<p>Very interesting!</p>
<p>Fascinating. Well Hampshire has always been known for its non traditional way of thinking, and it has always relied on teacher evaluations rather than strictly grades for undergrads, so it doesn’t completely surprise me.</p>
<p>Interesting! They hadn’t turned off the incoming spigot or as least as far as College Board is concerned, my son already had his scores sent to Hampshire last month. I’ll be interested in the admissions office presentation when we visit this summer.</p>
<p>My son is a '10 so starts his last year next year (I can’t believe it - it’s gone way too fast!) and he did submit after the fact. It definitely will be interesting to see how it’s handled. Sarah Lawrence College for a time was no test but I believe reinstated them as test optional due to U.S. news and world report rankings <em>rolls eyes</em>. </p>
<p>I suspect that Hampshire places little value on their U.S. News & World Report college ranking. Although some students may have relied on good SAT/ACT scores to overcome an unimpressive GPA, it strikes me that test scores tend to indicate ‘potential’, while course grades tend to indicate ‘ability to apply potential’. Given that test scores were already optional, this will probably have little effect on who does/doesn’t get in. On the other hand, Hampshire may prove to be more attractive to students interested in social justice and equality:</p>
<p>“The tests more accurately reflect family economic status than potential for college success. That standardized testing can pose racial, class, gender, and cultural barriers to equal opportunity is now widely understood…”
<p>^^^ agree re: the U.S. News and World Report rankings. My younger son attends Bates College. Bates is a test optional school (and has been since 1985). Their former dean of admissions just published this longitudinal study regarding their findings of students who chose to submit test scores vs. those who did not. It’s very interesting and absolutely supports what Hampshire is doing: <a href=“NPR reports on ‘first-of-its-kind’ national study challenging the value of standardized tests | News | Bates College”>http://www.bates.edu/news/2014/02/18/npr-standardized-test-hiss-report/</a></p>
<p>^^^New research reveals the shocking results that students who earned good high school grades went on to earn good college grades.</p>
<p>I was stunned. STUNNED I tell ya!</p>
<p>I just received a letter from President Jonathan Lash, giving a few more details:</p>
<p>"…we interviewed students who are flourishing in order to figure out what qualities help them get the most from our curriculum. Using what we learned, we’re now orienting our admission program to bring to Hampshire those students who are the right fit for our unique approach. This means that as we make admissions even more selective, class sizes will be smaller…</p>
<p>…Hamsphire will be the only college in the nation that doesn’t accept SAT scores on its application. Instead, our admissions criteria will emphasize the story told by the high school transcript (looking for rigor, breadth, trajectory, and achievement), expanded essay questions, signs of self-motivation and initiative, and purposeful engagement in the community."</p>
<p>I will be interested in how they glean signs of self-motivation and initiative. Based on the number and length of essay questions my kids had to address on their Hampshire applications, I’m thinking that any student who is willing to respond to ‘expanded essay questions’ will be displaying some significant self-motivation and initiative. Or, at least persistence!</p>
<p>Last week, the Washington Post published an article about schools that dramatically rose or fell in the U.S. News and World Report rankings:</p>
<p>"Hampshire College, which had been ranked 110th in 2013-2014, was dropped from the liberal arts ranking after it decided it would not consider SAT or ACT scores in admissions. ‘We’re not going to get into a big fight with U.S. News,’ said Hampshire’s dean of admissions, Meredith Twombly. ‘Obviously I question their logic and their rationale.’ "</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/us-news-college-rankings-amid-predictability-some-major-shifts/2014/09/08/a2e17efc-3774-11e4-9c9f-ebb47272e40e_story.html”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/us-news-college-rankings-amid-predictability-some-major-shifts/2014/09/08/a2e17efc-3774-11e4-9c9f-ebb47272e40e_story.html</a></p>
<p>I imagine that few families are going to be deterred from applying to Hampshire because it used to be 110th, and now it isn’t ranked. I mean, its not like a 110th-place ranking is going to impress anyone interested in enrolling in an elite school. </p>
<p>It is also interesting that some schools clearly ‘game’ the system with the explicit purpose of rising higher in the USNWR rankings.</p>
<p>In a response to a September 15 article about college Enrollment administrators in the Chronicle of Higher Education (“The Hottest Seat on Campus” - <a href=“The Hottest Seat on Campus”>http://chronicle.com/article/The-Hottest-Seat-on-Campus/148777/</a> - requires a subscription to view though), Hampshire President Jonathan Lash advocated for ‘test blind’ admissions and financial aid evaluation: <a href=“Letters: One ‘Test-Blind’ College’s Mission: ‘Be Our Own Best Self’”>http://chronicle.com/blogs/letters/one-test-blind-colleges-mission-be-our-own-best-self/</a></p>
<p>That’s a good letter.</p>
Inside Higher Education posted an article today, “Test-Blind Success” (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/09/21/hampshire-reports-successful-admissions-year-going-test-blind) that cites the latest results from Hampshire going ‘test blind’:
"In the past, applicants could have used the Common Application and one ‘Why Hampshire?’ question. This year, without test scores to consider, the college kept its previous requirements, but added two essays and a graded high school paper. Those additions meant that students who might have been casual applicants, figuring it was easy enough to add one more college on the Common Application, opted not to apply, Twombly said.
