<p>
Actually, that’s not the reason the tests were developed or applied in the first place. The concept was that it was an aptitude (IQ) test and it was an outgrowth of some very unsavory ideas about intelligence that coincided with the eugenics movement. See: <a href=“Interviews - Nicholas Lemann | Secrets Of The Sat | FRONTLINE | PBS”>http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/sats/interviews/lemann.html</a></p>
<p>I am not going to go at length to explain why @fallenchemist is wrong in his response to @rhandco but I think the Dean of Admissions at Georgetown says it all in his answer to the following question.</p>
<p>Do you ever get directives from the top of the university administration, whether they’re saying “lower the acceptance rate” or “get more Catholics”?</p>
<p>"No, I don’t. It may be because I’ve been here for so long, or it may be that we’ve been able to develop a process that gives confidence to those at the university’s highest level. Obviously the provost is learning, and he’s very interested in what’s going on in admissions because he comes from a background of statistics (Robert Groves was previously director of the U.S. Census). He’s very interested in the numbers and he’s fascinated about what we do and how we do it. But he’s brand new. He’s learning Georgetown. I’ve known the president since he came here, so he’s a good friend, and he’s very supportive. And the board – I know lots of people on the board, and they feel good about the big question that we feel drives us.</p>
<p>I’ll give you a great example: it’s the University of Chicago right now. They had a new president who came in and said, “You know, Chicago’s got this quirky admissions situation where they’re getting the ideal college students going through the process. But Chicago is as good as Columbia, and we only get 10,000 applications and they get 30,000, so we need 30,000 applications.” So they changed everything. Chicago was driven by trying to compare itself to Columbia, and they made that a big part of their application. And now, Johns Hopkins is being driven by having compare itself to Chicago.</p>
<p>We don’t have any particular school to compare ourselves to that causes us to have to act. If our pull is 10,000, that’d be one thing, but Georgetown has a great brand, great popularity and a very strong position. There has been no zealousness to just simply drive the numbers up for the sake of appearance, which we could easily do. Right now, we take a very responsible approach to who we even invite – we only write to about 40,000 people. Whereas obviously, Chicago is writing to much, much more than that. If we went to the common application, my guess is we’d add 10,000 people, because they would be people who’d say, “Oh, Georgetown? Yeah, it’s a high profile institution. I’ll check the box.” We’d only be adding people who otherwise wouldn’t have gone to the effort. They would look really good because their other options are Harvard, Princeton and Yale, but somebody who might have gone through the effort might end on our waiting list. How does that help anybody?"</p>
<p>The Dean provides some more insightful information in the following link:
<a href=“Admissions Dean Talks Staying Competitive”>http://www.thehoya.com/admissions-dean-talks-staying-competitive/</a></p>
<p>That’s very interesting. And doesn’t at all address that I was saying that your analogy to athletic recruits was way off base. But even so, the Dean says it himself.
So he is saying that if their pull was 10,000 which is about what Chicago’s was before adopting the Common App, he might have considered it also. But apparently their pull was already higher. Besides, this is a pretty singular point of view. So essentially you are contending that he is right for everyone and all those many, many more schools that take either the Common App, the Universal App, or both are wrong. OOOK.</p>
<p>I also think his characterization of why Chicago went to the Common App is a bit simplistic and facile. Maybe it is just as possible that Chicago thought they were not reaching a lot of really good students. How does he know? Like it or not, college admissions is a competitive business. And I do mean business, or at least a critical department within the businesses that are universities. And like all businesses, they use the tools that are available to them to increase their audience and brand. What’s wrong with that? Georgetown chooses not to, for now. I’ll bet you a few bucks that when this guy retires and they get someone new, they move to the Common App. Just my guess, not worth much.</p>
<p>So you seem to be saying that what is wrong with the greater reach is that it somehow is dishonest to applicants, or at the least creates hope in them that is somehow wrong. I completely disagree with that, but as I said before to the extent that happens it is analogous to someone advertising a $100,000 car to me. It might make me want it, but I sure know I cannot afford it. In this case receiving literature from Harvard or Stanford or whomever might make a student want to be at that school, but if they don’t have the resume they just don’t. They know, or should know, that these schools are incredibly competitive. You cannot blame the schools for making themselves known to those students, just like I cannot blame the auto company for making me want a car I can’t have.</p>
