<p>I do think, though, that the emphasis on test scores placed during admissions is something that needs to change. These scores are more related to socioeconomic class than to inherent intelligence. I commend schools that are moving to test optional policies, and I’d like my institution, Pomona, to do the same. </p>
<p>@dividerofzero </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.”</p>
<p>“Stats aren’t everything, but they are valuable.”</p>
<p>Are those 2 statements a contradiction? Since test scores count into one’s academic stats… also excuse me for sounding harsh (I’m not trying to), but why are you so confident that test scores make no difference? </p>
<p>@voiceofreason66 regarding the $ millions lost during applications, I wonder how much they profit off of simply from the application season… colleges truly look like a business at times.</p>
<p>Maybe someone out there would start some college offering crap majors or make some new ones (like a major specifically for Shakespearean Sonnets), advertise they will be worth a lot of money, hire some cheap teachers, and watch the money rolling in.</p>
<p>In China actually, there was a guy who actually did something like this, but the exception was that the school was “fake”… it existed only within the (false) advertisers’ powerpoints. </p>
<p>And the “school” did get exposed but they still made some cash off of it.</p>
<p>@Jarjarbinks23 “don’t make the difference.” As in they don’t make the ultimate decision- they can be overriden by really good performance in other factors, extenuating circumstances- and at schools where most of the applicants scored above 2100, they’re mostly used for initial sorting. Not saying they don’t make a difference- they’re just not the ultimate thing they look to when trying to decide between similar applicants. And it’s the common (and well-substantiated) wisdom that essays are huge deciding factors and what elite colleges ultimately end up looking to.</p>
<p>As for why I’m confident that test scores aren’t the most important factor:</p>
<p>Schools like Johns Hopkins openly place test scores last in importance among academic factors</p>
<p>And if test scores were everything, I’d have gotten in everywhere</p>
<p>@dividerofzero:</p>
<p>“Schools like Johns Hopkins openly place test scores last in importance among academic factors”</p>
<p>Eh. I knew two kids who got a couple of the very rare full-tuition scholarships from JHU. Don’t know about one, but the other got a perfect 1600 SAT (though he also did a lot with one club in HS).</p>
<p>“And if test scores were everything, I’d have gotten in everywhere”</p>
<p>Obviously, not all schools value test scores the same. Vandy evidently loves high scorers, for instance (more than some other schools).</p>
<p>@PurpleTitan Johns Hopkins openly lists their academic factors in order of importance on their website and SAT scores are at the bottom (though AP and SAT II’s are close to the top). I don’t think it was the 1600 SAT that did it; I got a 2400 and didn’t even get in.</p>
<p>Yes, their value varies- but that’s clearly not necessary to point out if I’m giving a counterexample to the claim that test scores make the big difference.</p>
<p>@nostalgicwisdom I never stated that every high stat applicant gets in. Nor should they. My point was that when a college touts it is a holistic school and that every bit of information will be weighed, it suggests that every applicant has an average chance of admission. When the truth is low scorers and low GPA students are many times less likely to get accepted even with outstanding ECs than high test scores with high GPAs. I would hope that these schools provide realistic minimum scores and grades so that the vast majority of would be applicants can just pass on applying to such schools.</p>
<p>As for your comment that Pomona accepts 1 percent of its students with some SATs in the 500 range. Well in this case that would be 4 students since a typical class size is 400. Venture to guess who these 4 students are? They are most likely an athlete, legacy, special project student, or some other special status that the 6000 other applicants are not given. Pomona’s average SAT is over 2200 and it requires that you send every test one has taken. But Pomona only reports the highest scores to ranking entities or in its CDS. Pomona accepts 1 in 9 applicants, which means that 8 out of 9 students get denied and their hopes crushed. The families of these denied students are another $70 poorer plus the costs of all the testing reporting fees.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>In the first two cases, did the students apply to the most popular major or division at the school that rejected them? In the third case, was the student outside the top 7%, or otherwise not qualified for automatic admission?</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus </p>
<p>Berkeley applicant wasn’t EECS; I think he went with L&S CS, which was still competitive. CMU applicant was SCS, but CIT and MCS were applied to as well so it shouldn’t have been that tough to get into one of the three given his caliber. Third one- of course; UT acceptance/rejection I can understand since squeezing 93% of Texans + all OOS kids into 25% of your acceptances does lead to some weird results.</p>
<p>Overall though, these (and many other results) make it look like the volume of applicants has led to fewer cross-admits across elite (AAU) universities.</p>
<p>Bioengineering and engineering undeclared are the other majors at Berkeley that are seen as being the most selective due to popularity.</p>
<p>Applying to Berkeley L&S would not normally be Yale-level selectivity. Possibilities:</p>
<ul>
<li>High test scores, but “low” (but still Yale-acceptable) GPA. Berkeley emphasizes GPA more than test scores.</li>
<li>Missing some baseline UC eligibility criterion, like the high school art or music course.</li>
<li>Had something that Yale really wanted, but Berkeley did not care about (e.g. recruited athlete at Yale but not Berkeley).</li>
</ul>
<p>@ucbalumnus Nah. Stats were maxxed out, but perhaps it might’ve been the fact that we had 20+ valedictorians and 5 perfect scores (3 SAT, 2 ACT amongst 4 people). He might’ve messed up on the app but his courses were near-identical to mine so I’m pretty sure we both covered the a-g.</p>
<p>Probably the third one, but not a recruited athlete.</p>
<p>Holistic does not suggest every applicant has an average chance of admission. Period. Are you confusing holistic and “random,” * a process of selection in which each item of a set has an equal probability of being chosen?* It is most distinctly not random, at the selective schools. </p>
