"No, the SAT is not Required." More Colleges Join Test-Optional Train

Applying to College
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<p>@Sue22 Your assumption regarding graduation rates is flawed. You assume that the college has the ability to increase grad rates by lowering the graduation GPA requirement. Many students fail to graduate not because they fail to make the grade but for other reasons such as financial inability to pay for school, loss of interest in obtaining a degree, job opportunity that does not require degree, as well as a host of other reasons that is unrelated to maintaining the grades. </p>

<p>The many other aspects of the US News Reports weighting methodology the college has little control over or it will cost a great deal more to improve. For instance lowering class size means more professors and greater cost. Colleges are aware of the cost/benefit analysis method to reach decisions.</p>

<p>The cheapest way to increase rankings is by increasing SAT scores by taking the test optional route by some estimates it results in SAT averages of 150 points higher than if a school required all students to report their SAT.</p>

<p>I do acknowledge @International95 that US News Reports states that some discount is given to test optional schools but since that value is not made clear, it is my guess that the test optional colleges have already determined that the discount is not as great as the SAT increase for a particular school. </p>

<p>As I posted previously, all test optional schools can require SAT scores for admission and then it is free to give whatever weight they wish and state so in its admission information. One reason colleges do not go this route is because it would lower its selectivity index by discouraging low test scoring students from applying. </p>

<p>Since you point out that 10.25% of ranking weight is directly related SAT results. The cost of manipulating the SAT result is little to nothing so you can see why colleges go that route. It is best bang for the bucks. </p>

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<p>@Sue22 FYI Bates even acknowledges that it has benefited from going test optional by pointing out that it “has almost doubled its applicant pool since making testing optional”.</p>

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<p>We all know that when colleges report scores, they’re for matriculated kids, which has its own host of factors- and limitations. We all know what usually constitutes the bottom quartile- ie, exceptions. Not the primary target for the freshman class. And that few schools tell the M/CR pairings. So you can have have that brainiac STEM kid with 800M and highest sores in math/sci Sat2s, and possibly something lesser in CR. Or the super humanities kid, with a less stellar M. Etc.</p>

<p>When it comes to “poor” kids and top colleges, what some forget (or don’t realize,) is that there is an increasing number of highly determined, focused, qualified, accomplished kids out there, with school and community impact, whose families struggle. Kids seriously striving in all respects. I’m going to skip the detail, but just say, it is a mistake to assume the SAT is so high and mighty that it alone can give view to a kid’s worthiness, hardiness, determination and potential, at a highly competitive school. (It’s also a mistake to assume what we are familiar with- the kid with good grades at his suburban hs, with a few hs titles and a few hours of service, maybe an award or two or five, is the pinnacle the top colleges seek.) </p>

<p>I’m giving this link for some background- as with many articles, you can’t just gloss for the easy to repeat tidbits. <a href=“http://www.maguireassoc.com/resource/documents/SAT_optional_article-NACAC_Journal_College_Admission_J.Epstein_7-09.pdf”>http://www.maguireassoc.com/resource/documents/SAT_optional_article-NACAC_Journal_College_Admission_J.Epstein_7-09.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Increasing a college’s applicant pool is not all about US News. It’s about increasing their reach and their ability to choose top kids who will fit and thrive and go on to make their mark. </p>

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<p>Yet I point out that going test optional would hurt the school in over 50 percent of ranking weight if indeed SATs were predictive of outcomes at schools that choose to make them optional.</p>

<p>I recognize that scores carry varying utility at different schools. For instance, a large school that receives a huge number of applications may not be able to spend the time wading through recommendations, lists of ECs and essays to make a first cut, the way a school like Bates, which receives on the order of 5,000 applications and strongly recommends an interview can. I’m not saying that standardized test scores are useless, just that some (an increasing number) of schools don’t find them particularly useful to their processes in many cases. </p>

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<p>Do you know what the time period for this increase is? Was this a quote from 1990? That would be a significant jump in only a few years. Or was it from 2012, in which case Bates would simply have made the same kinds of gains as other selective schools over the past 30 years.</p>

