I can’t imagine that a 33 would make your application weaker. It may not move the needle, but it is generally consistent with the record of a strong, capable student. I would submit!
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For those who are trying to reconcile the 46% admitted TO with the 88% with scores on CDS……
Bowdoin’s policy is that if you enroll, they want you to send them all test scores you’ve taken for the purposes of data collection. Even if you applied and were admitted TO. It’s one way they have been evaluating the effectiveness of TO policies for decades.
So, Bowdoin has scores reflected in the CDS for enrolled students that AOs never saw during the admissions process. This explains why scores on CDS are slightly lower at Bowdoin than peer schools. The CDS captures lower scores that people chose not to use for admissions. But this means the average score on the CDS is lower than the average score of those applying who chose to give scores. Very high scoring students will always report scores. Lower scoring students may not. The CDS for Bowdoin captures all scores high or low for those enrolled. Most peer schools’ CDS only reflect the scores of those who applied with scores and were admitted.
For this reason, I would be hesitant to submit any score you thought was less impressive than the rest of the application. I think a 33 is a very strong score. But only you know how it compares to your son’s overall record.
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This practice, at least with respect to the CDS, was consolidated relatively recently. The figures for the two years spanning the change show its effect on reported standardized scoring ranges:
Fall 2016
SAT Middle Ranges, 54% submitting
CR: 650–750
Math: 640–760
Combined: 1290–1510
ACT Middle Range, 44% submitting
30–34
Fall 2015
SAT Middle Ranges, 42% submitting
CR: 680–765
Math: 685–770
Combined: 1365–1535
ACT Middle Range, 36% submitting
31–34
This is not a recent policy. I don’t know about the accuracy of Bowdoin’s CDS reporting, but there are many years prior to 2015/16 where matriculants were required to submit test scores. The farthest back CDS on the Bowdoin website is 2001/02 (first year CDS was introduced), and all matriculants were required to submit scores at that point.
I am sure someone in Bowdoin’s institutional reporting dept can educate you on their CDSs, and perhaps they have made some mistakes in their reporting over the years.
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Bowdoin’s public figures with respect to standardized scoring show a demarcation between the several years preceding and including 2015 and the several years including and following 2016 to a degree that it’s unclear why anyone would be resistant to the possibility that Bowdoin significantly changed its reporting practices during this time, irrespective of what its practices may have been before or have been since:
Year | Percent Submitting SAT or ACT
2013 | 80%
2014 | 74%
2015 | 78%
2016 | 98%
2017 | 105%
2018 | 106%
Bates offers another example of a college similarly enhancing its reporting practices in recent years.
Please explain how more than 100% of applicants could be submitting the ACT or SAT?
Plus as mentioned…perhaps now Bowdoin is simply reporting that after acceptance all student are submitting these scores…which has been the case for more than MANY years.
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A subset of students submit results from both exams, which creates a hypothetical maximum of 200%.
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In which case, the verbage is bad
Percent Submitting SAT or ACT ≠ Percent Submitting SAT + Percent Submitting SAT
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I am 200+% sure that we have lost OP and a subset of others.
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In English, “and/or” is regarded as a less-than-desirable construction, for which the substition of “or” is viewed as easily understood from context and as stylistically preferred. In this case, “or” correctly can be seen as failing with respect to logical and mathematical implications, however trivially.
So the 106% could actually be 53% of students if all those students submitted both scores. Just saying.
Getting back to the OPs question. I think a 33 SAT score is strong enough to submit with your application…but it is not required by Bowdoin.
Back to OP. Yes submit 
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When a school reports the percentage of students who submitted ACT in their CDS, it is exactly that. Same for SAT. If you look at the CDS for schools in any year in which they were not TO, you will often see that the totals exceed 100%. That makes srnse unless they limited the students to one test.
Either/or is the right concept for reporting what percentage of students submitted a test with their application. But if they require scores for all matriculants, they could have both.
I am curious about how many students have NO test scores at all. My sense is that most who do not submit do in fact have scores but feel they don’t enhance the application.
One reason anyone would be resistant to your theory is that there are many more reasonable possible explanations for these data points.
Perhaps in the year of demarcation, more students started taking both SAT and ACT. Some states mandate the ACT so it’s possible that was a year in which more states introduced the requirement, bumping up the percentage in a way that has nothing to do with a change in Bowdoin’s reporting practices.
To the OP: a 33 is highly unlikely to move the dial one way or another, but Jeff Selingo’s Friday article on MIT’s reintroduction of testing requirements has some useful insights on the submitting vs test optional decision.
Yes. And Bowdoin collects that data from students who have test scores, but chose not to apply with them. They send an email to all admitted students asking them to send any scores they have that they did not apply with.
This is, imho, a bad process. The CDS would be more helpful to students and all if it listed only the #s used to gain admission.
They are two different things. The CDS is a profile of the student body. It’s not about how to get in – It’s about who is here.
The other is about application strategy. The Selingo article discusses the challenges now with so many schools only recently becoming TO. And that is the OP’S question, to which most say “submit”. But even for a school that has been TO for decades, it’s a tricky question.
Please focus on the OP’s question. Posts not responding to the OP, and that includes posts with 5 paragraphs of OT musings with a final paragraph starting, “To get back to the OP…” are subject to deletion without notice or comment.