Do you agree that trends support that colleges do not truly wish to standardize uneven grading and/or do not believe that the SAT/ACT do a good job meeting that objective.
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Standardized testing is never going to be popular. If it takes the top 1-percentile score to be seriously considered for a top college, by deinifition the other 99% wouldn’t be happy. One of consequences of TO policies is that these tests will likely disappear due to their economic unsustainability. The colleges that need these tests would not have that option at some point.
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Most elite colleges already take some students without a top 1% score and have been doing so for years. Even if schools go back to required testing , there will still be students who are admitted with lower scores/gpa’s than some kids who are rejected. Lots of kids with perfect gpa’s/course rigor/1500+SATs/strong ECs and LOR were rejected every year long before TO; and whether or not these schools stay TO or not, lots of fantastic students will continue to be disappointed by these schools every year.
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I was using 1% as an illustration. There’s nothing magical about 1%. For some colleges, it could be 0.1%, or it could be 10%, depending on what make sense for the college. In any event, no one advocates admissions solely based on test scores. I happen to believe they serve a useful purpose.
I’ve said it before, I will continue saying it: The claim that there is “vastly uneven grading” (by which I am assuming you mean grading standards and not that actual grades, please correct me if I’m wrong) is widely claimed, but I have not yet seem any actual evidence for that claim. Repeated assertion, even if made by multiple individuals, is not a valid source of evidence for such a claim.
The more selective the college, the less important the SAT/ACT test score.
The more selective the college, the more criteria there are.
Colleges that factor SAT/ACT test scores heavily tend to be large public colleges, often directionals, where GPAxRigorxScore tends to produce a formula for admission. More selective colleges will then add other factors, such as essays or recommendations, but some may also subtract the test score requirement if they feel that GPAxrigorxessayxrecommendation is enough to produce the desired class.
Most universities admit 50%+ students anyway.
At the most selective universities, the process is time-consuming because there are different pools related to institutional needs.
Based on this year’s admission process, I can say test scores are mostly useful in speeding up the 1st step of the process. It’s harder to decide on “first cut” at a highly selective, holistic university when you don’t have an ACT 21 to do it for you. As a result, you end up with more applications to review for committee.
Where test scores matter is for merit scholarships, especially at otherwise-not-very-selective universities, because in a sea of high GPAs they are the differentiator. Whereas admission can be offered to many (since many won’t attend and the problem at not-so-selective universities tends to be not enough applicants, not enough students who attend, etc.), scholarships come from a finite fund - something the initiator of automatic scholarships at Temple found out: even though it benefited the university academically and in rankings, it cost too much and one year nearly dried out the scholarship fund to have so many high achievers choose it over less generous competitors, and he lost his job, which I still think was short-sighted but probably in keeping with the state’s general policy toward Higher Ed.
So, we may end up with a system whereby university admission no longer depends on test scores, but merit scholarships do.
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Which means the sudden status quo for the HS classes of 2021 and 2022 basically just becomes the norm.
Which, arguably, could actually increase the middle- and upper-class focus on hyperintense SAT/ACT test prep, since the results of those tests become purely all about the dollars.
Yup.
Too early to tell though.
Many colleges have been testing criteria for scholarships without scores, competitove v. Automztic, but some have re established scores as a criterion for Fall 2022 and some added them (just checked UMW for a student and while they used to have automatic merit for GPA+Rigor, they don’t seem to anymore.)
Former high school teacher here: an A is not an A. I have taught in many public high schools in a large urban school district. I have taught remediation, AP, and other advanced coursework. I have also taught college courses in the CUNY system and elsewhere (private). In all cases, students take a placement test upon entrance because the A’s from various public and private schools around the world are meaningless measures. Students, including transfers from other colleges, would routinely come to me to complain that they should have placed out of the course. My demand was always as follows: bring me a final paper from the course with a grade of A. If the paper would be an A, according to our departmental rubric for an A at the end of the course they wish to place out of, then we can talk. I cannot tell you how seldom students leaped that hurdle, but in 12 years, I think I would not exceed my ten fingers accounting the # of students who thought they had been misplaced who truly were able to skip the foundational coursework. As for AP coursework, the # of APs is meaningless as many schools have too few spots and kids who are qualified are not placed in AP courses/it is a lottery. I also would caution that more APs does not a better education make. The standardization of AP curriculum and the need to teach to the test privileges breadth over depth. I prefer students slow down and work on close reading skills vs. “covering” the AP curriculum for the sake of the test. The Ivy I attended would not take any of my 5 score AP exams, nor did they place me out of any course with the A I earned in a class at NYU. Snotty - perhaps. Economic decision - probably. I was pissed at the time, but now, I think I get it. Signed - English teacher/writing specialist.
