Thank you everyone. It is good to vent, but also to get feedback from other parents. It’s the whole village concept. I will take your words and advice to heart. I will also update. Thank you.
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Very helpful and interesting conversation here. I recommend the recent YCBK podcasts featuring Dartmouth’s Lee Coffin, who discusses test-optional strategies at length, at least in the context of an incredibly selective school like Dartmouth. If you trust my ability to comprehend and summarize: Dartmouth generally encourages students to submit their test scores to Dartmouth but remains officially test optional. Coffin’s advice is more nuanced than I am willing to describe here, but I got the sense that he’d recommend submitting test scores if they are (a) very high within the specific context one’s high school or (b) not too far below a college’s 25%-75%. I also got the sense that test scores are probably carry a little more weight for students interested in quantitative fields (math, CS, etc.).
More troubling are the increasing nuances in the TO world. In my mind, there are currently at least 5 flavors of test-consideration, only two of which I was aware of a year ago:
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Test scores required: No explanation needed. Archetype: MIT.
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Tests scores not considered: No explanation needed. Archetype: The UCs.
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Truly test optional: Schools that strongly emphasize their test-optional nature and that fact that applying test optional will not hurt an applicant’s chances in any way. Many of these schools were test-optional before the pandemic. Archetype: Bowdoin.
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Test scores encouraged, but not required: This is the least-recognized flavor and applicants may mistake it for #3 (truly test optional). I think everybody is still figuring what this means for each school, but, in short, I think it means that there is a small thumb on the scale of toward submitting test scores, even if they fall a little below the school’s 25%-75%. How do you recognize such schools beyond listening to a million podcasts? I’m not sure, but I would read each college’s test-optional statement carefully. For example, Dartmouth’s statement is fairly overt: “Dartmouth College is test optional for applicants to the Class of 2028. If a student has taken standardized testing, we encourage the student to submit scores regardless of how they may compare to scores on historical Dartmouth.” Carnegie Mellon, in my reading, seems to take a similar position: “While we encourage those who have been able to take the SAT or ACT to submit their scores, we also recognize that candidates who do submit scores may not have been able to take the SAT or ACT more than once as planned.” Archetype: Dartmouth (for now).
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Admission is test optional, but merit aid isn’t: Some schools that are test optional for admissions may nevertheless award merit aid based on test scores. For example, at the University of Nevada, if you have a GPA above 3.7 and an ACT score 31 or higher, you get an automatic $8,000 scholarship, even though the school doesn’t even consider test scores for admission. Archetype: Nevada.
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I think it’s less a thumb in a scale and more of allowing the school to fulfill certain institutional priorities.
What is never disclosed is the profile of the kids accepted TO, including an overwhelming number of athletes.
One way to consider if a school may fall in this category is to look at the CDS. Princeton - who says “testing, if available, can provide valuable information” still lists standardized testing as “very important” despite being TO. Dartmouth does the same.
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this is a great summation. I would add most of the big publics in number 4. UNC, Michigan, Auburn…I would even add UTK in that group for the upcoming year. I think schools that get tens of thousands of apps need a test score just to help weed out the masses. It’s interesting sitting here in KY with tons of kids who flock to big southern schools, that more kids went to Ole Miss this year than in previous years because everyone can still get in.
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I noticed that today for a school. I feel like the schools we are looking list tests as “considered” but I was surprised when I saw “very important” for a school that is TO. I also feel with Ivies that they expect a score, schools farther down the food chain, one should have some more flexibility.
It’s interesting that nobody seems to look at this from the true perspective of the schools.
They are, first and foremost, a business selling an expensive lifestyle product. They rely on an image of exclusivity and excellence to attract more & better applicants.
They desperately need to keep the acceptance rate as low as possible and to show that they attract the “best” students. Who wants to attend a school that just takes anyone? It’s a velvet rope.
By removing the testing barrier, they make more potential applicants think they have a chance. More applicants = a lower acceptance rate. “Can’t have it” becomes “I want it so bad”.
This also allows them to accept lower performers without hurting the average test scores that they use to market (sell) their product.
