Test Optional Admission Data

Applying to College
81

There are many real examples of what happens when colleges go test optional. In general, the opposite relationship to what you describe occurs. Some examples from the current year are below.

BC Class of 2025 (test optional) – 54% public HSs, 42% non-White, 11% first gen
BC Class of 2024 (not test optional) – 49% public HSs, 34% non-White, 9% first gen

Notre Dame Class of 2025 (test optional) – 47% public HSs, 40% non-White, 13% first gen
Notre Dame Class of 2024 (not test optional) – 44% public HSs, 27% non-White, 9% first gen

Princeton Class of 2025 (test optional) – 64% public HSs, 68% non-White, 22% first gen
Princeton Class of 2024 (not test optional) – 63% public HSs, 61% non-White, 17% first gen

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82

deleted. addressed by someone else. (thanks @Data10)

83

Do you have a link for that data?

You are comparing two Covid years when the data is suspect, and despite that the data on public high school admittance is A) terrible, and B) just movement within a normal range of volatility.

How does not having information on a candidate drive those outcomes? Why is ignorance better than having the information on test scores?

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Class of 2025 admitted students are most talented, diverse in BC history
Meet BC's Class of 2024
University admits 3,446 to class of 2025, sets record-low acceptance rate // The Observer
University admits 3,507 students into class of 2024 // The Observer
https://www.princeton.edu/news/2021/04/06/extraordinary-year-princeton-offers-admission-1498-students-class-2025
https://www.princeton.edu/news/2020/03/26/princeton-pleased-offer-admission-1823-students-class-2024

An example quote from the Notre Dame link is below:

“One of the inherent benefits of test-optional is that it did encourage some students to apply who might otherwise not have applied,” he said. “We had an increase of about 500 students from lower-income households that had very high class performance.”

Earlier this semester, the University announced it will be continuing the test-optional policy in 2022 and 2023. Bishop said the tests have been valued less over recent years and the University was considering implementing a test-optional policy before the pandemic.

As touched on in the Notre Dame quote above, some kids see the higher test scores as a barrier to applying. This relates to why most highly selective colleges saw a significant increase in applications this year. Most of those relatively lower test score new applicants were no doubt rejected. However, a small minority of them had a rest of application that was inconsistent with their test scores – better composite of grades, rigor, LORs, essays, ECs, … than would be predicted from their scores alone. This group is often admitted test optional, when they’d be rejected or not apply under a test required system.

As occurred in the class of 2025 examples above, the report on 21 test optional colleges, the Bates analysis and most other test optional colleges; these test optional admits are more likely to be lower income, more likely to be first gen, more likely to be URM, and more likely to be female.

They are not more likely to be wealthy kids attending top private prep HSs. Wealthy kids attending top private prep schools tends to have exceptional test scores. Many of such high schools have emphasized scores as a criteria for HS admission (prior to COVID), so they have hardly any kids in the HS without great scores. As such, test scores tend to be a strong point of their application rather than weak point. You can confirm this by reviewing the HS profile of literally any top private prep HS.

For example, Harvard-Westlake’s profile at https://www.hw.com/Portals/28/Harvard-WestlakeSchoolProfile2020-21v2.pdf?ver=2020-10-01-101325-867 mentions an average ACT composite of of HW kids is a 33, which is a 98-99th percentile score (varies by year). At public HSs as a whole, only 1 kid in ~100 gets an ACT score as high as the average kid at HW. At less resourced HSs, the rate is often far lower. However, HW’s grade distribution is not as extreme. Plenty of kids at typical public HSs have GPAs as high as HW kids, even if they can not match the HW kids in scores. So HW kids tend to benefit from a test required system that emphasizes their typically very high scores, which tend to be a relatively strong point of their application.

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85

Do you have data on this?

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86

You can crunch all the data - but the reality is when a school like Wesleyan is enrolling more than 40% of their class TO and Trinity and Connecticut College nearly 60% - yes, some kids couldn’t take the best but the reality is they are admitting kids who scored less and didn’t submit because of it.

We all know the system can be gamed - so tutoring, etc. helps - and who has access? The wealthy.

Yes, it’s anecdotal but it’s beyond clear that schools have enhanced their ‘reported scores’ and widened their student class in regards to economic diversity because of TO. One doesn’t need a PHD or fancy studies to see this.

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87

I reach exactly the opposite conclusion about economic diversity and test optional.

Again, no one has been able to answer why colleges are better off WITHOUT this piece of data? How is their review holistic if they don’t have this?

Let’s do a hypothetical. Take two very similar candidates applying to the same school for the same major. Let’s make it Boston College for Math. Both have 3.9UW GPA, good ECs and volunteer, but one candidate has a 1380 SAT from a middle of the pack school from a middle class town that has not sent a kid to BC in 10 years, and one candidate has an 1100 SAT from a prep school so he goes test optional. Who do you think gets in? Why is the school better off not knowing about the 1100 SAT?

