ED is a huge disservice to low and moderate income families who need to compare packages.
High income families often have their kids apply ED to lock in advantages like legacy, sports, or full pay.
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Completely agree. Only folks who don’t need financial aid can lock in a school without considering affordability.
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I have a hypothetical. Let’s say test optional switches where two kids are admitted for college. Kid A, who benefited from test-required, is now at a moderately worse school (school 2) and switches places with kid B who is now at a moderately better school (school 1).
Now fast forward 20 years after graduation. Is kid B dramatically better off than had he gone to school 2? If kid A dramatically worse off than he had gone to school 1?
My opinion is, no, hypothetical switching is not going to cause dramatic changes in their lives. I basically think all people have times when fortune favors them, and other times when it doesn’t - but that it all essentially evens out at the end.
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And they probably won’t. Once legacies, athletes and the children of major donors are accounted for, the rest of the applicants, regardless of how talented, are fighting for a small number of seats.
This does not jive with my experience. I know from family members that several of the “meets needs” schools came within $5-$100 of what their Net Price Calculators said the family would need to pay. A cousin who applied to Princeton early- accepted early- offer was exactly what the NPC predicted it would be. Of course the family could have waited-- applied in the regular round. But since the allegedly “affordable” options would have cost somewhat more than Princeton- assuming those college’s NPC’s were correct- it was a no-brainer for this kid.
The problem is not with the top tier colleges-- if they say they meet full need, AND you agree that their definition of your need is acceptable for your family, your kid gets admitted and agrees to Work Study, etc, then you can take them at their word.
The problem is with the “merit packaged in need” schools, or the schools that play games with how they package the award so that it’s unclear how much is a loan vs. a grant. If you need financial aid, if your financials are straightforward (i.e. don’t own a business, have real estate outside of your primary residence, aren’t divorced with a complex situation) then the top tier schools early programs are a great deal if your kid is at that level of academic achievement.
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Depends on the kid. It’s more likely that someone starting out with $$ is going to end up secure. But it also depends on personal characteristics.
Few people make enough $ and set up plans so that their kids can afford to do nothing and still retain their economic standing. If you look at top income earners, I think something like 75% are self made. The rest are families with generational wealth.
This is also continuing as technology changes. It becomes more and more difficult to pass money along. Few live on earning alone.
And then there’s social capital. The fact that millionaires live in towns and socialize in a way that expands their access to the best jobs and opportunities. They give each others kids internships. They let middling students attend elite private schools.
The kid with the better education does not have a better chance when you dactor in social capital.
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Yes, test-related admission policies are probably a relatively minor knob to turn for adjusting expected SES diversity of the applicant and admit class, although it is a knob that they can turn to make minor adjustments. Legacy, preppy sports, development, ED, and CSS Noncustodial Profile are probably knobs that they can use to make bigger adjustments that they probably do not want to make. For many such private colleges, a veneer of SES diversity is needed, while still keeping half of the class from the top 5% income/wealth families.
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On that point, we completely agree.
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One thing that doesn’t get talked about much is the variability of test scores for any particular student. We tend to say “Kid X got a ____ on his SAT” and leave it at that, but human performance varies a lot day to day. My DS19 took the SAT the first time with just a bit of Khan Academy studying and got a 1460, which was slightly below his PSAT score. Two months later, with slightly more studying, he re-took the SAT and improved by 140 points. In his words, “I just had a really good day”. I asked him if he thought he could do it again, and he just laughed and said no way. Which score was really him? I think this is part of the reason that a standardized test score is such poor predictor of success - it is such a small snapshot in time, and we all have good days and bad days.
I think TO is a good trend, and here to stay.
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Actually, it has gotten easier to pass money along to heirs, since estate tax rates have been trending downward, with exemption from estate tax trending upward in recent years.
But then wealthy parents may be able to help their kids better by spending the money on buying educational opportunities (including purchasing residence in a good school zone or paying for private school, and being able to pay for college and professional school so that the kid need not be limited by financial constraints in college choice) and removing barriers (such as ensuring any needed disability accommodations) in their educational paths early on, rather than waiting until death to bequeath an estate.
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I agree that most TO likely either did not get opportunity to test or scored in lower range (and some of those could have brought score up if they’d had opportunity to retest).
As far as disadvantaging the typical, upper middle class high SAT score student, I think we are back to the debate of how meaningful is that 1550 score if it comes after a summer test prep program from a kid with different circumstances and advantages than a 1350 from a kid that didn’t do a summer prep program and didn’t do a lot of test prep in general. What does one standardized test score actually demonstrate?
