For the class of 2021, our high school had 50% of the seniors apply TO - big suburban Chicago high school that sends 97% to four year colleges. It’s not just for legacies and athletes. And our neighborhood would certainly been considered a privileged. AND there were tests to be had. D21 took three ACTs and two SATs and went TO.
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We’re in the middle of another Olympics. We didn’t select our Olympians by having them to write essays or participate in activities that are irrelevant to their sports. Maybe we should have. Maybe we should have also boycotted the Olympics altogether because they’re unfair to the poorer countries that don’t have the same resources and equipment to train their athletes. Or maybe at least we should have awarded 100m dash medals with a more “holistic” approach. Maybe Usain Bolt didn’t deserve his medals. Now I’m wondering why in Olympic sports where performances are judged more subjectively no one from a poor country has ever reached the medal stand…
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I’m sure many different types of applicants benefited from TO. It’s absolutely true that kids from well known and well regarded high schools had an advantage. The colleges know the reputation of the school, understand the rigor of the curriculum and likely have taken students from those schools who do well once admitted to their college. I absolutely think that one of the reasons why D did well in admissions was because the AOs knew her high school, she had a very strong transcript and teachers who knew how to write recs. D also knew both of her rec writers very very well and I’m guessing her letters were very flattering but also very detailed.
I agree that kids should go TO if their tests just don’t match the rest of their app. We knew how kids with her GPA and rigor score at her high school and she wasn’t hitting that bar. Our school just updated Naviance and we can see last year’s results. Here are a couple of examples:
Colgate - 15 applied, 2 accepted. It was D and a recruited athlete. Kids with higher scores (and some with higher weighted GPAs) did not get in ahead of her.
Boston Collge - 64 applied, 6 accepted. Same as above. Kids above and below D in GPA were denied. A slew of kids with same or higher GPA and higher SAT were denied and she got in.
Very similar analysis for all of the schools on her list. TO didn’t help or hurt. The colleges just used what she sent to review her app.
So, if anyone is using this thread to figure out if they should go TO, I think they should be doing the analysis of their high school’s history with each college. I’m not sure how helpful overall trends are.
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I’d wager she had excellent essays as well. In a year of crazy volume and TO/TB, I think essays were very important.
College is not the Olympics and applying to college is not analogous to competing for a spot on an Olympic team.
Prep school kids and rich kids have the resources to prep for the tests, inside and outside of school. They take classes, hire tutors, practice incessantly, etc. And it works. Prep school kids and rich kids score better than do kids from less privileged backgrounds. The average tests scores at some of these prep schools are in line (or higher) than the average test scores at many top colleges. It sure looks as if prep schools are doing a pretty good job of controlling the test scores.
I agree 100% with the second part. Not so sure about the first part.
It seems like TO applicants from “well regarded high schools” were not disadvantaged as compared to those who submitted tests from the same or similar schools, but I doubt that they had an advantage over (or were even compared to) kids from different demographics. In other words, if a well regarded school usually gets around 10 admits from BC, I’d expect that overall number to remain fairly constant.
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I’m not sure what your point is. They’re both highly competitive. Merits and fairness are supposed to be critical to their successes.
The purpose of the Olympic 100 meter dash is to identify fastest runner in the 100 meter dash, so it fits that the qualifier would also be the 100 meter dash.
Believe it or not, colleges don’t exist to identify and reward the best SAT takers, and reliance on these tests may not be particularly well suited to accomplishing their goals.
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There is no “fairness” in elite college admissions (and that is what we’re really talking about - most colleges aren’t competitive and for those TO is a moot point). Holistic admissions criteria, which are purposefully opaque and based on institutional priorities that the public is unaware of, means that kids with lower GPAs/test scores can, and are, admitted over higher performing kids. As people have mentioned ad nauseam, the goal of these schools isn’t just to enroll the top academic students - they are also looking for other things – the athletes, oboe players, artists, dancers, legacies etc. This is going to be the case whether or not standardized tests are part of the equation.
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Of course Olympics serves a different purpose. That’s not the point. The Olympics, and the selection process that leads to the Olympics, help identify athletic talents. The elite colleges, and the selection process that leads to admissions, also help identify academic talents. If the process is supposed to be (at least partly) meritocratic and fair, there’s no way around testing, because it’s fairer and more meritocratic than any of its alternatives.
I agree that there’s no perfect “fairness”, either in elite college admissions or the Olympics. Therefore, it’s ironic that those of you who argue against testing seem to do so because of its “unfairness”. Testing isn’t perferctly fair but it’s fairer than the alternatives.
Whatever you think the elite colleges’ missions are, one of them is to identify and nurture academic talents.
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Exactly. Just because a student is “admittable” does not mean he will be admitted.
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And many schools say they can identify academic talent without testing
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Are those same schools getting rid of tests in their academic programs? Why not? If tests are useless for admissions, then why aren’t they useless for education too? Why should students have to be evaluated on what they have learned? Shouldn’t they just be allowed to start a club and write an essay and have their parents write a check. Shouldn’t that warrant an A in Intro to Chemistry?
I’m not aware of any elite scientist or mathematician who can’t do well on a simple SAT test. There might be a few exceptions but they’re exceedingly rare.
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Every argument you make about the unfairness of tests is 5x worse for every other criteria for admission.
I can guarantee that if schools eliminate SATs and ACTs from admissions, then the average GPA at prep schools will go up.
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Huh? I just meant standardized test. ACT and SAT.
Right but colleges can find those kids without a test. They can see they are very advanced in math on their transcripts or in their ECs if they are competing in national math contests etc
Colleges may be able to identify some of them, but not most of them without some objective measures. National math contests you mentioned are tests.
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I am talking about ACT and SAT tests. I thought this thread was about test optional admissions. Someone who is a math wiz can show it without an ACT or SAT. I’ve heard many an AO say they know the math kids without even looking at their scores on those tests. Kids taking MV or linear algebra after getting a 5 on BC Calc earlier in high school don’t have to send an 800 Math SAT2 score to show they remember algebra 2 and trig
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I agree that the math sections of ACT or SAT aren’t useful to identify a future mathematician. However, a poor score does generally indicate a lack of aptitute in math. The main purpose of these simple standardized tests serve is to filter out unqualified applicants.
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