88

In your scenario above, the public school kid with the 1380 SAT would probably be advised not to submit that test - too low now for BC :face_with_monocle:

Additional data that will be very interesting to see is about transferring out, dropping out, and number of applicants for transferring in after Freshman year. Some colleges already have the equivalent of a “bull pen” of qualified applicants deferred for a semester, sent to overseas terms, or housed in their “feeder” program for a year waiting to come on down after Freshman year.

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89

That is why I picked that number.

I would like to see the following analysis:

Remove the A’s, D’s and C’s (as defined in ALDC) and URM from TO admittances. Then track the remaining TO acceptance rates based on parents that signal they can full pay vs. those requesting financial aid. THAT would be an interesting analysis. What is the correlation between TO admissions and parents signaling they don’t need financial aid?

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Are you asking for more transparency? If you are, I have some news for you. It isn’t forthcoming. What little we know about ALDC is mostly because of the Havard lawsuit.

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91

We live in a low income, mostly URM district. The only kids from our area applying to schools that have “holistic” review are maybe the top 10 kids in a graduating class of 700+. These kids if they applied TO, will be successful in college.

92

TO policies will hurt more than help kids from your district over the long term. Schools are always free to adjust their test score standards for kids from disadvantaged backgrounds. I support that approach 100%.

Where applicants from your district will have problems in applying to T20 schools is getting matched up with the grade inflation and EC resume padding at the prep schools and rich suburban districts. I do not think test scores will be the primary issue.

93

The data for BC 2025 is for admitted students, while the BC 2024 data is for enrolled. 2025 enrolled won’t be out for another 1-3 months.

94

I think the false assumption your theory is based on is that the kids would apply anyway for the schools to be able to consider their scores in context. @Data10 provided evidence that low income student behavior changes under TO. They apply more. So TO creates that - that is the answer to your WITHOUT question. Many of us consider that valuable.

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95

I agree that more kids apply, but around here the same number of kids were accepted. They accepted kids TO, but the number of acceptances stayed the same as in previous yrs. I would love the see data of where in the increase in acceptances was from.

96

“The same” may be a good thing this year given all the increase in apps. Our school that has higher income students had noticeably fewer acceptances this year. (I just saw the data because our Naviance was just updated!)

I would love to see more data from this year, too! Who can we beg? :slight_smile:

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97

Wesleyan is pretty clear that even TO students must submit their scores upon matriculation:

and, as far as I can tell, its median standardized test scores for each class (first-years only) haven’t changed that much. Not as sure about the mean test scores.

.

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98

I strongly agree with the statement that TO policies result in more applications for the elite schools. That is not an accident. Universities essentially soliciting applications from kids that had low or no chance of getting accepted is why US News stopped using acceptance rates as a criteria in its rankings.

People have the right to send an application in to any school in the country with or without TO policies.

I am truly interested in how having less information about applicants results in a fairer application process. And part B of this question is: why should only tests be optional? Why not make EC’s or volunteer work optional? EC’s are badly skewed towards the wealthy. Prep schools and wealthy school districts have a variety of EC’s that are simply not available at other places. And if a kid is only doing volunteer work to put it on his resume to get into college, then it is not really volunteer work. Why shouldn’t applicants have the ability to leave that section blank without it negatively hurting their application?

My first extra-curricular activity growing up was to get a job, but it was really hard to “show leadership” when I was pumping gas.

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99

ECs and volunteer work are already optional. And plenty of students get into great schools without hundreds of volunteer hours or massive EC participation.

None of my children are heavily involved in volunteering (meaning not at all), it didn’t hurt my oldest’s application one bit.

Each of my children has basically one EC; they aren’t doing 5-6 activities. And my oldest quit their one EC Junior year of high school and got a part time job…colleges didn’t mind that a bit. That decision actually became the basis of her common app essay, and every school she applied to wrote her personally about how much they appreciated that essay.

My next child is already planning on applying test optional (class of 2023), her test scores would be massively out of line with the remainder of her application and aren’t indicative of her talents and potential. There will be plenty of information in her application (rigor of her classes - all honors and AP, GPA, teacher recommendations, personal essays, varsity athlete/captain in her one EC). I think the schools she will apply to will have plenty of information to see if she would be a good match for their school. And those schools agree, as they are the ones that chose to go test optional.

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100

I think your questions are good ones. I think it would be fun to know an AO personally so we could get some unfiltered answers on how they process all the data, given all the skews, biases, etc that you name.

Another way to get at your question is if you were to start from scratch and look at all the elements of the application, which parts would you make optional and which would you make required and why? The optional parts allow the students to “curate” their story and then the required parts allow for the more apples to apples comparison. But is there anything that would truly be apples to apples again given the skewing you name?

In my opinion, I think there is more comfort - at many schools - in letting students “curate” for tests because they simply feel they get enough info from grades, activities, rigor, AP scores, etc. And they feel that the additional information they would get from a required SAT/ACT just doesn’t add enough to justify requiring it. They would likely agree with you that it is more info but they may not think that they have to have that info (and want the increased apps instead - I am guessing very few low income students would know what you say that people can just apply anyway). By the way, Georgetown is with you - they seem to love all the test info!!