high and been evaluated in the context of the few AP/DE/IB courses available at “Podunk” high, some (not all) would be more successful. Some would also stand out to a greater degree among classmates, leading to better LORs.

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@CaliDad2020 - take a look at the NM lists for Marin County and you’ll notice there aren’t many NM. Extraordinarily high income and assets. Driven parents. Why can’t the kids there score higher? If income matters shouldn’t we see the correlation there? And yet these kids are not even in the same league intellectually as their south bay analogs. They’re just as wealthy…

Fremont, Mission San Jose, Saratoga HS, sure, high scores. Who are the parents? Uber smart immigrants for the most part. Higher genotype intelligence. That they have high income is a side issue. It just so happens that being smart pays well.

Look at scores for very high income and high SES black kids. They are lower than low income low SES white kids. Why?

What do the parents do for a living in Needles? What is their average intelligence? Do you really think that if you plop those kids down at Sararoga HS they’ll suddenly start winning math competitions and achieving NMF?

At some point, one would think parsimony would win and people would just accept that intelligence is largely heritable and explains a whole lot. Just flip your point of view and play along. What if environment doesn’t imply intelligence (or scores) but intelligence implies environment? That explains a lot.

I do agree with the idea that the SAT has become a bit of a waste of time for most kids. It’s too easy of a test to make distinctions at the top end. On the other hand, so many kids who shouldn’t go to college in fact do, and so what value is there in trying to gauge ability or aptitude when college is available to just about anyone who wants to go?

Personally, I am more concerned with the utter waste and fraud of a k-12 system that can’t equip most kids with the tools necessary to succeed. Additional schooling should be limited imo to people well above average intelligence, maybe 20% of the population, as it used to be in the US and still is to some extent in Europe (although that is changing). The real reason the SAT has been made easier over the years is the same one that some colleges are going test optional: college administrators are fat and happy and they want to keep the gravy train rolling no matter what.

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@CaliDad2020,

You keep confusing correlation with causation. Once you let go of that, what @SatchelSF says will become clearer.

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“Again, it’s really not rocket science. Go to the NM lists. Search for the Podunk schools. They ain’t there. Freemont is there. La Jolla is there. Needles is not…”

Fremont is there because its 80% Asian as are the other bay area schools with high Asian populations that produce a a majority of NMSF in California.

Here’s the relevant question on this I think, if the Asians were at Podunk and not taking AP classes, would they stop showing up on the lists and would the URMs in Fremont taking APs take their place? Or would the NMSF list still be mostly Asian in California regardless of school they attend?

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^ It wouldn’t make a bit of difference if the South Bay kids were at Podunk high school. They would still win most of the NMSF and the vast majority of the math contests. But in a short while, Podunk HS would be indistinguishable from Mission San Jose high school. The kids make the school, not the other way around. It has zero to do with funding or the wealth of the parents or nonsense like small class size or having teachers kids can identify with or whether certain classes are offered.

We live in an age of virtually free information, and every poor kid has a cellphone and internet connection. Do gooders should stop making excuses for poor kids. Give them a readily identifiable goal - like a test score on an appropriately hard test - and watch how fast many will rise to the task. In fact, because wealth is distributed much more unevenly than intelligence, higher reliance on intelligence-sensitive tests will quickly see lower SES kids displace the children of the entrenched elites. Ask an intelligent poor kid whether she would prefer to be judged on some objective and transparent testing process, or on some nebulous mix of holistic criteria dreamed up by some administrators to satisfy their paymasters. The question answers itself.

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@LadyMeowMeow

Perhaps in a single or few outlier incidents. But on aggregate, for the vast majority of students, there will be way more instances when Jared is = smart as Dorothy, but Jared, due to tutoring, peer competition, parental resources - even access to more test facilities, will have a signficantly higher super-score.

So sure, there is undoubtedly one Dorothy helped by an eye-popping SAT/ACT score - but at the same time dozens and dozens of Dorothy’s, were they at Jared’s School for Rich Snooty Boys, would have 100 or 200 point higher SATS, and instead are lost in the murky swamp of “pretty good” while Rich Jared, after 7 proctored timed practice tests at his tutoring service basement. After focused coaching to work specifically on the Medium level math questions he always misses. After repeated “game theory” explanations of how long to spend on which questions, will get to the point he can take a “real” test the third time, push both sections over 720 in his superscores, pay the rush fees, apply to 10 Ivies+, indicate subtly on his application that he’s full-pay and maybe good for a building down the road and Jared ends up getting deferred to Dartmouth - which is fine by him since he wanted to yacht around the Aegean anyway for bit to destress from all that tutoring, while 1 sitting 680/680 Dorothy gets a nice merit scholarship at State flagship. (and is probably better off for it anyway.)

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@SatchelSF

The problem is you’re talking about measuring intelligence in a vacuum. I’m talking about measuring likelihood to succeed and thrive at X college “significantly better” than GPA, LOR, Personal Statement, Rigor of curriculum, reputation of HS, etc.