<p>It’s often easiest to start with Harvard <a href=“Apply | Harvard”>https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/apply</a> And you can read their What we Look For page. At issue, imo, is that many kids apply without a careful self-assessment against what the colleges tell us they look for. They share responsibility for assumptions, including that stats and hs standing predominate and that the app is just another survey. It’s convoluted by amateurs responding to chance-me threads. All an astute observer can truly tell a kid is whether or not he/she appears to be qualified to apply, based on the limited details the kid provides. You don’t see the app, LoRs, or writing. All sorts of factors determine admits. When you have a pool that includes the final thousands of highly qualified applicants- and only x seats- there is no predicting, the colleges can cherry pick the ones they want most. Read what H says they want. All kids should be reading this for their target schools. And then realistically assessing. </p>
<p>As H puts it, “We seek promising students who will contribute to the Harvard community during their college years, and to society throughout their lives.” It’s obvious that not every applicant who hits the Submit button will. </p>
<p>You can dismiss this, you can apply all sorts of formulas, but the decision rests with the adcoms.</p>
<p>
I don’t follow why a holistic college that considers the whole package, both objective stats and subjective non-stat criteria, would have an average chance of admission for all stat groups? Instead one would expect admit rate to increase as stats increase, but many top stat students get rejected in favor of less than top stat students who excel in other areas. The numbers we do have suggest this is exactly what happens. For example, Brown’s published stats mention that they rejected 76% of applicants who had a perfect 36 ACT. I’d expect most of the 36 ACT kids also had high GPAs, so the numbers suggest that they are rejecting many of the highest stat applicants in favor of lower that top stat applicants that excelled in holistic factors besides stats. Other holistic colleges have a similar history. Back in 2007, the dean of admission at Stanford said that they rejected 65% of the applicants who had a 4.0 and a perfect SAT. I’d expect the rejection rate for perfect stat applicants to be even higher today.</p>
<p>
Or maybe he was a STEM specialist who did not excel on the CR section (I fit in this category and was accepted to HYPSM type colleges with a 500 CR). Or maybe he had unique life experiences that added to the class, such as the relatively low scoring unhooked posters who were accepted to HYPSM colleges with backgrounds including receiving state level Future Farmers of Americas awards and being a commander in the Israeli army. Or maybe he excelled in holistic criteria such and sounded like he was going to change the world for the better, such as the CC poster who was accepted to Stanford and Columbia with the equivalent of a 500s math SAT, while at Stanford received the highest award given to Stanford students (Dinkelspiel), became the youngest ever elected official of his home town during his graduation year, and continues to make strides towards to saving his area today. There are many possibilities besides just those who had seemingly unfair advantages.</p>
<p>Sure, the SAT as any other positive factor can correlate to how well a student does in college except I view it as a a prejudiced weed out tool.</p>
<p>Engineering for example doesn’t require a student to have a large vocabulary, be able to correctly find an interpretation to a passage, find grammar mistakes out of a haystack, or even write many essays–well in my case I’ve never had a timed write in college (even in English class) and the essays I did have to write I could take my time and use my resources properly to get good grades. While there are English skills involved, I don’t see the test as directly assessing a student’s ability to succeed in their classes (which I have), rather more of a game of trying to master the test and SAT tricks. I didn’t waste my time trying to prepare for that test.</p>
<p>–As far as earlier discussion about individualized tests for colleges:
The student has the option of preparing for each test because in that sense, they are preparing with the skills necessary to succeed at a certain college. Or maybe you have the skills or you don’t approach might prevail over people gaming the test scores of a main standardized test.</p>
<p>@dividerofzero Does JHU factor AP scores into admissions? As in they’re not used merely for credit but they are actually used to help a applicant?</p>
<p>Because I was always irked how a student with an “A” in AP CHem but a “2” on the actual test would have as much academic credence as one with a “B+” but has a “5,” for example.</p>
<p>Why a common yardstick is needed: the saga of valedictorian Bridget Green and flagrant grade inflation:
<a href=“http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2003/10/01/valedictorian-flunks-graduation-test”>http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2003/10/01/valedictorian-flunks-graduation-test</a>
</p>
<p>I have absolutely no problem with a standard by which all students/applicants are measured. The variation in education provided to high school students has to be normalized in some way in order to get an objective appraisal of one’s qualifications. On the other hand, I believe that there are some serious flaws with the College Board AP exams, and wish there was a credible, respectable alternative to them. At the very least, they should be offered more than once in a school year, preferrably once at the end of an academic year and again in the summer. This past winter, we had 12 snow days between Dec and March. The school year was extended through the week of June 23-27; in other words, that was when finals took place. If you took the Calc AP exam, you took it around May 7th, leaving almost SEVEN more weeks of instruction to be conducted. In this example, the exam did NOT represent the skills learned by all students on that one specific day.</p>
<p>I agree that standardized tests give colleges an objective way to evaluate applicants. However, to make it fair, perhaps students should only be able to take the tests one time. Our friend’s son attends Stanford. He is an excellent student but then many of his high school classmates, who did not get into Stanford, were also excellent students. I think one thing that set him apart was the fact that he had perfect SAT scores. I was really impressed and proud of him when I heard this.</p>
<p>Until his parents let slip that he took the SAT six times. </p>
<p>@cbrand One time?No. Sorry, but I believe people should always have a chance to retake because one time is not enough. It’s up to the individual themselves however many times they want to take the SAT. </p>