<p>You know, the flip side is that these schools for years did pretty much what you are suggesting, and everyone said that made them appear snobby and exclusive and pretty much saying to the rest of the world “we really don’t want your kind”. I guess it just proves you really can’t win no matter what you do. They decided to “err” on the side of being more inclusive.</p>
<p>@fallenchemist Do you realize that just 10 years ago UChicago had a respectable admit rate of 38% and Stanford’s was 13%. Today they are 8% and 5%, respectively. This trend is the same with nearly every top college.</p>
<p>To keep lowering admission rates from such low levels requires even greater number of applications. To reduce Stanford’s admission rate from 5% to 4.5% next year it will need to attract an additional 10% more applicants or about 4,000 more from the approximately 40,000 who applied this year. The same applies to all the other colleges that want to keep up with Stanford. </p>
<p>It has become an ugly game and our sons, daughters, and young high school graduates are the pawns. Do you really believe that Stanford doesn’t have enough qualified applicants from the Southeastern States from the existing pool of applicants to complete its objective of enrolling students from that region?</p>
<p>This thread started out as an inquiry as to why a growing number of schools had gone test optional. I gave my opinion on that. Then the discussion morphed into admission rates and other issues that are tangentially related to the original topic of this thread. I gave my opinion on that. I also assumed that when I stated something that the context of every thing that was discussed previously would be incorporated into any additional replies.</p>
<p>I was wrong. Somehow you have taken my athletic recruiting analogy to be far more than what it was. I never intended to suggest that academic students be wined and dined like top college athletes the admissions officers sitting in the classroom observing a targeted student. In your own words that’s absurd. My analogy was blown into something that it was not suppose to be by you and others. </p>
<p>I just wanted to convey the idea that when a college athlete is recruited, the college really wants the student to come whereas these top schools send out flyers, emails and other contacts it is to garner more applications and not necessarily really wants the student attached to the application. How could they when the admission rate is already so low. </p>
<p>There have been others who have said that these contacts are no more than informational contacts to make a student aware of a college to put it on the student’s radar. This might be true if the information is given once or even twice to a graduating h.s. student but that is not the case. </p>
<p>These colleges in their zeal to get an additional applicants will send out 10-15 contacts or as many as needed to get their targeted student to apply. Telling them how outstanding their academic achievements are and how they would be a great fit to the college. Some colleges even sending t-shirts to show how interested they are of the student and many even waiving the application fees to further incentive to send in the application. </p>
<p>What is a young person to think when such attention is given by the likes of Stanford, UChicago, Harvard, et al?
Of course these young people know the low admit rates, but when they are given this amount of attention, they are led to believe that they are truly wanted and the low admit rate is for others and not for them because why else would UChicago send them a T-shirt or Stanford offer to waive the application fee or Harvard send out 14 different contacts to a student. </p>
<p>These actions by colleges are just like college coaches who show love to a new recruit. The only difference in my opinion is that the colleges really only want the application and not the person submitting it because unlike the coach who wants the recruit to play for his team, 90+% of the students who apply to these colleges are told they are not wanted.</p>
<p>@voiceofreason66 - I appreciate that this is your opinion, and I am certainly not dismissing it at all. I think there are elements of truth in it. Although I continue to think that the athletic recruit analogy is a very poor one. The coaches already know a lot more about that recruit before they even meet them than an admissions office can possibly know about a typical applicant. And, as I have said repeatedly, at the level of “knowing they want that student at their university” the coaches are looking at maybe 150 athletes for 20-30 slots or whatever. That is far more manageable than the thousands of slots for academic students, where they cannot “know” they want which student because there is no equivalent to game film until they get the full application where they see EC’s, recommendations, and essays. Therefore different mentalities and particulars are involved completely.</p>