I don’t doubt the College Board and UC contention that GPA + SAT is a better predictor of FYGPA than GPA alone, or SAT alone.

My question is, given that SAT is a “test to nowhere” and given that the GPA predictor studies I’ve seen all seem to use self-reported SAT (maybe not the UCSC - I didn’t notice.) is there a relatively simple way that GPA and other data points, that don’t require 6 million Saturdays and countless 10’s of millions of dollars every year, can acheive the same FYGPA predictability, which is all those studies are looking at.

About 800 colleges seem to think “yes”- and since getting results from students is their bread and butter, I’m inclined to believe them.

I am simply suggesting that we waste an inordinate amount of time taking tests that will tell us what we already know: If you’re from a certain socio-economic strata, your parents have a certain education level, your school has a certain baseline of competency and you acheive a certain GPA, you’ll thrive and suceed at a competitive school (and, if you bother to take them, you’ll get a 90%+ SAT/ACT after a couple of tries.)

I just wonder why we don’t just cut to the chase - look at the data points the kids alreayd provide by virtue of their education, rather than creating this artificial hoop just so parents feel like the game is fair.

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@CaliDad2020 “given that SAT is a test to nowhere” pretty bold statement. I would hardly say that it is a given. You dont seem to want to acknowledge that the 800 colleges you are inclined to believe might have ulterior motives.If those same schools are so convinced that the SAT doesn’t mean anything then why do they also still use racial preferences to ensure acceptable numbers of minorities?

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@hebegebe

No, because he’s trying to measure something different from what I’m trying to measure.

I want to know how well a college can predict FYGPA, which is all the College Board and UC and other studies do (or FYGPA and likelihood to persist to graduation, actually.)

My quibble is not “does the SAT measure intelligence or aptitude or altitude or attitude or whatever it now measures.” My quibble is “do colleges really need it?”

And my point about socioeconomic/environment factors is that they DO “cause” higher SAT scores - not because they “cause” smarter kids, but becuase socio-economics, parent education etc. “cause” the opportunity and ability to use resources that have been demonstrated to contribute to higher scores. This is demonstated - even the SAT folks themselves admit it.

This is all in response to the Podunk Paul who is going to get his dream ticket to Harvard by virtue of his eye-popping SAT scores. And yes, this CAN (and does, of course) happen. But it is an OUTLIER. For every Podunk Paul who nails a 1580 and gets the dream trip to the Ivy League, there are 100? 200? 300? Podunk Peters, or Economically Challenged Ericas, who, if they could only take another Saturday off their job, or off watching their sibling, and afford a few more hourse of tutoring, or get on the computer to do Kahn accademy, or even if there was just a test center nearby giving the test on a better Saturday, they could probably go from a 1350 to 1510 and pop some eyes, too, but they can’t because of whatever socio-economic, structural roadblocks happen to be in the way.

My question is why are we making these kids, who are already jumping through 4 years of hoops, with multiple data points, jump through a bunch of “tests to nowhere” unless those test really tell us something we don’t already know that is worth the time and money spent on the tests?

I’m not convinced those test alter colleges’ understanding of the applicant in any significant way. Sure, the numbers make it easier, especially at high-volume schools, to speed-date applicants. But why should the pain of that fall on the students. Why can’t the schools figure their metrics out better? They actually have, you know, REAL rocket scientist and brain surgeons. If Northeastern’s engineers can reverse-engineer USNews algorythms to rocket them up the rankings, they can probably design and nice, elegant program to tell you what each of these kids would have gotten on the SAT anyway.

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@SatchelSF

“higher reliance on intelligence-sensitive tests will quickly see lower SES kids displace the children of the entrenched elites. Ask an intelligent poor kid whether she would prefer to be judged on some objective and transparent testing process, or on some nebulous mix of holistic criteria dreamed up by some administrators to satisfy their paymasters. The question answers itself.”

What? do you have evidence for the first assertion? And I call complete BS on the question “that answers itself.”

I talk to these kids alot - rich ones and poor ones - they are much more interested in their actual four year effort being what they are judged on. That is the sweat-equity they are investing in their lives. They HATE the SAT BS. Most of them DESPISE it, because they know it’s a one-off “test to nowhere.”

They know the real rubber hit the road at midnight before their big Civ paper was due and they had the choice to hit submit or read it one last time to catch one more clunky phrase or poorly defended assertion. They know the real work was telling their BF they couldn’t go to the game 'cause they had a Calculus final coming up. They know the hard stuff in school is playing 3 Varsity sports, driving home tired as hell from an away game and STILL managing to do your APLit reading.

Kids HATE the SAT, 'cause they know is a completely artifical construct. They alreayd feel school is artifical, but at least their effort there is sustained and genuine. Now, they also hate the unpredicability of college admissions, but that is as well as, not instead of, hating the standardized testing.

At least in my many years of involvement with college-bound kids, that has been my experience.

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@center by “test to nowhere” I simply mean it is an ends unto itself. Being good at taking the SAT is useful only for being good at taking standarized test. That’s all I mean. What other skill do you learn you’re not already learning at school?