The numbers back up [Meredith Twombley’s, Dean of Enrollment] theory that those who did apply were more serious about the college than were some applicants in years past – and they also are more diverse:
The freshman class that enrolled has 380 students, up from 331 a year ago.
Those gains reflect a nearly 50 percent increase in the yield rate (the percentage of accepted applicants who enroll), from 18 to 26 percent.
The percentage of minority students increased from 26 to 31 percent. (That figure covers all American, nonwhite students, a majority of whom are black or Latino.)
The percentage of students whose parents never attended college increased from 12 to 18 percent.
The number of international students increased from 10 to 27. (While those numbers are small, Twombly noted that conventional wisdom holds that potential international students and their parents tend to be particularly reliant on rankings.)"
Those results are interesting! However, I wonder if the article is entirely accurate. When both our kids applied to Hampshire ('06 and '09) they had to submit more than two essays, as well as a graded analytic paper from high school. So I doubt that these items were ‘added’ just last year to the supplemental application.
The Washington Post picked up in the Inside Higher Ed article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/09/25/what-one-college-discovered-when-it-stopped-accepting-satact-scores/
It is interesting to view the readers’ comments, which tend toward a negative reaction to the news that Hampshire’s no ACT/SAT policy seems to be yielding a better group of students.
This came out in other outlets as well. My Hampshire son’s sibling on the west coast mentioned yesterday that it was on the news out there. Great publicity for the College, I would think.
P.S. The WaPo comments section is a cesspool, always has been
I don’t even “go there” re: the comments section. So nasty. My younger son attends Bates College, who’s long been test optional (since 1985 I think). This is 10 years old but the numbers are still holding up: http://www.bates.edu/news/2005/10/01/sat-study/ I’m proud of Hampshire! And love that it’s in my newsfeed as “trending”.
I did read a lot of the comments. While largely infuriating, it was interesting and instructive. The difference between test optional, where an institution is still basically part of the machine, vs. what Hampshire has done, by refusing to participate further in the US News and College Board revenue-generating schemes – really pushed some people’s buttons. Very interesting how threatening some commenters seemed to find this idea.
Sarah Lawrence was no test for awhile too and then caved and is back to test optional. I thought Bates’ study was interesting since it showed there was no difference statistically between kids who took the SAT or ACT vs. kids who elected to not report.
Time Magazine had a nice article two weeks ago, “Bubble Trouble for Standardized Tests” (get it?) - http://time.com/4057309/standardized-testing/ . It notes the growing number of colleges that are test optional, as well as the competition between the SAT and ACT tests (ACT is winning). Also, a discussion of SAT and ACT tests being marketed to public school districts as placement and ability tests.
A companion online article featured Hampshire College, “Meet the College that Doesn’t want to See your SAT Score”
http://time.com/money/4065387/hampshire-college-test-blind-no-sat-scores/
It pretty much covered the same ground as previous articles cited in this thread.
[Either or both of these articles may be behind a pay wall]
Meredith Twombly, Hampshire’s Dean of Enrollment, wrote a good response to the Obama Administration’s ‘Testing Action Plan’, in Ed Week:
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/op_education/2015/11/standardized_test_scores_do_not_predict.html
“…our institutional research team led a study to identify the attributes of students most likely to succeed here. We asked faculty members: Who are our best third- and fourth-year students? We interviewed those students then looked at their admissions files from three or four years earlier. We didn’t intend to look at the SAT or ACT in particular, but it quickly became obvious: There was no correlation between high SAT or ACT scores and success at Hampshire. The test scores were poor predictors of success.”