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Those colleges requiring submission of a graded high school paper for admission know what they are doing
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No teacher or professor wants to fail the majority of her/his class, whether in a college or a high school. Nor does s/he wants to bore the majority of her/his class and gives them all As. Any course is taught, and graded, at the level that’s suitable for the majority of students who take the course, Both course rigor and its grading are highly dependent on the students, regardless how similarly the names of a course sound in different schools. For different courses, grades are even less comparable, so GPA is even less meaningful as a comparison measure.
It’s mind-boggling that some people would believe an A is an A, the same everywhere.
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An A doesn’t mean the same asolute academic achievement, but for college admissions, it represents the same relative achievement. Getting the “A” is the general pre-requisite both for high-rigor schools and low-rigor schools, but the analysis looks at other factors (part of “context”).
To give a real-life example: a junior whose English Honors class is “honors” because it requires a 1-page, 5-paragraph essay every week and a junior whose English class is Honors because it requires a 10-page research paper both get an A. Adcoms know both schools don’t have the same level of academic expectations. But they won’t penalize the first kid for what their district has decided was the norm for Honors English.
What they want to see is evidence that, if presented with the 10-page paper challenge, the first kid would have the ability to do it. (If they think there’s potential but the gap is too big, top universities have summer programs, and the kids they bring do catch up.)
What happens however is that for admissions, the “Top 10%” rule may be a bit relaxed for known-to-be rigorous schools and from a less-rigorous school only the top 3 or top 5 students would be considered; B’s won’t be treated the same depending on where they’re from. (There’s been a big discussion in the Boarding School forum about how adcoms interpret grades in relation to distribution, for instance.)
That’s what adcoms mean by “using context”.
Outside of top schools, automatic scholarships at large state universities may use whatever GPA is provided. It doesn’t matter if it’s weighted or unweighted, or how the schools calculates the weight (it was a problem at UIndiana I think.)
On the other hand, other universities recalculate the GPA.
The “top schools” that are the subject of the original post do not just look at GPA in isolation to make admission decisions. Instead they look at the full transcript consider things like the courses taken including the course rigor, number of AP classes, which classes had lower grades and how relevant they are to planned field study, etc. They also look at the school profile and usually have a good idea of the grade distribution. Many other criteria are considered beyond just the transcript, which can also serve as a confirmation.
Most of the colleges mentioned in the original post require all students to take a math placement test to help determine appropriate first math course, rather than just assuming that if a student gets an A in calculus that means they mastered calculus. They certainly do not assume that if a student gets a 7## math score on a test that doesn’t use calculus or in any way resemble the math classes at their colleges means they mastered calculus and validates the A calculus grade. Instead they have their own placement test that is completely different from the SAT/ACT.
A few colleges take things even further. For example, MIT has particularly strict requirements to get transfer credits for a STEM foundation class. Depending on the subject, students may need to provide a list of lecture topics + textbook, provide written assignments from class, take a placement/validation exam, etc.
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I agree that AOs evaluate everything in context. However, even in this context, I don’t see how an AO can properly and fairly assess the academic qualifications of two students from two very different schools based on grades alone, if their methodologies deviate in any significant way from “picking the top few percent.from each school”. It is a difficult, perhaps impossible, task to properly take into account the variations, especially in the few minutes they have with each application.
The large publics that currently use more-or-less formulaic methodologies (some with relatively minor “holistic” tweaks) are doing so primarily because of the volume of applications they receive. With TO policies, some privates started to receive nearly comparable number of applications, and they have to process them largely without the aid of test scores. Next year, they’ll likely receive even more applications as acceptance rates plummeted at all desirable colleges. Either the system will break down at some point, or it will have to be replaced by a more automatic/formulaic methodology, or even less care will be given to each application.
