ECs also include jobs and caring for siblings or other family members…many low SES students have one or both of those activities.
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But in the details on that page it says ‘if taken’
Official SAT/ACT Scores, if taken (first-year students only)
Kids who have top GPAs, rigor, LORs, essays, ECs, and everything else the college looks at rarely get as low as 1100 on the SAT. They may get lower 100-200 points lower than expected based on their reset of their profile, but rarely get as low as 1100. So odds are the 1100 kid is not excelling in something else that is considered in the application. For example, perhaps his teacher and counselor LORs for the 1100 SAT kid do not mention being among the best students in the class at his selective prep HS school… While the kid with a 3.9UW at a less selective HSs does have gushing LORs talk about how great he/she is compared to classmates.
There is not enough information to determine who would be accepted, but I think the most likely scenario is both applicants would be rejected. I’d expect next most likely is the 1380 SAT kid would be accepted due to the correlation with other sections mentioned above, even if both applied test optional, so SAT scores were not visible.
It is also worth noting that if you are talking about top prep schools like Andover and Harvard Westlake, I doubt you’ll find any significant number of kids who score as low as 1100. Prior to COVID these high schools considered SSAT or similar score in admission, and didn’t admit the equivalent of 1100 SAT kids. When you combine the high entrance score, with excellent teaching, a community emphasizing getting top scores ,test prep if needed, more likely to get special accommodations, filtering out the kids who don’t do well academically by encouraging the return to home HS etc… that high test score upon entering unlikely to go down years later when they take the SAT.
So now the argument in favor of TO is that prep schools are so awesome that their students shouldn’t have to prove their ability by actually disclosing their SATs.
I am going to tap out on this discussion.
Yes. Not all TO applicants bother taking any tests at all. I have to think that’s a clear minority, however. According to their common data sets, about 80% of first-year Wesleyan students have taken the SAT and 40% have taken the ACT. So, some unknown subset actually wind up taking both tests.
I’m not sure how you got that from my post above since it does not say anything resembling the comment.
Kids who were admitted to highly selective colleges test optional prior to COVID did tend to average lower scores than the full class. They generally didn’t bomb the SAT/ACT, but their score(s) were typically lower than would be expected by the rest of their applications. Some specific 25th to 75th percentile numbers for Bowdoin class of 2023 (before COVID) are below.
Bowdoin Test Submitters: EBRW = 700-760, Math = 720-790
Bowdoin Full Class: EBRW = 660-740, Math = 670-780
Not quite sure what you mean by this. By lower than expected do you really mean, by comparison? If so, compared to what?
I mean, there’s nothing counter-intuitive about Bowdoin’s numbers, especially when you consider what you, yourself point out at post #84:
I mean lower than would be expected from the rest of the application. In short their scores were generally a weak point compared to the rest of the application, including, but not limited to GPA. I agree there is nothing counter-intuitive about Bowdoin’s numbers.
Unfortunately, in order to agree with that statement, one would have to concede the entire argument that standardized tests are a meaningful reflection of the applicant’s academic bona fides (which is, of course, the opposite of what TO advocates believe.)
Just pointing out. How many schools have MV or linear in high school?
No, test scores being correlated with other sections of the application only implies that a portion of the information derived from test scores is duplicated in other sections of the application. If the information derived from test scores is largely duplicated in other sections of the application that are considered, then removing scores does not result in a large amount of predictive ability being lost.
For example, in the study at https://web.archive.org/web/20181012020332/https://www.ithaca.edu/ir/docs/testoptionalpaper.pdf , Ithaca reviews possible effects of going test optional by comparing how much predictive ability is lost when they remove SAT from a variety of other factors that include both a measure of GPA and a good measure of course rigor. A summary is below. Note that a near negligible amount of predictive ability is lost when removing test scores because the test scores are correlated with other sections of the application that are available, including but not limited to GPA + rigor + AP hours. That is the scores are not driving the cumulative GPA prediction, but rather other factors that are correlated with scores.
GPA + SAT + Rigor + AP hours + … – Explains 44% of variance in cumulative GPA
All of Above with SAT Removed – Explains 43% of variance in cumulative GPA
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@Data10 did address this, albeit somewhat indirectly. But here are just two of the many reasons in which colleges may be better off:
- Colleges are better off with TO because they are more likely to attract outstanding applicants who would otherwise shy away from applying for fear their test score was too low.
- Colleges are better off because doing away with the test mandate may incentivize at least some applicants to quit wasting their time preparing for the stupid tests, and instead devote their time to more meaningful and healthy pursuits. Like sleeping. And they will be better applicants.
Your hypothetical assumes that these two students are competing with each other for a single spot. The reality is the prep school kid is being compared to other kids at his and similar schools. Likewise regarding the kid from the “middle of the pack school in the middle class town.”
The applicants that colleges love — those who can pay:) The Campus Tour Has Been Cancelled - This American Life
Yes, but that just makes your use of the words, lower than would be expected (i.e. than would be predicted) at post #106 even more problematic. But, as long as we’re agreed on the main point - I’m fine with it. 
The idea is lower scores than the average for applicants with similar GPA, course rigor, LORs, essays, ECs/awards, … making scores a relative weak point of the application. You could call this lower scores than “predicted” or “expected” from the rest of application, or something else if you prefer.
I know quite a few that have MV and, if high schools do not, a student could take it at a community college or online. I guess the bigger question is if grade schools and middle schools have advanced programs that allow kids to move faster through curriculum. Our kids are tested after fifth grade and can be placed as high as algebra for sixth which means geometry honors in seventh and algebra 2 trig in eighth then pre-calc in ninth and BC calc as sophomores. I understand not all districts have that option.
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Quite a piece of anti-SAT propaganda. The narrator imposes his views into the story throughout the piece, to the point of paraphrasing some of his interview subjects, such as the Yale AO, away from the words coming out of their mouths. The Georgia Tech AO states clearly that increasing URM enrollment was a focus for the school before TO, and the narrator still credits TO for increasing URM enrollment at GT. Increasing URM and first time enrollment was a focus around the T40 schools, and now TO advocates are simply taking credit for some of those outcomes that were going to happen anyway. I stopped listening after about 20 minutes.
One outcome of TO policies at the elite schools that I had not considered is the damage it is doing to the third and fourth tier colleges. The branding gap between the Elite and the 100+ schools has grown significantly in a large part because of the artificial spike in applicants due to kids applying to schools they have no shot at. Applications are down at a lot of the third and fourth tier schools, and there almost appears to be an environment of “Ivy or bust” among many applicants.
Some of these smaller, less competitive private schools are not going to make it, and TO will be at least in part responsible for that. I wonder what that will do for the social mobility of the middle and working class kids that need those schools to get an education.
Just so I understand, your latest argument against TO is that kids who cannot get into the “Ivy” schools will choose not to go to college at all? And this is because TO? You don’t happen to have any data supporting any of this, do you?
You have been correlating modest increases in first timers and URMs at schools with TO’s, when in fact those were areas of focus for a lot of schools for the last few years, before TO became so common. Maybe there are some other correlations.
Applications are down at less competitive schools, and many are in dire financial shape. Is it unreasonable to believe that TO was at least a factor?
I will provide a couple of links.
https://www.bestcolleges.com/blog/selective-colleges-application-surge-mean-low-acceptance-rates/