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<p>Do you mean the 25th-75th of the SAT scores at an elite narrow-range school (e.g. Caltech) or the 25th-75th of all SAT takers?</p>

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<p>The test-optional policy feels gimmicky, kind of like the ACT’s (and new SAT’s) essay-optional policy. Performing well on a test- just like performing well on the ACT essay- still gives one an advantage against the massive competition, so it’s not going to really mean anything- at least not until the number of test-optional school reaches critical mass (i.e., a large portion of applicants find itself applying only to test-optional schools and therefore doesn’t take a single SAT or ACT).</p>

<p>There’s still the emphasis on the SAT and ACT by American college-prep culture; I know freshmen at my school who’ve taken the SAT multiple times (which makes me a little bit sad). It’s going to be tough for a few schools, most of them not at the tippy-top (many being LACs that most people only recognize as sources of spam e-mails) when it comes to applicant appeal or receiving huge volumes of applications, to change the system.</p>

<p>I also disagree with their premise that these tests are invalid measures of academic potential. There are many problems with the SAT/ACT (namely the tendency of scores to be best predicted by race and family income, and the rebalancing of the non-quantitative sections to make male performance equal female performance… but the lack of a similar rebalancing of the quantitative sections which currently appear to favor male students, etc.- oh and that nasty test-prep culture) but overall it’s not entirely a measure of income/race/etc. A SAT score of 1700 from a valedictorian tells you something about the quality and rigor of education at their school. Besides, colleges already adjust for these issues through affirmative action and other policies; they know how to interpret these scores through the lens they’ve developed over time. After all, colleges can differentiate between a privileged kid who took the SAT eight times to get a 2150 and an inner-city student who took it once to get a 1950- it shows on the application.</p>

<p>Removing the SAT only gives more leeway to subjective factors that reduces colleges’ accountability even further (admissions officers at Amherst did publicly admit that they sometimes have no idea why they’re accepting/rejecting an applicant) and lets them maintain the pretense that they can somehow “know” an applicant better than his/her peers through a series of relatively short essays that applications seem to come down to anyway. This is like the phenomenon of people who interview very well but have to switch jobs- because an interview (like an essay) is far from the best way to determine whether someone is qualified for a position. Sure, the super-qualified applicants will shine through but most accepted students aren’t Intel STS winners- and the ability to BS an essay does make a huge difference. You could argue that such an ability is a valuable life-skill but so is the reasoning ability tested by the ACT and the SAT- and the ability to do well under pressure and not just become someone who complains about “not testing well” to reword their inability to get mere test anxiety. EC’s are useful, too, but honestly colleges don’t seem to be adjusting for the offerings at different schools very well. And admissions are already a crapshoot for most people- there were so many weird results this year that make me wish there were some more objectivity to it all.</p>

<p>Ultimately, I think @voiceofreason66‌ hit it pretty well- these colleges are just trying to boost the number of applicants and their ranking. </p>

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Number of applicants, possibly. For a ranking increase this would be ineffective. As has been stated, USNWR discounts TO schools on the SAT/ACT factor, so the impact is likely very muted. And as far as getting more applications so that the acceptance rate looks better, that only counts a little over 1%. So I am not very convinced that the cynical view is the right one.</p>

<p>@lookingforward - you said

And that is true for the Common Data Set and therefore the USNWR rankings. So while this really has nothing to do with what you said, I wanted to point out for those new to the admissions game that when you look at the websites of these schools, they will often report the stats for all accepted applicants to the school, not just those that enrolled. The former will be significantly higher for all but the most elite schools since students going on to much more selective schools often apply to less selective schools as safeties. Once thy get into the more selective school, the less selective one is a distant memory and the higher test stat is long gone with them.</p>

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<p>DoZ, seems you’re looking at it from the hs perspective, the college prep culture, your hs, your peers. TO has been going on for more than 30 years. Certainly you are aware that, along with rigor and grades, holistic already places great value on qualitative factors. Look at Brown’s freshman applicant admit rates and see how far more than stats matters. The ‘rest of the story’ has long been defining differences among candidates. </p>