<p>Yes, I am sure there are feelings of “keeping-up-with-the-Jones” involved in many of these admissions offices. But as any business course will tell you, the consequences of not doing so can be devastating down the road. And when I say keeping up, I don’t mean that they have to match or beat numbers that are already close. I highly, highly doubt that Stanford feels a need to get their number down from 5% to 4.5%, or that Harvard feels driven to top Stanford as having the lowest number. What they do want is to make sure they are seeing the same top tier students that the other is. They really do want them to come. Unlike the coach, they have to use different methods to make sure that student is considering applying. You think it is over the top. Maybe it is. It wouldn’t be the first time that kind of thing has happened. But I see it neither as pernicious, as you seem to think it is, nor as big a problem for the student on the other end of it. Most students, from what I can see, just throw them away. Some get excited. Do you know how many students I see think that U Chicago is a state school? Maybe they need to market that heavily.</p>
<p>You used a single school to make a point, I will do the same. My alma mater markets very heavily as well. Free app, easy application for selected students, etc. 44,000 applications a few years back, most of any private school in the nation that year. They have cut back the last couple of years, but it is still quite a lot. I cannot even begin to count the number of students who were not considering Tulane in the least or hadn’t even heard of it, got “pulled in” by the marketing, and ended up finding it to be the best school for them. Couldn’t it really just be that simple? Yes, their acceptance rate went way down, because the number of applications skyrocketed. Should we have denied all those students the chance to discover the school they ended up being extremely happy at just because many others applied and didn’t get accepted? Or just because people such as you think it looks unseemly or that there are ulterior motives? Really?</p>
<p>I will make one other point. Took me a while to find the data I wanted. You say:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Now I think we can agree that for the tippy-top schools like U Chicago one of their main goals is to get the very best students. Best in this case meaning most academically accomplished.</p>
<p>Did you know that in roughly that same time period you mention (15 years instead of 10), the average verbal SAT score has gone from 671-740, and the average math score has gone from 678-745??!!?? That is a stunning increase. Or if you want to narrow it down to just the Common App Era (for Chicago, which means starting in 2009), which is when the really big jump in applicants started occurring, those scores went from 709-740 and 705-745 respectively. That is incredibly huge considering the rarefied air that level was already in. So besides the extremely plausible reason I gave above of making the university known to more students, it also fully supports my contention that they did not want to fall behind in the race for the best students, which they were.</p>
<p>Oh, and another big goal for any school is retention rate. In those same years Chicago went from about an 80% retention rate to now something more in the 90’s%. A natural outgrowth of more academically talented students.</p>
<p>I honestly think that rather seals the point.</p>
<p>why aren’t AP scores given more weight? (know if the school teachers for those classes are good in the college’s profile about schools). It’s a standardized measure of what one learned in the class and more standardized than grades which can vary immensely from school to school or even from teacher to teacher in the same school (at my school for ap lang comp, one teacher gives 1 A to about the 50 students she has in 2 classes, the other teacher gives A’s to 75% of her students). anyways in college, grades are based more on testing than on daily homework/prep that is used in high school. </p>
<p>A few key points that may be getting lost in the thread:</p>
<p>1) The SAT is much better at measuring general college readiness for typical students than it is about measuring differences among the top students. It is ridiculous to think that the SAT, or any test, can be all things to all people - the difference between a 740 and an 800 in Math is a big percentile difference, but in some years amounts to only getting two questions wrong. A brilliant aspiring Mathematician with a careless error or two could be denied admission to the most elite schools, if SAT were used narrowly to distinguish among the top students. Even worse, the Math on the SAT covers subjects (Algebra and Geometry) that that aspiring Mathematician covered years earlier (some students like this take Calculus as Sophomores and Juniors, so could have forgotten some of the Geometry they took in 8th or 9th grade). The SAT is not as good at distinguishing among the top few percent of high school seniors, as it is about giving a broad indication of college readiness in three key areas.</p>
<p>So perhaps the Ivy League, MIT, Stanford, Rice, Duke, Notre Dame, Chicago etc. should accept an alternative aptitude test that is meant to measure differences among top students or should weight hard IB and AP Tests (BC Calculus, Chemistry, Biology etc.) and Subject (SAT 2) tests more highly for those students who have access to strong teachers at good schools (since not all students have access to well taught AP or IB tests).</p>
