<p>News:</a> SAT Skepticism in New Form - Inside Higher Ed </p>
<p>"When New York University officials announced Monday that they were no longer requiring all applicants to take either the SAT or ACT, they stressed that NYU was not, repeat not, going 'test optional.'</p>
<p>"That's because NYU applicants will still have to submit standardized test scores under the new policy."</p>
<p>I think judging on ability of students with AP tests (especially at more selective schools such as NYU Stern) is dangerous because the scale of grading is based on 5 possible scores. With the SAT/ACT you can differentiate between levels of achievement a little bit better. That’s just my two cents.</p>
<p>^^lol so SAT II is better?</p>
<p>“I think judging on ability of students with AP tests (especially at more selective schools such as NYU Stern) is dangerous because the scale of grading is based on 5 possible scores. With the SAT/ACT you can differentiate between levels of achievement a little bit better. That’s just my two cents.”</p>
<p>This.</p>
<p>SAT Subject tests are good, but Harvard has thousands upon thousands of applicants with straight 5’s on numerous AP tests. They aren’t very useful to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. (at least at the very elite level)</p>
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<p>National AP scholars at the end of junior year number only in the hundreds, not in the thousands, and many of them don’t apply to Harvard. </p>
<p><a href=“http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/2008_AP_Scholar_Counts.xls[/url]”>Higher Education Professionals | College Board; </p>
<p><a href=“http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/200_Top_Colleges_11-3.pdf[/url]”>Higher Education Professionals | College Board;
<p>And then you run into the problem of an applicant like me who attended a high school with only two AP classes.</p>
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<p>No, Kicharo is right.</p>
<p>National AP scholars (8 or more exams) in junior year number very close to 1000, as can be seen from the spreadsheets you posted. AP Scholar With Distinction (5 or more exams) in junior year are ten to twenty times as numerous, with the ratio dropping to 8:1 by senior year. Without tallying the exact figures state by state, we can safely say that 11000 students enter the college application cycle with five or more AP exams with scores in the AP scholar range. A rough guess as to how to interpolate these figures is that the number of students doubles each time you drop the number of exams passed, so roughly:</p>
<p>1000 with 8 or more exams at junior year
2000 with 7 exams
4000 with 6 exams
8000 with 5 exams </p>
<p>It is also known from the College Board, that over 3000 students take an AP exam before grade 9. More than ten times as many take an AP exam in grade 9, with at least a thousand of those taking multiple exams in grade 9. Those are high performing students, they continue to take AP’s, and they apply to schools like Harvard.</p>
<p>It appears that Harvard could fill its undergraduate class with students with all 5’s in five or more AP’s, if it wished to, and that there are in the low thousands of such students applying each year.</p>
<p>How do we know what scores those AP scholars had, when the score cut-off for those award levels is below 5? I was disagreeing with “numerous” (I don’t consider five AP tests “numerous”) and with “straight 5’s” (because the award levels can be reached by lower average scores). </p>
<p>But if the statement is that Harvard has plenty students to choose from if it considers AP test scores (as it does) and that there are meaningful distinctions among AP test-takers (which seemed to be disagreed with above, by some students who thought a 1-5 scale is not as fine-grained as a 200-800 scale), then I don’t disagree with that. Harvard has asked about AP test scores on its supplement to the Common Application for three or four years, at least (maybe longer), and it receives the Common Application, which as of the most recent application year asks for self-reported AP (or IB) test scores from all applicants. So the working assumption is that most successful applications for admission to Harvard do include submission of AP test scores from testing done before the application school year.</p>
<p>C’mon, tokenadult, the proposal only requires that 3 AP scores be submitted. I am sure that there are many thousands of students with at least 3 scores of 5 by the end of junior year. </p>
<p>And, yes, the average score cut-offs are an annoyance. There’s no good way of telling how many students had 5’s on 3 or more AP exams, or 5’s on all exams they took, however many. The AP scholar classifications tend to reward taking a large number of tests, as opposed to scoring very well on all a student takes. QMP had 7 scores of 5 at the end of the HS career, no other AP scores, and 30 credits of university work (3 years post AP Calc BC in math), but all you can tell from the AP scholar classification is that the number of AP exams was at least 5 and the average score was at least 3.5.</p>
<p>I wasn’t disagreeing with the proposal, and I wasn’t disagreeing with the proposition that many students at the top echelon of colleges submit strong AP scores as part of their applications already. I was suggesting some nuance in language for the specific statement I quoted from another participant, namely </p>
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<p>I probably have a different habit of when I apply “numerous” to an indefinite number from the person I am quoting. To me, “numerous” is a bigger number than “several,” and that in turn is bigger than “a few,” and I would agree with the statement as made if “a few” was the indefinite number referred to. That would agree with your statement </p>
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<p>with which I also agree. </p>
<p>I’ve been more than a little surprised that there aren’t more AP National Scholar awards by the end of junior year. For a while, I overestimated their frequency by a full order of magnitude, until another CC participant kindly pointed out the reference source </p>
<p><a href=“http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/2008_AP_Scholar_Counts.xls[/url]”>Higher Education Professionals | College Board; </p>
<p>that gives the actual count. Also interesting to me is how many of those National AP Scholar awards are concentrated in particular states, probably because of differences in state policies in promoting AP courses and AP testing in public schools, perhaps with the state university system in mind. </p>
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<p>One thing I find funny is that if everyone’s expected to take AP exams, then it wouldn’t really be “advanced placement” anymore.</p>
<p>And so the divide continues to grow…
While there will always be inequalities in educational access, basing admissions on AP scores will replace a testing system that favored those who can afford hours of SAT/ACTprep classes with something that will prove even more discriminatory.