I guess I am thinking about my D and her friend, both upper middle class btw (different areas of the country). They scored the same on the Pre-ACT, both not having done much prep. D works FT summer/PT (20 hours) school year on top of heavy other ECs and maintaining 4.0. So, she does not have to work like I did growing up lower-SES, but choses to work. Friend doesn’t work. D has higher GPA than friend (both take similar load of APs/honors). Friend took prep classes after pre-ACT, D didn’t. D did some prep at home using books and flashcards, but not a ton. Friend scored 5 points higher after prep program on actual ACT, D scored 3 points higher without. So, does that mean friend will be more successful at X college vs D or is suddenly smarter, better student, goes to a better school, etc? Had D done prep program and/or multiple retakes could she raise score more? Probably. Never took SAT because it was cancelled, rescheduled, cancelled again too many times to count. We gave up.
Then you have the kids that are in lower GPA boat because by their own admission they “messed up” (yet somehow rocked out a 1550 without trying). So, is that 1550 a reflection of likely success in college or not? There are really bright kids out there who for whatever reason do not put in the needed effort into schoolwork (lazy, bored, got in with the wrong crowd, who knows).
It’s a single measure taken on a single day by students with huge variability in circumstances and prep opportunities/time. If colleges thought it was a great measure I imagine they would be pushing to keep it rather than seemingly going the other direction.
D did not apply T20 nor TO anywhere btw.
Also, while I agree some of the increase in applications resulting in large deferred and waitlists is from TO, some of it is just the “I didn’t get to visit Jr year/summer to decide where I want to apply and it’s such a crazy year and who knows what schools may be in-person or not Fall 2021, so am casting a wide net and applying to 15-20 schools and will figure it out later factor.”
The problem is broader than just at a few such schools. There’re many unpleasant FA surprises every year. Home equities in primary residences are also treated very differently by different schools. If a school knows a student is highly unlikely to decline an ED offer, there’s less incentive to offer the best FA package for the student. Students of lower-SES often need to find the most affordable college option.
You took my quote out of context. The sentence that follows was important.
Few live on earnings alone.
I’m sure you realize that my point is, very few are living on the interest from an inherited estate alone. Trust fund babies.
Well, yeah—but that’s the “meets need” schools.
ED has spread, virus-like, way beyond those.
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Underrepresented groups almost always increase among test optional applicants. You mentioned Harvard. Some numbers for Harvard’s early class this year are at Harvard Admits Record Low 7.4% of Early Action Applicants to the Class of 2025 | News | The Harvard Crimson. and quoted below:
The Harvard quotes above are for early admits, not overall applicants. They do not provide information for overall applicants. However, other studies do. For example, the study at https://www.nacacnet.org/globalassets/documents/publications/research/defining-access-report-2018.pdf looks at 24 test optional colleges. Some numbers are below for those 24 colleges.
Non-Submitters Applicants – 30% URM, 22% First Gen, 23% Pell (Admits)
Submitter Applicants – 19% URM, 14% First Gen, 12% Pell (Admits)
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I suspect that if they had similar increase in applicants, they would have mentioned it in their announcement. But they didn’t.
The Harvard article focuses on admitted students. It does not publish any demographic information about applicants. This is the typical format for such news articles. As mentioned in the rest of the post you didn’t quote, the study of 24 colleges found that underrepresented were more common among test optional applicants at all of them (one had mixed results for different groups). Some more detailed numbers from the previously linked Ithaca study are below, which tracks at each stage – applicants, admits, and enrolled. Considering Harvard’s admitted students also show an increase in underrepresented groups, I certainly wouldn’t assume Harvard is the lone outlier from the trend of increase in underrepresented groups among test optional applicants.
Applicants
Test Submitter – 10% Pell, 26% URM*
Test Optional – 17% Pell, 40% URM*
Admits
Test Submitter Admits-- 15% Pell, 22% URM*
Test Optional Admits – 29% Pell, 35% URM*
Enrolled
Test Submitter Enrolls-- 18% Pell, 19% URM*
Test Optional Enrolls – 30% Pell, 31% URM*
*Ithaca includes Asian students as part of their URM category. Only ~4% of Ithaca kids are Asian.
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The subject of this thread is titled “test optional at top schools.” Under a test optional system, the kid with a 1300 in your example can submit his 1300 to colleges, if he/she chooses to do so. “Top colleges” also have numerous other areas of the application besides scores where such a student can excel, and lower income admits are far more likely to excel in these other areas than scores, which relates to why lower income kids are overrepresented among test optional applicants, admits, and enrolled; as listed in my post above.
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Teachers don’t typically know where students are going to apply though, unless it’s done differently at your school?
We definitely see ACT scores in the 18-23 range each year at many of the most selective colleges (and some of the those scores are from students exactly like the ones that schools are courting now, by going TO). Non-TO schools have always had the choice to accept low-SES URMs with low test scores (they just want more of those kids to apply).
Many Illinois public schools have been fully remote all year and have not held the state mandated school day SAT test yet, including CPS schools. Many of these schools have no intention to offer the tests this year, so Pritzker is under pressure to remove the grad requirement for the 2021s (which he actually did remove last summer, but then reinstated it in the Fall).