Agreed. Which is why a test mandatory admissions process disproportionately harms those of a lower socio economic cohort who don’t have access to tutoring, the funds to test multiple times and in some cases have to supplement family income by working while being a HS student.
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Here is Connecticut College’s advice on whether to submit test scores:
“Our advice would be to submit your scores if you feel they are representative of your achievement and you believe they will enhance your application. Some students use our middle 50% ranges as a guideline. If their scores fall within our upper ranges, they submit them.”
I’m guessing that students at private and wealthy public high schools would not be making this kind of mistake because the GCs have the time to actually read Connecticut College’s language and understand the hidden meaning behind this. But how is a kid at a low-performing high school supposed to interpret this? If a kid is at a high school where the average SAT is 1000 and doesn’t have GC advice, then that kid might think that scoring 1360 represents strong achievement in the local context. Making students guess at what an AO is going to value during a “holistic review” just seems wrong. And the “some students” language in Connecticut College’s advice implies that “some students” might have a good reason to submit lower scores.
I was on the fence at the beginning of this process, but at this point, I think that schools should either require students to report every standardized test they are able to take or to move to test-blind admissions.
Why would this be the case? It seems like people who are in the admissions and college counseling worlds have been saying this loud and clear to their clients this year (at least based on reports that I’ve read on CC–I’m not connected with people in these circles.)
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Because of the reasons I wrote above:
Yes, Conn College is upfront about not sending scores unless they are above the median (which their website says in a strange way). Obviously that is unsustainable mathematically speaking as scores will increase until only those with perfect/near perfect scores are submitting.
I do agree with you that we will see more schools going test blind each year (which have already been increasing the last couple of years).
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Anyone who thinks the process is about merit - with or without test scores - is sadly mistaken. Admission to super selective schools is heavily weighted towards the upper middle class/wealthy across almost every measure. At the same time, these schools educate a tiny fraction of all college students. Most colleges admit 50% or more of applicants and having a super high test score and/or sky high gpa is neither expected or required. I’d like to imagine more kids would turn away from the super selective schools - not because they are TO, but because unhooked applicants have a minuscule chance of being admitted, but I’m not holding my breath.
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I agree with this completely. Superscoring and Score Choice are the biggest reasons behind the proliferation of test prep and test tutoring in recent years. However, I rarely, if ever, hear opponents of standardized testing coming out against these practices. On the contrary, most seem to cheer for them, even though they line the pockets of testing companies and disadvantage the poor. Limiting the number of tests (perhaps to two?) and requiring all scores sent to the colleges will do more to level the playing field than making the test optional.
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I think they should do away with any kind of super scoring and, if I had my way, they would limit the number of times you could take each test.
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I don’t disagree that superscoring and score choice have had unintended consequences, with more students taking more tests. Multiple test takers do tend to be more affluent, but I work with a not insignificant proportion of low-ses students who take the tests 2-4 times.
I don’t see colleges starting to require all scores. Many college enrollment management people believe the data that we all have seen ad nauseam…the data that show test scores don’t add much to the predictability of college success, or the admissions decision, so I don’t see many of them going back at this point. It’s enrollment management people who have generated some of that data (e.g. from DePaul, Ithaca, Bates, etc.) and some are leaders in this space. I do think more schools will go test blind over the next 5 years though, which IMO is better than TO.
I again agree with this. If I had my way, I’d only offer standardized tests right after the end of each school year. Each student can only take the test at most twice. All test results are to be reported to the colleges, which can use (or disregard) them in any way they wish.
But if colleges are going to disregard or cap/limit the importance of the tests, why put students through that stress? The time spent on test prep and test taking is better spent in other ways. It’s also increasingly difficult for schools to even staff these tests (which is part of the reason there are still access issues both in number of cancellations and number of seats when tests do go).
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Not too long ago, some colleges (including Stanford, Yale, Cornell, HMC, etc.) still required all scores. They obviously saw value in having all scores.
The point is to reduce, if not eliminate, test prep.
They don’t require all scores today though, and all those schools are TO as well. Some Cornell schools are test blind.
Test prep would increase if schools start requiring all scores.
Yes, but that’s because they operate under competitive pressures. As their competitors eliminate the requirement, they were to forced to respond.
Agreed. Yet they didn’t have to respond, and Georgetown is an example of that. Georgetown is not test optional (unless one couldn’t/didn’t take a test) and does not allow score choice (so students must report all tests). Georgetown applications and cache have not suffered by not following the crowd. (Note I am not making a judgement on Georgetown’s policies one way or another).
You probably know more than I do, but I think Georgetown is in a different situation. Georgetown does everything possible to make application less convenient for a casual applicant. It wants its applicants to exert greater effort to demonstrate their interest. Keeping the all-scores requirement is part of that effort.
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When demand out paces supply typically the seller is flourishing. Elite schools have seen their applicant pools grow exponentially by lessening the barriers to entry, reducing costs for those most in need and actively recruiting across broader geographies and among more diverse populations. The percentage of public versus private school students has gone up and will continue to rise.
Greater demand for static supply leads to greater competition for spots, greater disappointment among those that don’t get accepted and greater consternation from those that opt not to even try because they view the “market” to have moved away from them.
