Worth remembering, for those who stress that TO means optional, so no harm either way:
At a lot of TO colleges, aside from this pandemic year where many applicants very literally couldn’t take the SAT/ACT, merit aid is often not test-optional.
For many families (including mine), when looking at colleges where submission of SAT/ACT scores are necessary for the good merit aid, TO still means “test scores required”.
Is there a place to access approximate number of 18 year olds somewhere? I’m curious what this looks like over time.
We went to test optional and received merit from quite a few school so far…
Right, applying for merit during the pandemic is being different, like I said. But for many, many colleges, access to their best merit awards require test scores even if admissions doesn’t, and so my default assumption for now has to be that by the time my D23 reaches her senior year, at least most of those schools will have snapped back to the status quo ante (read: only kindasorta test-optional).
Nah, the studies on these tests don’t support your concerns… the SES students are hurt far more by these tests than they are helped (and I agree that optional means just that, if someone has a great test score they can still submit it, assuming they were able to take the test, which is the reason for this change anyhowz. I like your idea of looking at the test as another factor like an extra curricular).
I also disagree with others on this chain who suggest that these tests should be worth so much, in recent years the amount of prep that some kids are able to receive is crazy- Even the diamond in the rough kid would probably be prepping to keep up with the students LOL I get it, not saying there’s anything wrong with the prep courses, but in most cases the results reflect the prep, not the ability of the student to do well at the school.
The Seligman book details UW hiring admissions readers.
Apps are down at regional colleges like Montclair State and up at highly selective colleges like Swarthmore, Princeton, etc. Montclair State’s acceptance rate was 47% in 2010 and has risen over time to 71% last year. Those are certainly different applicants.
Why is the yield at regional universities and community colleges declining? Rising income inequality? Education costs outpacing inflation?
Do you know what percentage of colleges required tests to receive merit scholarships? On my daughter’s list the percentage was 0%.
Here’re a few:
So I went and looked it up for my older two. Of the colleges that offered merit aid, for D17 it was 10/11, and for D19 it was 9/9. Most of them (6 for both, it turns out) had to submit test scores for admission, so of course test scores were taken into account for merit aid.
For the 5 and 3 that didn’t require test scores for admission, yes, at least several would have offered merit aid without those scores, but not their highest levels of it—and it’s the highest levels of merit aid I’ve been talking about since I brought up this point.
interesting. I was thinking of this year and I guess most schools just relaxed the policy.
How do those factors impact a regional university that’s never been on the Top 200 list? To my knowledge, only top 100 private universities have ED and the vast majority of ED admissions are in the Top 50.
ED has spread (like a malignancy, I would argue, but that would be a different thread) throughout the higher-ed sector.
If my list is correct, you find ED at such non-T100 (and public!) institutions as Ramapo College of New Jersey, Salisbury University (Maryland), and UNC Asheville.
COVID-19 and its effects on everything else hit lower SES people the hardest.
Some may offer automatic merit scholarships only to those with test scores, but allow test and no-test applicants to compete for competitive merit scholarships. Example: University of Alabama.
Regarding colleges having to hire additional readers…
Someone on the Virginia Thread said that, at VT, any faculty or staff can grade essays. And, they are frequently asked to do so by admissions as the volume of apps is so high. Each reader gives each essay a rating of 1, 2, or 3. These random readers aren’t necessarily trained in reading and grading essays the way that admissions folks are.
I thought this approach was interesting to say the least.
sad for them
As we talk about low SES kids and their challenges, the young lass I was tutoring today told me her math teacher quit. It wasn’t Covid related (I asked). She just quit. And now they are doing nothing for math - no one has filled in.
I don’t normally do 6th grade, but I told the folks in charge of tutoring that if they don’t get a teacher soon, let me know what she/they’re supposed to be doing in 6th grade “math” and I’ll teach for her instead of “tutoring.”
The gal is a new one for me to work with (since I usually assist older students), but we worked on English and then talked about science (her favorite subject by far). She’s quite bright. Toss her into a better school somewhere with assistance to get up on par and I have no doubts she could “be” someone. But the odds of that happening? They’re stacked against her.
Too many think low SES kids have it made. For a few who make it through the maze there are financial benefits, but most - the vast majority - get stuck, and I’ll never believe it’s their fault or that they deserve it.
I couldn’t disagree more. Solving problems is about your depth of knowledge, not how fast the neurons in your brain fire.
In some fields, timeliness matters. Medicine is the obvious one, but it will also be true on a variety of state licensing exams, including the bar.
And, of course, any service academy