@socaldad2002 – It’s an equity issue too. I’m sure if you look at the kids who prepped and had scores they were happy with by Feb. of Junior year that would be a set overrepresented by upper middle class/wealthy students and relatively few URMs.
I think part of this is that many folks (myself included) don’t really trust the TO.
I also think colleges that use scores for auto merit should be re-thinking. Not easy or comfortable for them, but they need to do it.
TO is forcing kids to apply to a ton of schools. We don’t. Know how seriously each school is taking it. D21 did take the ACT. She studied the summer before junior year, then got really sick for Sept test. Couldn’t take it. Took it in October and did ok on two subjects but not the others.
Got back PSAT score (in Nov I think?) and realized that was probably her test but had been prepping for second chance on ACT so didn’t want to switch right away. Took Dec test and did better but it still seemed like her SAT would likely be higher based on her PSAT. So she moved over to SAT in late Jan and was getting ready for mid- March test. Studied maybe ten hours a week for seven weeks. It was cancelled. As was April and May and June and now Aug too. She waiting for Sept and Oct tests. I’m not holding my breath.
She has taken maybe six full ACT practice tests and studied with the Black Book too Same with SAT and was hitting much higher scores but has had no test. I don’t think this should be held against her. She’s not a lesser student because we didn’t hire a tutor or figure out the SAT was her better test in time to get it in before Feb. If she gets into fewer schools because of that, that’s pretty sad and no fault of her own.
TO is the lesser of 3 evils. There are three options:
Require a score. College requires a test score similar to previous years. Patently unfair as many kids will not have a score and will not apply to the college.
Test blind. Colleges can’t see any test scores no matter how well you did on them. Unfair to a large segment of students who planned for, took the test before spring and tested well.
Test optional. Students that don’t have a test, don’t have to submit one. Students who were able to take a test and are happy with the score, can submit them. Probably the best option of the three as it allows families who are concerned about test safety to forgo a test and can still apply to any college that is TO, which is a lot of them.
I really hope that colleges look at the whole file and don’t ding an applicant without a test score. Will be interesting to see if we ever find out what percent of accepted students did not submit a score this coming year?
With so much grade inflation in HS, it will be a challenge for colleges to sort through so many applications without standardized test scores. I don’t envy their job this year.
I think test optional is the way to go as well - it leaves the most options for both colleges and applicants.
I asked my daughter which instate school she wanted to apply to (just in case something happens and she decides she needs or wants to stay close). I thought she was going to say UIUC or Loyola, maybe DePaul. “If I have to stay close, I’m going to try for Northwestern.” Interesting, I did not see that coming. I think I may insist on a non lottery school in Illinois as well, so that means 7 applications here.
How do kids from your high school do in NU admissions? They used to take a dozen or more from our school but about three years ago that came to a grinding halt. Usually three or four in ED and they are all legacies and then maybe one or two in RD. And that’s with 120 applying. Crazy. D21 is a double legacy but I don’t see her there. We’ve been told legacy only counts in ED. I’ll be curious to see who from her class gets in.
No idea. We always send a handful of kids, but they could all be ED for all I know. She’s on the “good side” of the Naviance graph, but there are more waitlists and no’s than yeses even on the good side.
Edit - I take that back. Class of 2020 is only sending 2 kids. Maybe one or two more got in and chose to go elsewhere, but probably not; I’ll bet they were ED
Yeah rough admit for the Chicago area kids.
Out of curiosity I checked Naviance for Northwestern. 4 - 5 years ago they had 40-50 kids apply, but that number has increased substantially each year. Last year there were 160+! Of course the number of kids accepted has remained relatively consistent (roughly 15-25, depending on the year). But NU’s marketing efforts are clearly working.
Our Naviance is not that great. The follow up with the seniors must not be good, so after 2015 it stopped reporting accepted/attending numbers - all I can see are application numbers and then checks, circles and x’s in the graph, which aren’t labeled year to year. Same general number of applications over the last 6 years - low of 42, high of 59.
@3kids2dogs – On our Naviance, in the graphs a check indicates acceptance, a circle is waitlist, and X is rejection. The waitlist circle has too colors – one is just WL and the is WL/accepted. Agree not labelled by year.
I guess the question is if they’ve added new data for the checks, circles, Xes since 2015 – I think you’d have to ask your GC’s office. It’s not as much value if they haven’t.
@AlmostThere2018 - I’m sure the checks are updated, it’s just the bar graphs that aren’t updated - though I checked both DePaul and Loyola’s last night and those HAVE been updated - all the way through 2020, and some other schools on D’s list have also been updated both acceptances and attending and some are updated with with acceptances, but not attending. It’s so odd, but not that important in the grand scheme of things. I guess the data out is only as good as the data in…
Our bar graphs on Naviance aren’t correct right now either. Naviance itself must still be updating since the format changed earlier this summer. Even 2019 bar graphs are incorrect.
There is a thread on CC about who does TO help. People have posted all sorts of theories, but the reality is TO benefits who ever the individual college wants it to benefit. At some schools it will be close to test blind and at others it will be the cover for accepting wealthy kids.
