Isn’t it interesting that instead to raising the ceiling in response, the opposite has happened with the SAT? In other countries (e.g., UK, Singapore), you might see the bar raised to bring about wider dispersion.
Of course, I understand that persisting educational inequality in the US leaves less room for maneuver on this front but it does contribute to academic stats becoming less meaningful.
“There’re students who have done all those things at some of these schools and they’re still deferred and waitlisted.”
Right. I don’t know of any school that has a 100% admit rate. But how many students have done all those things with a balanced application list and gotten completely shut out?
You clearly don’t like ED and you don’t like the idea of telling a school that if admitted you will come - once you have arrived at that conclusion based on results. It seems that your view is that the student should have all the power/options and the school should pass out the acceptances and let the chips fall as they may. Given that the students/common app have pushed the envelope (arguably schools have as well) and students now apply to ~20 schools when in the past it was ~8, I think the decision/acceptance approach changing is quite understandable. Both sides want what they want - many here seem to think that only one side should get to determine the rules and don’t like it that the schools are changing their admission criteria in response to the massive growth in applications.
This happened because they became test optional. They became test optional because they wanted to show lower acceptance rates – covid helped. Now it is hard for any particular school to go back to testing required, unilaterally. I think it is very hard to put the genie back in the bottle again, especially if SCOTUS rules against affirmative action.
There’s asymmetry of information and power between the colleges and their applicants. If you like ED or similar one-sided mechanism colleges can adopt, take a look at the CMU example below:
CMU has been known to offer students who apply RD a special “deal”. If they’re willing to commit to CMU, it agrees to render admission decisions (on a continuous basis) for them within a week, long before other RD applicants. That’s effectively a continuous form of EDx.
I didn’t know this. Is this really true? Can we signal now?
The SAT and ACT are looking to expand their market, and the greatest room for expansion is downward, where they can add masses of students (including non-college-bound ones taking them as part of state assessments). Even if colleges at the top end no longer see value in the SAT and ACT, expansion at the low end brings in a lot more revenue for the test companies than loss from (for example) Caltech no longer considering them. Obviously, downward expansion means that the test needs to be aligned to be useful or perceived to be useful in that range of test takers.
Yes.
Perhaps test optional exacerbated the massive growth in applications but both my kids were of the pre-test optional era and the common app. at that point allowed 20 applications and many kids were taking full advantage.
Really? Was definitely not aware of that when my daughter applied.
It’s not advertised in their application process. So may be you have to be “in the know” to be aware of this side door?
Open admission community colleges… but also there are many non-open-admission colleges (particularly less selective publics) that have published automatic admission criteria so that a student who meets them has a 100% chance of admission.
Yes, of course. The argument was that someone can do everything right and still be a victim of perceived yield protection. In general we are talking on this thread about schools with acceptance rates between 25 and 60% - that was my point.
Good point. Do you think AMC/AIME/equivalent scores will be increasingly expected for those applying for STEM at highly selective schools?
Agreed. But if I respond further we’ll probably both get flagged for going off-topic, or worse 
The problem from the colleges’ point of view is that access to such may be too uneven to completely rely on such things or make them a formal requirement, even if they give a strong plus to applicants showing strong performance on them.
Even something less “elite” like AP scores has this problem due to variations in access.
You would probably eliminate most, if not all, selective colleges as they are seen as unfair by applicants, for some reason or other. Before the lawsuit made Harvard’s admission data more public, Asians knew that colleges like Harvard had about a 20% soft quota for them, based on mainly unfair practices, at least from their perspective. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t apply of course, just know the odds going on.
Keeping it on topic, I wonder if schools look at yield rates by ethnicity, while modeling strategy for the next year.
I wonder how schools in the rest of the world, where holistic review is not practiced, manage to meet “school needs that particular year?” I think the answer is that schools elsewhere have fewer “needs.” The example that is often given on CC is “needing a tuba player.” Most of the world probably views the idea of “needing” a tuba player with incredulity.
A lot of countries rely on a national standardized exam and that score basically dictates which school you end up attending.
@fiftyfifty1 And most schools in the rest of the world don’t have dorms like the schools in the US, they don’t field sports teams, they don’t have symphonic orchestras and marching bands, they don’t offer dance and theatre majors (outside of conservatories, usually) etc, etc.
If someone doesn’t want to worry about schools trying to fulfill their institutional needs* that include sports, music, dance, art and theatre as well as a rich residential life experience in addition to what many seem to consider “the real purpose of college” - then there are plenty of schools that offer that!
If an applicant and/or family doesn’t value any of those things…why are they interested in schools that have made it abundantly clear they do value those things and will give preference to applicants bringing more than just academics to their campuses?
*Not to mention multiple fields of study that need interested students. It can’t all be STEM, unless the school is a STEM only school.
Exactly, because the rest of the world views a university as being a place for academics, not a place for football, marching bands, etc. except perhaps on a club level.