This makes sense if your students test well. I have two children who are strong students. Their grades, performance on IB assessments, and - in the case of my child who is a college sophomore - success at the college level confirm their abilities. However, they are mediocre standardized test takers. Their SAT/ACT scores are not a good representation of their abilities at all. There seems to be an assumption that all highly performing students have high test scores and that is not true (at least in our case.)
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Iâd love for 23 to get 2-4 EA apps done this weekend.
One school just has six short answers beyond the common app. Hoping 23 can knock that one out pretty quick.
Michigan and NEU will be more intense, I imagine.
23 needs to work on demonstrated interest for certain schools. Been hard to do due to fall sport, because virtual sessions conflict with practices and games.
We have to be done by December 10th due to other commitments.
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My son received his first acceptance to Duquesne in Pittsburgh. It was great to see a smile on his face. He took a photo of the letter and I heard him tell his friends that he got into college. I need to wait to hear about financial aid since the letter only had info about a merit scholarship.
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Congrats! Have you visited Pittsburgh? We did last summer (I had never been, despite living in this state for over 20 years). I really really liked it! There are some great foodie options in town, plus, a huge bonus: an actual real-life Penzeys spices store.
Just a reminder for those submitting EA apps. If you ARE submitting test scores, make sure request the official score reports now (donât wait until the application is submitted). Same for transcript and LOR requests from the school. In a few weeks your see posts from kids who had their applications moved to RD because all the supplemental material didnât make it in time.
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Yes, we are in the Philly metro area and in 2021 when my D23 was just starting to think of college⊠and had no idea what she wanted⊠I told her weâd begin in Philly so she could get a sense of big/small, urban/suburban, preppy/gritty, etc. It really is a terrific place to get a feel for so many different factors of college. One weekend and she knew exactly the feel/size she was looking for.
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Could not agree more. S24 had A in the class all year AP Euro), A on every test they took. Got a 2 on the AP exam. And only 50% of the students got a 3 or higher. In my mind that is a reflection of the way they were prepared for the test.
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Standardized test + GPA is the best predictor of college success. This has been shown in many large studies as well.
The point is that standardized tests do add value to the overall application and in my opinion, more than essays and ECs.
We have discussed this time and again and it makes very little sense to argue again.
At the end of the day, schools will decide whether they want to use tests or not. Some great schools are test optional and some require tests.
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This is a great point. Most schools will tell you what the deadline is for submitting ALL materials. In todayâs world where kids are applying to 20 colleges in some cases through common app, this is not taken into account.
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It really wouldnât be a debate at all if people werenât so fixated on applying/attending to a small set of schools.
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The grading for AP test can be subjective too. I forgot which class, my D22 had received a score of 3 in one of them, but her teacher appealed it right away and was corrected to 5.
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Agree not all students test well. I have one child who excels at standardized tests and was near perfect on SAT, and one who struggles with tests but works their tail off for good grades. The second one had much tougher challenges for admission. I donât think ever is going to be a perfect process for admissions. Just my personal opinion that at some point I prefer a standardized score for splitting hairs between candidates instead of a decision based upon non academic factors. I have children in both camps and it can be frustrating and hard to accept in the moment of being denied, but thatâs part of life and the student then chooses the best path offered.
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Which is why test optional is a good approach. IMO test blind is just as bad as test mandatory.
However, I also believe test optional schools should stop publishing the range of submitted scores.
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We donât see this issue the same way. I think there are plenty of academic factors to split hairs on other than test scores. I donât think being test optional affected my childâs admission decisions. I also think that professionals are able to navigate the nuance of an imperfect process better than I am. Maybe that trust is misplaced, but as you say, if their imprecise decisions result in a denial, students learn itâs part of life and choose the best path offered.
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Kindasorta. This is only true in the sense that building a predictive model is always improved by adding more factors, so of course standardized tests plus HS GPA will do a better job as a predictor of first-year college GPA* than either of them alone. Thatâs just the way math works. But thatâs kind of trivialâeither of those measures plus any other correlated quantitative measure will be a better predictor than the one item alone.
*Important: Not college success. We canât actually predict that.