<p>What makes you think experienced adcoms, who read thousands of apps/year, can’t read kids for their colleges? Of course they can read an applicant better than his high school peers, whose world is high school, who haven’t made the college leap yet. 17 year olds. And adcoms are accountable only to their own colleges.</p>

<p>As for “the offerings at different schools,” the better colleges aren’t looking for kids who have “more” laid out for them, who fit themselves into a tidy routine and got stuck there. That’s reactive. </p>

<p>FC, right. </p>

<p>Btw, adcoms measure hs quality by far more than whether a val got 1700. Look at a School Profile for your own hs and see the various details. In some cases, you can pick a low SES community and see theirs online in community assessments, to compare. In addition, adcoms have access to addl metrics. It’s part of their job to know various hs in their regions, they travel, etc. It’s not just look at a smattering of A grades, then scores.and make assumptions.</p>

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<p>Bowdoin has been test optional since 1969, long before the advent of the US New rankings. Therefore, the choice to go test optional quite obviously was not designed to ‘game’ the US News rankings. Rather, it was a policy decision by the school based on the recognition that standardized testing is designed to test a very specific kind of intelligence (and, perhaps, life circumstance/background). </p>

<p>The test optional policy is also not a “back-door” way to get admitted. Successful applicants who don’t submit test scores must have some real ‘magic’ in their applications which makes them truly outstanding despite not submitting high test scores. There is wisdom in this policy, in my opinion.</p>

<p>Bowdoin is one of the 20 highest ranked feeder schools to top law, business and med schools. (The rankings are based on the percentage of the class attending top graduate programs). <a href=“http://anayambaker.hubpages.com/hub/Wall-Street-Journal-College-Rankings-The-Full-List-and-Rating-Criteria”>http://anayambaker.hubpages.com/hub/Wall-Street-Journal-College-Rankings-The-Full-List-and-Rating-Criteria&lt;/a&gt; </p>

<p>These top graduate schools all require standardized testing for admission, so the fact that Bowdoin utilizes a test optional policy to admit certain candidates who are exceptional in other respects certainly has not diminished Bowdoin’s ability to have outstanding success in grad school placement relative to other top colleges. </p>

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<p>@lookingforward‌ I’ve read our School Profile. It’s riddled with inaccuracies to the point that other people used the Common App “additional comments” section to point out that we didn’t actually offer 5 of the AP courses listed on there. There’s a lot missing from the picture.</p>

<p>Yes I know that test scores don’t make the difference; I’m also perfectly in agreement with how little test scores are considered. Stats aren’t everything, but they are valuable. I know what colleges <em>claim</em> to do; I just don’t believe that they’re actually achieving it. As I said, Amherst adcoms have admitted that they have absolutely no idea what they’re doing a lot of the time. What “shines through” one an essay depends on a lot of semi-random factors (or at least ones whose impact can’t be gauged by the applicant). People have completely arbitrary ideas of what’s desirable that they’re convinced are rational and common.</p>

<p>And holistic admissions did take off in the 1920’s as a way to exclude Jews by reducing college accountability and transparency. Legacy admits also started that way in the Ivies.</p>

<p>I know what colleges purport to do, but I’m just not buying it. And thanks for the “17 year olds” remark. Reminds me of my Congressional Rep who claims that Iran and North Korea should be nuked off the map and that Linux uses McAfee to protect users from viruses (which wouldn’t be that bad, except he votes on tech bills all the time)- because “oh it’s just 17 year olds and I’m more qualified than they are” is how he responds to criticism as well.</p>

<p>I’ve lost all faith in the system.</p>

<p>Relevant article: <a href=“Everyone is totally just winging it, all the time | Psychology | The Guardian”>http://www.theguardian.com/news/oliver-burkeman-s-blog/2014/may/21/everyone-is-totally-just-winging-it&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Amherst adcoms had a little fun on camera one afternoon, a process normally speedy and private. Do you sincerely believe they don’t know what they are looking for? And that one short snapshot can then be extrapolated? Applicants, with some good guidance, can know what they need to write about. Unfortunately, many think the writing is just another piece for their hs teachers, who know them. Especially with the new prompts, which so many kids take literally, forgetting this is a college app that should present you in a light those colleges want, need and can appreciate. Your app is how you let adcoms know you. Everything counts- at colleges with fierce competition. </p>