If, for example, a school has an average accepted score last year at 1520, any and all applicants for this year will be dragging them down if they submit scores below that number. At 1500, you should remember that the school would then need to find and close a 1540 just to maintain their 1520 average for next year’s sales pitch.
1500 might not feel like a bad score but, when you understand how they look at it from a marketing standpoint, why would you want to put yourself in a position where accepting you makes them look “less good”?
Parents and students have been conditioned to think this is some sort of altruistic, wholesome process where they look at the “whole student”. What they really look at is what increases their revenue, their bonuses, and their ability to hold the rope closed for more bodies. If they accept you, you become a tool to sell to the next guy.
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Test optional has been the topic of 62 separate threads. Other users have indeed espoused your theories.
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Very good point. Universities ARE money making entities. Every application requires an application fee. Test optional may just be a very good marketing strategy to make more money. Looking at Harvard alone, when they went test optional, their application numbers rose by 20,000.
When you are receiving nearly 60,000 applications, you need some criteria to cut down those numbers. I think scores are one way. GPA numbers are another. I’m just curious how many test optional kids actually get in. I haven’t seen too much data out there for the Ivies. Other schools have been more generous with their info.
Call me small minded, but I still think test optional is a better option for kids who have adversities in their background or are lower income. I think students with no adversities, who have educated parents, and high socioeconomic demographics are screwed when they go test optional. Just my opinion.
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I agree that test optional is not viewed equally across the board but even before TO colleges knew how to contextualize scores.
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I also think smart educated kids with a 32 are going TO to schools like Boston College which has a 34 as the 25% percentile.
Taking Ivies and comparables out of the equation (where you really do need a test score), the colleges in the next selectivity group are saying during the admission events, “don’t submit a 32”. So super bright top-of-the-heap kids who 3 or 4 years ago would have been delighted to submit a 32 are now not. There are dozens of schools spouting the same message.
I think AO’s know that smart kids from rigorous high schools can do the work. They also know that there are bright kids getting a 32 on the ACT so I think those AO’s are pretty confident in letting those kids in.
But every parent of a kid who is going TO would absolutely love not to be in that situation. It is not a great feeling at all, but we have no choice but to make the best of the situation and do our research.
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I note the Harvard application fee is $85. This means for every 20000 additional frivolous applications it gets, it might get up to $1.7 million in additional fees. Of course processing more applications costs something, so the “profit” would be net of that increase in costs.
Meanwhile, Harvard’s annual operating budget is $5.4 billion.
My point is the idea that Harvard would see an increase in applications and therefore application fees as an important source of operating revenue is not particularly plausible. Indeed, I strongly suspect that Harvard would rather that $85 fee discourage frivolous applications, as opposed to Harvard getting more frivolous applications at that rate. In that sense, I would suggest for Harvard, that is more of what you might call a queue pricing strategy (other examples including congestion pricing).
I also note that trying to gain a marketing advantage by driving down reported acceptance rates by driving up application volumes by going test optional is not a very promising strategy because of course it is easily duplicated by all your competitors. There are other things you can do to try to use your college resources to increase application volumes that are not so easily duplicated. So even if competing in that way is important, this does not sound to me like a very effective way to compete.
None of this is meant to imply we should not seek to understand these colleges in light of their own institutional goals. But I am pretty sure what matters to Harvard and the like is how well the class they enroll ends up serving its institutional goals, rather than how much of a “profit center” it can try to make out of the admissions office.
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Agree.
Over a decade ago, Brown started putting granular admissions data on its website which included a breakout of the admissions rate if you were Val vs. Sal vs. “just” top 10%. I don’t know if they still do.
It was intended to help shatter the “Brown is so crunchy granola that they don’t care about GPA’s and grades” myth which was generating SO many “hail mary pass” applications. The application fee in no way covers the costs of running an admissions department, let alone serve as a profit center!
I have interviewed some of these “hail mary pass” applicants… and it always made me sad that instead of spending the time falling in love with a college which would be a great fit for their academic and artistic profile, the kids were pining away for a college where they were not just below the academic bar-- but SUBSTANTIALLY below the academic bar.