I understand that AOs have the school profiles to help them. However, the usefulness of such profiles is very limited. They’ll know some of their feeder schools, but for the vast majority of high schools, their knowledge can only be described, charitably, as insufficient, even for their regional reps.
I agree that test scores themselves are certainly inadaquate to place students properly into specific courses and placement tests and such will do the jobs nicely. However, they are administered post admissions and wouldn’t have any effect on admissions.
Perhaps that is the root of the issue. Is a college looking to admit the best academic achievers measured on an absolute scale, or those who made the best achievement out of what was available to them?
Colleges with extra high rigor (e.g. Caltech, Harvey Mudd) need to look at the best academic achievers measured on an absolute scale to find students who can handle their rigor. (But they are probably looking for non-traditional indicators of academic strength, since the typical GPA and test scores have ceilings too low for the students they want to stand out.)
However, most highly selective colleges have minimum rigor levels that strong students from anywhere can handle, so they can extend their admissions to those who made high achievement out of what was available to them. This allows them to look for students who bring desirable (to them) qualities besides academic achievement (even though they still will generally have high academic achievement compared to admits to colleges in general), such as those from low SES backgrounds as well as legacies, etc… They also do try to get high absolute achievers for at least a portion of their students to maintain their high academic reputations.
Moderately selective colleges may need to look at both issues, since both can matter in terms of eventual student success. Of course, they also need to figure out how various admission criteria predict success, etc…
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If you look at which colleges use the most/least formulaic methodologies, it correlates with selectivity, not volume of applications. If anything there is a negative correlation with volume of applications. As applications go up, the increased selectivity usually leads to becoming more holistic and more emphasizing non-stat criteria to distinguish applicants.
For example, UCLA probably has the most applications of any college in the United States. They had 139,463 first year applications this year, and had more than 100,000 applications long before COVID. Yet UCLA is far more holistic than typical public colleges, with consideration of ~14 criteria, consideration of course rigor in context of opportunities, upward/downward trend, personal qualities / character, ECs, overcoming challenges, essay-like “personal insight questions”, etc. However, the less selective Cal States are a different story, and mostly follow a formula based on stats. Further less selective CA 2-year colleges are even more formulaic.
It’s a similar idea with private colleges. Most of the private colleges that were mentioned in the first post are especially holistic and not formulaic. Yet they are also some of the private colleges that received the most applications prior to COVID. For example, the ten private 4-year colleges that received the most applications in 2019 include Cornell (49k), Stanford (47k), Penn (45k), Harvard (43k), and Columbia (43k). These colleges are known for being especially holistic and not formulaic in spite of being the most applied to private colleges. Instead the more formulaic private colleges tend to be the less selective ones, which all had a much smaller volume of applications.
The degree of holism is always relative. UCLA probably would be more holistic if it didn’t routinely receive such a large number of applications. It’s also relative to the resources a school has. Selectivity may appear to be correlated, but it’s actually the effect of holistic admissions, not the cause. Holistic admissions make acceptance less certain but possible for a larger number of applicants, thus increasing selectivity.
^ I have no idea what this means.
You’ll never be able to have a perfect system, but for the most part highly selective colleges are not obsessed with making sure kid with a 3.9x at HS A is correctly compared to the kid with a 3.9y at HS B, or in a test required model emphasizing the difference between a kid with 15xx SAT vs a 15yy SAT. Instead of focusing on the pinnacle of GPA or GPA+SAT stats and requiring ideal comparisons of small differences in those high stats to make decisions, highly selective colleges tend to distinguish applicants in other metrics, which relates to why more holistic decisions tends to follow selectivity, as mentioned in my post above.
Maybe the kid with a 3.9x has some incredible out of classroom ECs/awards that are well related to his planned field of study and is likely to continue a related ECs at the college. Maybe the kid with a 3.9y has glowing LORs that talk about being the best student they’ve seen in their career. Maybe the kid with a 15xx shows incredible personal qualities / character with supporting her family/community through a challenging period and is likely to similarly support classmates at the college. Maybe the kid with the 15yy shows an extremely high level of course rigor, including straight A’s in classes at a nearby university. There are countless factors that a college may focus on beyond such slight differences in stats, which tend to be more influential in admission decisions. Transcript comparisons between schools being imperfect does not mean that SAT/ACT score adds significantly beyond the many other factors that are considered in the decision, in predicting what is important to the college.
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