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<p>I haven’t read any of the other posts, so excuse me if I’m being redundant. Isn’t changing to test optional only going to incite more applications (and thus more $ for the colleges doing this)? It will be the stronger students sending in their scores, so I don’t see how it would benefit those who did poorly on the test … unless they had REALLY horrible scores.</p>

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<p>UCB, the devil is in the details in the case of the Texas public universities. While it is a true that a student can gain an automatic admission to a Texas school based on his or her ranking alone, there are plenty of “use” for a high test score. The automatic admission as you described is most often used to enter the Austin or College Station campuses. However, that is also for … general admissions and NOT for the most sought-after programs in business, engineering, and a couple more such as Plan II o the elusive BHP. In addition, one can get (or at least could) be admitted to Texas AM based on a 25 percent ranking AND a 1300 MR SAT score. </p>

<p>Lastly there are a number of scholarships that become available to high test scorers, including some that are hardly publicized.</p>

<p>The above truly underscores why the SAT is rarely irrelevant. The narrative pushed by FairTest (for their own obvious benefit) fails to describe the DANGERS of not approaching the standardized tests with close attention, if not total dedication. Yes, one can (and does) gain admittance to a range of schools (mostly what I called middling schools) but the absence of competitive scores becomes a VERY limiting element for admissions, scholarships, and opportunities in general. </p>

<p>In the end, it is probably easier to overcome the demands of the SAT or ACT than doing cartwheels of joy about the schools than are deliberately different! </p>

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<p>@lookingforward‌ I’m not questioning their knowledge or their training. I’m questioning their execution for very obvious reasons.</p>

<p>Most systems look rational, efficient, and functional from the outside. When people are little, they’re convinced that adults know what they’re doing. When they grow up and fill those same roles, they realize how much they have to wing it. Most of the people in this thread are probably end-users; the few who program are probably all too familiar with the near-guesswork and confusion that goes into creating code that looks clean and efficient (many probably know how it feels when your code is working but you have no idea why). We think all the time that these people have perfected methods and rely little on gut feelings and intuition (the reliability of which can’t even be tested!) and that their conclusions and results are indisputably warranted or well-made… and then we realize how many holes there are in most code, how many times people in positions of authority have “learning experiences,” and how people in general have no idea what they’re doing or work very hastily and make mistakes.</p>

<p>It’s inevitable. It’s almost human nature.</p>

<p>And after all, it’s more probable than even seasoned “experts” being able to go through tens of thousands of applications and being able to pick the indisputably most qualified/worthy 500-10000 candidates. There are mistakes all the time; there are weird results because humans just aren’t able to perfectly handle tasks like these (although, of course, it’s far from pure guesswork and there are methods in place- but it’s not perfect, either).</p>

<p>I don’t trust them. I’m also a bit bothered by the value placed on essays, as even you note that:</p>

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<li>to many applicants, the prompts don’t communicate what’s actually being asked</li>
<li>people need “guidance” to figure out what they’re really supposed to do</li>
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<p>The product of five seconds of an applicant’s thought could make the entire difference. And these committees are often delusional because of their unquestioned assertions. They keep claiming that the only successful essays are the ones that applicants put their time and their heart into- yet brief scribbles resulting from 30 minutes of my thought got me several thousands in scholarships that claim to be prestigious and are awarded based on evaluations by qualified and seasoned committees. We like to think that they have a special instinct that tells them who actually put the work in- but that’s like how we thought when we were young that mothers had a special ability to tell when we were being honest. In the end, it turned out just to be a particular set of simple tricks that only caught the most poorly-designed lies- and there was no magic. Similarly, there’s no magic or special ability when it comes to adcoms- at least that’s how I see it after the increasingly weird results coming through this year.</p>