Could they succeed at Brown? Who knows. But a kid who struggles with college prep English lit and is barely passing pre-algebra as a senior but who fancies themselves an artist, poet, social justice warrior, and major bohemian is not a likely admit. At least ten years ago when I was still interviewing…
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I agree that Harvard doesn’t need the money from application fees. In fact they’d probably drop the fee if they didn’t think that would cause an additional deluge. But it’s not as if they aren’t out there marketing and I’m not sure why - I mean, yes, in under represented communities/areas/schools it makes sense but I’m not sure why the effort to encourage kids like S24 to apply - unhooked kid from UMC town in MA (an over-represented group if ever there was one).
I think it varies greatly among schools, some like Vandy and USC, accept a lot of kids test optional. But most of the Ivies still have relatively high numbers of scores submitted. UVA has surprisingly high number of scores submitted for a school that says it doesn’t weigh the test highly. And of course, scores still required at MIT, Ga Tech/UGA, Florida, Georgetown and Purdue.
This is why my son who graduated in the class of 22 did not submit his SAT score to three top universities. Even though he was 99th percentile, it was considered in the bottom quartile of admissions. Therefore, he applied test optional. Those are the only three universities that did not accept him. Not even waitlist. Just denial. Call it coincidence? I don’t know. However it has made me very wary of test optional, and this is why I am concerned about my current high school kid refusing to prep for the SAT.
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There are kids in Greenwich CT-- one of the wealthiest zip codes in the country- who live on three acre estates. Dad is a groundskeeper and mom is a housekeeper, and a small apartment over the pool house is part of their comp package. And believe it or not, some of those kids-- perhaps with exceptional scores and grades-- do not think they are “Harvard material”.
So yeah, Harvard continues to market to addresses in Greenwich.
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I think you’re confusing the argument. It doesn’t have anything to do with profit from application fees.
It has everything to do with increasing the top line number so the % accepted gets driven down thus creating an aura of exclusivity which reinforces price. Simple marketing.
Your point that it wouldn’t be feasible because others would follow… they have. COVID is over There are no barriers to testing anymore yet TO remains. Why? Because their accepted test scores would plummet. They’re backed into a corner.
You’re also seemingly only focused on Harvard. I’ll give you that an Ivy might need this strategy less but every 2nd tier school out there gains tremendously from it. It makes them appear to be more selective than they are while it paradoxically encourages lesser qualified applicants to take a chance because the score doesn’t matter. It’s genius.
Here’s one school that flat-out admitted to all of this 10 years ago.
Google: Boston magazine how-northeastern-gamed-the-college-rankings
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Additional test required schools include Florida publics.
Additional test not considered schools include CSUs and Caltech.
The last category regarding merit scholarships is probably more widespread where colleges like University of Alabama offer automatic merit scholarships for high enough test scores and GPA, but those without test scores can only try for competitive merit scholarships.
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That’s a really good question I have wondered about myself.
I do think it is important to understand the context, though, which is that the total pool of 4-year college enrollees in the United States is trending down, and projections make it look even worse (google “demographic enrollment cliff” to see what I mean).
What I have normally heard as the next thought is many colleges are looking to branch out into new-to-them markets. This could mean more international students. More FGLI students. More of whatever pool they think might have more students they would want, but which are not applying at maximally-high rates today.
And that sort of analysis is presumably being driven by some Big Data approaches these days (few institutions with a decent marketing budget are not doing something like that).
So I don’t in any way understand the details intuitively, but presumably if these colleges are sending emails or mailers or live representatives or whatever to help market to a certain pool of kids, it is because they think there is still some untapped potential in those pools. And it could be they are going from like 80% applying to 90% applying, but hey, that is still 10% more. And their Big Data models and such might be saying that is worth just as much as getting some other pool to go from 10% applying to 20% applying, or whatever.
But that’s just a concept. Why Columbia in particular seems to think my S24 is someone they really want to apply, but is worried will not, is not something I know.
Although actually, he is not interested in applying to Columbia, so maybe they know what they are doing after all.
Except the mailers and such haven’t worked . . . .
Many colleges are constrained by their budgets from being able to offer enough financial aid and scholarships to more students from low income families, so that market will likely stay under served by colleges.