@socaldad2002 – I guess we just have to agree to disagree that it’s ‘unfair’ to make a decision that negatively impacts early test takers. Since that’s mostly a measure of privilege, I don’t think rewarding early test taking should be a consideration in policy decisions for college admission. ‘Early bird get the worm’ isn’t really a thing in standardized testing; never has been.
My S was one of the lucky ones who took a test this month, so I’m not advocating for test blind b/c of my kid – I just think it’s the right call at this point given public health concerns and the inability of test companies to enforce safe testing environments. I came to this after reading the horror stories from so many July ACT site.
The only lever to ‘turn off’ this madness this fall is for colleges to stay they don’t count. Otherwise, test companies, parents and students will keep trying to test and given the ACT debacle this month it just seems like the wrong call. Too much stress and safety concerns. No kid should worry about catching COVID sitting in a test for 4 hours and endangering their parents or grandparents.
Again, if ACT or College Board could guarantee and enforce appropriate social distancing and mask wearing, I would feel differently. But they are not set up to do that as evidenced by this month’s ACT, and that’s what’s changed my mind from thinking TO was fine to now thinking it should be test blind and all tests cancelled this Fall.
@AlmostThere2018 I have to disagree with one statement you made. Namely that “early” test takers were “mostly a measure of privilege”. Why was it privilege that my kid took an SAT in December of 2019 and an ACT in February of 2020. We had planned that out a year in advance with the idea of take a second ACT or SAT in the spring depending on which test she did better on and be done with testing by the end of her Junior. (That did not happen as her ACT was cancelled twice) And then concentrate this summer and next fall on filling out applications and writing essays.
Her getting the tests scores had nothing to do with “privilege”. Rather it had everything to do with our individual plan for her college admission process…
Should colleges be activities “blind” because some schools have robotics teams or super competitive bands etc and other schools don’t. Those types of extra circulars could be considered a product of “privilege.” I would think not.
I think in any holistic approach a student who had a test score should be able to have it considered in the application process.
The fact that some schools may use the scores in different ways should not be a reason to preclude schools from considering the test score of students who have them as part of the holistic consideration of that student just as they do with robotics teams etc.
@burghdad – Yes, there are plenty of ECs that also result from privilege. Heck, the whole education system reflects privilege, but I digress.
Standardized tests are supposed to be one aspect of admissions that are an equalizer. (Of course, research increasingly shows that’s not true – which is why the UC system voted to discontinue using test scores even b4 COVID.)
I have very high confidence that if you analyzed the set of students who had a score in hand before COVID cancellations it would very much skew toward high socio-economic students in high wealth schools – i.e., privilege.
@burghdad but it is a privilege to even know to take tests early. For goodness sake, your kids have an active parent on CC who knows to do that! Many around here, even at our competitive high school, don’t bother to take a test until spring or maybe they take one as a baseline in Dec without prep and then prep for spring. The top 10-15% likely feel like they can take the test earlier because they’ve had enough math but lots of kids here take algebra 2/trig as juniors so they aren’t even really ready for the tests until later in junior year. And this is in a high SES town and at a well known high school. Tons of kids across the country start their testing in the spring, retake in summer or fall.
I don’t know how I feel about test blind but certainly TO is fine. The problem with TO is that no one is sure how schools will honestly use it. Most are not prepared to do holistic admissions. Test blind would truly even the playing field and some schools have chosen it. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out in May and if we see kids with super high grades and rigor not get into schools they maybe would have if they don’t have a score they want to use.
I don’t know about other districts, but in Chicago students aren’t required to pay for the in-school SAT administration. I absolutely agree that early (or, for that matter, any additional) tests are generally taken by students who have the financial ability, not to mention an understanding of the benefits of prep and/or testing multiple times. Even among D’s (mostly privileged) friends, she is one of VERY few who have a test under her belt. Everyone was waiting for the in-school administration in March. That’s the one they plan for all year.
@AlmostThere2018 and @homerdog you both make good points. I guess I think if you have a score in hand the school should be able to considerate it in the holistic application. As you may remember my D18 with 4.0 UW, 4.5UW 8APs also had a 35ACT which couldn’t get her into Vandy, UNC, UVA and a couple of Ivies. So that 35 ACT was just part of her application which didn’t get into any of those top schools. Don’t think it would be any different this year in TO.
At least in our area, I do not believe there are any competitive kids, at least not many at all, that wait until spring of Junior year to take the SAT or ACT. There are plenty that do not get the score they want and hope they can improve it significantly. To me the ones that are privileged are those that take the test cold to get a feel for the test or see where they are at.
Along these lines, are there any legitimate studies that show how many kids are truly “bad test takers”? With the GPA inflation and extensive opps for extra credit I do not think a comparison of GPA to SAT would necessarily capture it. I googled a bit but most of the results were on how to increase your scores. I am sure there are some kids that get nervous, etc but in my opinion that is just another reason to start the SAT earlier.