<p>2) Challenging students to be ‘more college ready’ in an objective way is not a bad thing. For all of its flaws, the writing section on the SAT does measure useful writing skills, and the reading section does correlate with the ability to read challenging literature and ‘college level’ texts, and the Math section is a reasonable ‘bare minimum’ (algebra/geometry) although not suitable for testing future engineers.</p>
<p>If preparing for the SAT causes students to read more ‘hard’ books, this is not a bad thing given the general decline in reading.</p>
<p><a href=“National Endowment for the Arts - Reading - The New York Times”>National Endowment for the Arts - Reading - The New York Times;
<p>@theanaconda - it’s a good question. While what you say about grading varying from teacher to teacher is true, I guess the colleges just figure that they are relying on the grades in the rest of the transcript being representative, so why stop now? I think also, in their minds, the AP test is more about getting credit, while taking a lot of AP courses and getting good grades is more about overall rigor, which they weigh more due to experience as to its predictive value. If the kid ends up having to take chemistry or Calc again, so what? At least I guess that is what they are basically saying. Also, as mentioned before, most of the AP scores won’t come in until after the acceptance decision has been made.</p>
<p>@2018RiceParent Colleges of that caliber do look at distinguishing competitive performances- MIT, for example, considers AMC/AIME/USAMO performance.</p>
<p>@2018RiceParent
uh no serious aspiring mathematician for a college like MIT, stanford etc. should get a 740 on the math section, it’s ridiculously simple and even if they forgot material they didn’t forget basic math. …
But I like the idea of an alternate aptitude test, there are plenty of people who can ace the math portion of the SAT test and it barely says anything. </p>
<p>any mis-bubble will drop one down 20-30 points usually, an infinite amount of math prowess cannot prevent one from occasionally filling in the wrong letter on a 5 hour test</p>
<p>@dividerofzero That is a good example. Any student who scores high enough on the AMC 10 to qualify for the AIME has demonstrated Math skills (and aptitude) far beyond what the SAT can measure. Qualifying for AIME would indicate top 2.5% of the small sample pool of those motivated enough to take the AMC 10 test. For an aspiring engineer or scientist knowing their AMC 10 (or 12) score might be more useful than knowing their SAT Math score (although to be fair, public magnet schools can provide significant and useful preparation for AMC10, preparation that a ‘typical’ student would not get).</p>
<p>@2018RiceParent - I think your points are very good and well made. I would just say, though, that beyond the additional info the schools get from the rest of the resume besides test scores, they are generally content to accept the fact that there is a certain arbitrariness to who they accept out of the, for example, 4,000 completely qualified applicants that essentially have no differentiable aspects to their resumes to make 2,000 offers. An embarrassment of riches, if you will. But short of a crystal ball, it eventually comes down to, for no reason that can be logically asserted, just choosing the ones that they feel are the best fits. And I do think that in that evaluation, they really don’t differentiate between the person that scores 2300 and the one that scores 2370. It drives some people nuts, but I take them at their word that they truly believe, as you say, that within a certain range there is no real difference.</p>
<p>So sure, at a school like MIT especially (assuming the person is applying for engineering or math and not econ or straight chemistry or one of their other fine majors) there might be value in demonstrating a math aptitude beyond what the SAT can show. But I would say at most elite and near elite schools there is simply some luck involved once you make it to that final group of “equals”. Certainly everything I have observed over the last 10 years and more seems to fit that model.</p>
<p>Regarding the comments above about focusing on AP/IB scores more that SAT/ACT scores, I’d expect many of the selective colleges that place little emphasis on AP/IB scores do so because different students have wildly differing degrees of availability to AP/IB classes and quality of instruction in those classes. A student who attends a higher income private school that offers many AP classes with excellent instruction is likely to have a huge advantage over a student who attends a small, lower income public school that offers no/few APs. The excellent private school kid is likely to have a wide selection of available APs to choose from and excellent instructors that cover the material of the course well and also assists students in AP exam prep. The kid who attends a lower quality public school is likely to have a lower quality of instruction and exam prep. He likely has fewer APs available, which puts him at a disadvantage to the top private school kid, even if he does manage top scores. He has the option to self study for exams instead of taking a class, but self studying also puts him at a disadvantage. Some of those kids are diamonds in the rough, who’d accomplish amazing things, if they were given the resources and opportunities available at an excellent college; and many selective colleges want to increase representation of such students. Some colleges have de-emphasized SAT/ACT for similar reasons.</p>