Along the lines of what kelliebm stated above, our high school and those surrounding us in our rural low income communities offer no AP or IB classes and have no plans or funds to implement them.<br>
At least our kids stand a chance, if they are so motivated, of trying to prepare for the ACT/SAT on their own via online prep or with books purchased or borrowed from the library. (That’s right, we have no Kaplan or Sylvan either). While our situation may be somewhat unusual in that physical distance as well as prosperity prevents us from accessing resources, income and resource disparities can create the same situations for low income students in more populous regions of the country as well. Despite this we do have students that go on to great academic successes when given a reasonable chance at the admissions game.</p>
<p>kelliebm has a good point. Many folks who frequent CC probably have high schools that offer a vast assortment of AP classes. However, this might not be the norm nationwide. </p>
<p>My own children’s HS lists numerous AP courses and yet most of them don’t run, due to lack of interest. D made sure to mention this during her college interviews.</p>
<p>You can submit SAT I OR SAT II OR AP, not just one. I don’t see how this creates inequalities. If your school doesn’t offer AP, just do SAT I/II like the past students always did. It’s not like they’re taking away that option. They’re just broadening the options.</p>
<p>I didn’t read the entire article, but I’m skeptical about that policy. My school only offers three AP courses, so if students wanted to apply to NYU with out SAT I or ACT scores, it’d be pretty tricky. Kids who attend schools with a ton of AP classes would have an obvious advantage. Also, to be honest anyone can study for AP tests and subject tests and do very well. For subject tests like bio, chem, american history, etc., it’s all about memorization. Same goes for a lot of AP tests. The SAT is at least based a little bit more on innate intelligence, although I don’t really think it’s doing its job.</p>
<p>The problem with switching from the SAT to AP as the benchmark test for admissions is that it completely changes the rules of the game in mid-stream. The focus should be on academic rigor and getting a good education. My son’s school tends to focus more on honors courses as opposed to AP, which allows his teachers to structure the curriculum around what they want to teach as opposed to teaching kids to do well on a standardized test. If some schools want several AP scores and others want SAT scores, then the kids have to prepare for more and more tests. The entire secondary education process becomes more about taking tests than learning if it is mandatory that a kid take up to 5 or 6 standardized tests by the end of his or her junior year.</p>
<p>I also strongly disagree with the assertion that people who spend thousands on Kaplan SAT prep courses have an advantage. An investment of $100 to $200 in good SAT prep books, coupled with practicing with “real” SAT questions from the College Board, in a self study program is the key. Any kid with intelligence, self motivation and discipline can overcome a disadvantaged economic situation with a quality self study regimen.</p>
<p>This old thread (still active) may be of interest: </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/ap-tests-preparation/369861-self-studying-aps-improving-your-app.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/ap-tests-preparation/369861-self-studying-aps-improving-your-app.html</a> </p>
<p>The OP of the thread lived overseas when he was applying to college and enjoyed good admission results. He is now a student at MIT.</p>
<p>Thats stupid…The SAT’s measure aptitude or as I like to say “intelligence”…My opinonon may be biased because I scored a 2200 on the SATs, but have yet to make a 5 on an A.P.s test…Anyone can study for 6 months or longer, and get a 5 on the A.P. Test, but not very many kids can score high the sats(this doesn’t hold true for cc)…</p>
<p>I would think that tutoring for AP would be easier than tutoring for SAT. AP is just information and methods to memorize.</p>
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<p>Really? Then why wouldn’t everybody do that?</p>