The truth of that fact doesnât change the fact that HS GPA is so much more of the GPA+test model that if you leave out test scores, youâve still got a good modelâbut if you just go with standardized test scores alone, you donât have a strongly predictive model.
(And also, much cheering for @Dolemiteâs response.)
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If my 3.9 gpa student has great essays and letters of rec and a 36 ACT and is competing with another candidate with a 4.0 same ECâs, similar quality essays and LORs with a 28 ACT. Or a non-submission. Why would the 36 ACT not be a good way to differentiate and choose a candidate?
I feel like the anti- test parents are ones whose kids âdonât test wellâ
BTW- I was an A student in top 10 in HS with embarrassing test scores. But I still see the value in including them.
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There are many paths to high scores on APâs and some of them may include âteaching to the testâ or doing tons of sample questions from past tests, etc., but thatâs hardly the main difference between why kids do better and others donât. There are schools that stopped even calling their classes AP and donât match the curriculum closely, but they are rigorous and many of their kids choose to take the correlated APâs and do well on average. I had 3 kids take mostly the same AP course at their HS, many taught by the same teachers, and their average performance on the tests varied meaningfully (despite similar GPAâs). The first 2 got 1 x 5 each, a mix of 4âs and 3âs (and one 2). The other has gotten almost all 5âs (with 4 the lowest). Courses didnât change. They donât teach the test, do drills or practice tests, etc. But the one who got all 5âs has better mastered the material. The other two acknowledge that. He didnât do it through practice tests or prep books or tutors. He did it by absorbing the textbooks, creating tons of flash cards (that he took everywhere and used on any drive or waiting for food at dinner, etc.) etc. In two cases he didnât take the AP course, he just studied on his own (not using prep books, just textbooks).
There are bad test takers who have a disadvantage. But itâs also true that for most if you truly master the subject material, youâll do well on the tests. Show me a class where most students did poorly on the test, and on average I youâd find they have less mastery of the subject however you wanted to measure it. The quality of classes and teachers vary widely, as do grading systems (how much of the grade is subjectively graded projects, participation, extra credit, graded on a curve, etc.?) Grades and test scores together correlate into useful data. Dismissing the tests scores entirely does not.
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So true. My kiddo left the public school system Jr. year where she always had upper 90âs on her papers in English. Her new boarding school has a history of grade deflation. Her English class last year was taught by a brilliant published author who did not put grades on papers but wrote on my kiddoâs first paper âfair to goodâ. She did tons of writing in that class, had lots of great feedback on all assignments. Ended with an 89 for the year. She is a much better writer now and I am much prouder of that 89 than her public school 98. This kid got a 35/36 on English ACT sections.
Yes some schools know of name brand or well known schools, and their reputations, but for the ones that donât, the ACT score is important. There isnât truly a fair way to compare grades from one school to the next.
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I do think there are many âaverageâ as in 3.0-3.5 GPA kids who can do amazing in college and deserve to get in. I support anything that can get these kids âseen.â
That being said, I am always perplexed at how so many super high GPA kids score so poorly on standardized tests. Do their high school classes only grade based on projects or essays? Like how can you be a 4.3 GPA student taking AP Calc and get a 25 on the ACT?
Do these kids not get test anxiety during their regular school exams? Do their teachers allow âredosâ on every assignment, quiz, or test?
I have a child with documented LD and he scored as we thought he would on the ACT. My daughter has slow processing speed and she doesnât do well on the preACT but it is true to her knowledge based thus far.
GPA does not equal intelligence as the grading scales are so subjective to be honest. Granted my S23 is the GPA/ACT mismatch. I know his low GPA is due to lack of effort and has nothing to do with his abilities.
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Exactly! My DD is a 3.2 GPA but is crazy good in all arts stuff- singing dancing theater writing and art. The sciences and math does not interest her at all. She is me! I graduated high school with like 2.9 bc I did the minimum etc. Graduated college with 3.8 and then went to grad school and was in top 10% of my grad school. Lowest grade was an A- My freshman year of college had to take the classes that didnât interest me so did the basics but once I got into my major I worked hard bc I enjoyed my classes. My daughter is the same.
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