<p>As an example, I have a relative who attended a small, rural school that offered no AP classes. It did not even offer honors or accelerated classes. Most students at the HS planned to stay in the farming community and did not attend college. If there was a strong focus on AB/IB, she’d have little chance of admission. Fortunately for her, selective colleges saw past her background with fewer opportunities, and she was admitted to Stanford and an ivy.</p>
<p>@Data10
That’s why I said asses within the strength of each school. Or maybe only use it for students who came from strong private or public schools that have that much access to AP classes with good instructors. After all, AP classes are the closest to college most students can get. I agree that students who go to worse high schools shouldn’t be discriminated against. </p>
<br>
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<p>What is the average number of AP among admitted students at the most selective school in the country? Yes, why is that number at Stanford low enough to be counted on … one hand? </p>
<p>Why is so that students who now routinely report more than a dozen AP do NOT fare THAT well in admissions at the most selective schools? </p>
<p>What is that they know about the mile-wide but inch-deep tests that reward rote memorization? Perhaps they do remember that the AP were designed for Advanced Placement but not for admissions. </p>
<p>Schools such as Stanford expect students to take the hardest curriculum available at their school, but also do not believe that it means piling up a bunch of questionable AP as trophies. </p>
<p>Go figure! </p>
<p>@theanaconda AP scores are given weight at top schools. It’s CC that thinks they are only for college credit. Been there. It can be one reason you don’t want to wait to load up all your AP classes for senior year-- no scores. </p>
<p>Why is so that students who now routinely report more than a dozen AP do NOT fare THAT well in admissions at the most selective schools? Because it looks ridiculous when it’s obvious it’s all the kid climbed after. Or maybe he founded the pie club! </p>
<p>Many need to climb out of their hierarchical thinking- this kid has better gpa and scores- and wow, look at all those APs- therefore he is better. Better at what and better for what? The APs are not college courses. </p>
<p>As for low resourced high schools in low SES areas, get over the stereotypes. - I mean, both your own pictures of baffled kids magically getting A’s in classes that don’t cover the material and dumb adcoms sitting there wide eyed. </p>
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<p>It might be common sense to think that AP scores are given weight in admissions. After all, why would an adcom dismiss good scores in meaningful APs? Yet, where is the evidence that:</p>
<ol>
<li>The students who do NOT take many APs are penalized? </li>
<li>That the scores are given MUCH weight? After all, that poor Euro cousin of the AP releases most senior grades well after admissions are decided.<br></li>
</ol>
<p>There is a lot of overlap at play. Students who take several AP in high school boost their GPA and rankings. The better students rarely build a curriculum without a solid number of APs. Yet, how about schools that are selective with the progression of honor courses, pre-AP, and pretty much restrict the full AP for the … Senior year? Does the adcom dismiss the GC appraisal that such schedule is the toughest available despite having no AP in the Junior year? How about schools that have a very tough dual credit program? </p>
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<p>By the way, I wrote that rhetorical question to support my opinion that APs form a part of the application puzzle, but a much smaller one than most think!. And fortunately so! </p>
<p>Most important is the right APs, when available, then doing well. And using your freaking AP sci or math teacher for an LoR, when you want STEM.<br>
The bottom line is it all has to “make sense.” </p>
<p>If a hypothetical school limits AP, fine, you still look for the rigor and performance- and that it makes sense. Why would the adcom dismiss the GC saying it’s most rigorous…if it IS? Although they still look at the actual transcript, for choices and achievement. So many on CC seem to think they don’t. Ie, that they won’t notice you have a record of, say, B’s in math. In that case, even if the GC said “most rigorous,” that yes, you chose most rigorous classes, the performance can be an issue.</p>
<p>What really comes up and should concern kids and CC is when the school didn’t offer AP or IB (or limited them) and the kid got middling grades in what he did take and then turns to the AP policy as an excuse. We see that all the time on CC. “My hs didn’t offer AP this or that, will my reaches understand?” But the grade record isn’t there. </p>
<p>Ha, good DE speaks for itself. If the hs program includes it, the GC is likely to check most rigorous. If the kid did it on his own, its pretty clear how he took on the challenges. </p>