<p>And something that’s good for one particular committee could be atrocious for another, even when they purport to look at the exact same goals. Subjective factors are like that- it’s inherent in their subjectivity and their reliance on human decision-making.</p>

<p>To offset that, objective factors are always necessary, especially when at most colleges there’s an hour at most spent in the final evaluation of each applicant.</p>

<p>I’m amazed at just how much faith you’re able to place into the system. I’m not quite the believer you are.</p>

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<p>Indeed, why not look at the explanation … in its entirety. You left the most important line out!</p>

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<p>Fwiw, despite the explanations provided by Bob Morse, it remains that there are plenty of loopholes and plenty of interpretations left to the people who enter the numbers and the weight. In the end, Morse makes decision about what is relevant or not. For instance, Morse does NOT think it has been relevant to force schools to stop obfuscating the Winter or Spring admits (think Berkeley or Middlebury.) While he is fully aware that the numbers are incorrect, they see little reason to change reporting them as they have done for years! </p>

<p>In this case, what is the meaning of “If a school told U.S. News that it included all students with scores in the reported SAT and ACT scores, then those scores were counted fully in the rankings and were not footnoted.” and how does it work when a school merely reports to HAVE x percent of students WITH scores? </p>

<p>Think it through, International95, and you might understand how it works for test-optional scores versus schools that refuse to report all scores. In so many words, SLC was punished in 2007 but Bates was not! </p>

<p>Again, the ONLY respectable solution open to Morse is to UNRANK all schools that submit incomplete data. All of them! But respectability has never been front and center of the USNEWS ranking, as their clinging to the manipulated peer assessment and expected graduation have shown for decades. </p>

<p>Morse has no problems “messing” with SLC or Reed, but will not be foolish enough to show the same conviction with the east coast blue blood schools, or the mighty Cal! You can (and should) have a ranking without SLC, but you can’t hope to sell the same number of copies if you start deleting the Bates. Middlebury, or Bowdoin from the rankings! It is a matter of survival for a rag that has faced its battles! </p>

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<p>Xiggi, didn’t SLC have two major problems? Being the most expensive college for a number of years and not having a generous aid policy?</p>

<p>I know why you question, DoZ. But questions shouldn’t lead to too quick assumptions. That doesn’t always yield understanding. But your comment does bring something to mind- one of the qualities adcoms appreciate is the ability to seek appropriate help, to recognize when you need it. Getting the right guidance on, say, a college app essay, is not that far from seeking opinions and advice in STEM fields, especially engineering and CS, where a cooperative spirit it is (/should be) part of the culture. The essays are your own words- your own choice of what to say and how to then say it. Very revealing. </p>

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<p>Actually, there is a balancing act that comes in play. </p>

<p>While the SAT scores might (not always true*) increase the selectivity index and the ranking, it will ultimately also reduce the expected graduation rates. In practice, a school that overreports its SAT scores might end up being penalized substantially more four to six years later. To highlight this, all one needs to do is to monitor the differences between a highly selective school such as Harvey Mudd and a lower selective school such as Smith, and then weigh which of the expected graduation or the SAT scores has the greater impact!</p>

<p>*When my own alma mater decided to report inflated scores, the result was … nil. USNews reran the rankings with the corrected numbers, and the ranking did NOT change. </p>

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<p>LF, I think that SLC has many more problems that its cost and financial aid. One of my cousins did graduate from SLC with a degree in English. The very wealthy parents indulged their daughter’s choice and 8 years after graduation are still doing so. But with a LOT less joy. In a way, this is not an indictment of SLC in particular, but a reality that not all parts of a liberal education has the same value in terms of employment and return on investments. There will ALWAYS be sufficient people with the ability of spending several hundred thousands dollars, but there will also be an expectation that the “acquired” degree is both valuable and marketable. </p>

<p>And, perhaps, that is why it is important for a school such as SLC to maintain (or establish) that it is considered a very selective school and a peer of the schools listed on top of the USNews. </p>

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<p>^ which brings to mind one reason I hoped my godson would choose differently. Ironically. he probably would have flourished there (there, as in who knows what would come next?) </p>