Certainly some criticisms are valid but to suggest these elite institutions are poised to getting knocked down is contradicted by all evidence to the contrary.
Your comments remind of Yogi Berra when he said “that resteraunt isn’t popular anymore because it’s way to crowded”.
I am confused as this is an argument for test optional as undeniably a testing advantage accrues to those with resources such as tutors, money for multiple tests and time to prepare without the economic imperative of a job.
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i am so much a beginner and basic with this all re: TO. Most of this over my head as i’ve not thought about it much before. But i’m trying to understand this all, so please humor me as i think these things through.
I just read through that twitter feed - that was interesting, and posed questions to me. If a TO school has a 50% range, won’t that range be going up if anyone below 50% doesn’t submit scores? The 50% score then becomes the low end. . . ?
also, if TO is used to widen the range of students including low SES, is that a beginning premise that low SES students would have a low standardized test score to begin with?
will top colleges going TO stay intense with their education? Can TO kids handle this? (i’m thinking of several talented kids we know from our old low ses school with very high GPAs; but low 20s ACTS, and non-passing AP scores.) trying to understand that, i realize all HSs are different.
And GPA manipulation: discovered yesterday that an A- doesn’t equal an A for gpa at our new school. it’d be easy to manipulate this. my kid could go to teachers and ask to retest, do extra credit, explain how she knows the material, etc. They like her; i can see how it’d be easier move that grade than to change an SAT/ACT score. Think that happens?
sorry for rambling; just trying to understand this all with my last kid in hs. 
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Yes, and that’s the problem. We are seeing mid 50% scores skyrocket because some colleges themselves, and counselors are telling students to only send if their score is at the median (so the midpoint of the mid-50% range). That leaves no room for nuance…for example, test scores for engineering and business majors tend to be higher than liberal arts.
Yes, and lots of data show this. There is data on a blog called higher ed data stories dot com.
Many schools that have been TO for awhile have published data showing no difference in outcomes between TO and test submitting students…DePaul, Ithaca, and Bates to name a few. Bowdoin hasn’t published data, but they have been TO since 1969 and say the two groups don’t have different outcomes (they wouldn’t have happily stayed TO all those years if the data showed something different).
ETA: Here is some ACT data by two levels of income (+ or - $80K). A bit old, but dramatic differences: https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/R1604-ACT-Composite-Score-by-Family-Income.pdf
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If a student is able to show up with minimal prep and score 1500+ on the SAT the first time taken, that tells me a student might have a special aptitude (certainly for test-taking). Obviously, there are very capable and talented students who could not do that, so it shouldn’t be used as a barrier.
But I wonder…could we have a system that tries to identify students differently?
Maybe all schools could be test optional and a student may only test once and must disclose whether they received professional test prep. The idea would be that the test becomes just a helpful data point — like winning a competition. A kid who had a bad test day wouldn’t be able to use it to their advantage, but neither could a kid who had a bad competition day. (A little more like AP test results.)
And maybe teachers could be asked to provide a short survey with letters of recommendation that has each teacher rank students on a scale from “below average” to “among the top few students” with space for a short comment on criteria like:
- work ethic
- intellectual curiosity
- responsibility
- leadership
- collaboration
- inventiveness/creativity
- originality
- etc. (whatever schools care about)
Teachers could also be asked to identify any special talents/attributes not otherwise covered and the strongest and weakest area for each student and discouraged against giving “all A’s” in order to help colleges know precisely what makes that student stand out.
There are probably flaws in my idea, but I am trying to think of the best way to help students get admitted based on being the best version of themselves rather than engaging in an ever-escalating and unhealthy arms race among “privileged” kids to do MORE test prep, hire MORE consultants and tutors, take MORE AP courses, work their parental connections and bank accounts to snag MORE research positions and create MORE nonprofits, etc. — all the while leaving the have-nots further behind in the dust.
Interesting…… Having taught at 2 well known universities in NYC, I can assure you that course rigor has been adjusted over the past 30 years when I first began teaching. While admissions selectivity has risen, the actual content in many non-STEM courses has been adjusted. If you have taught at a university today, you may have observed this also. With the combination of grade inflation and test optional, how can colleges objectively select students who are prepared for university?
As I have posted on other threads, I have taught students who were not academically (or emotionally) prepared to go to university (even one where the stress of moving away was not an issue because they commuted from home). On another post, someone listed the most common lies applicants state on their application. Hint: Demographic info is a top one.
Here is a social-philosophical question: Should universities expect students to be academically prepared to matriculate to their institution? How do they objectively measure that? It seems that some folks on this thread are not concerned about preparation, but other aspects of attending university that relate to social justice, economic opportunities, and social mobility. That is all fine, but why are universities taking all responsibility for this? Is it really fair to accept students, saddle them with debt, and never graduate them? If you look at statistics (where is the data guy?) on how many students drop out after the first year or two, it might help us gain perspective.
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This is the (literal) million dollar question. Just ask the UT system, which spends tens of millions of dollars on remedial schooling for its students. The problem is our K-12 education and the many reasons why that is lacking and not competitive on the world stage. I agree it shouldn’t be the responsibility of 4 year colleges to catch students up.
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