Test Optional Strategy

Applying to College
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I was responding to something a different poster said.

Again, it doesn’t seem particularly smart to me to try to do that in a way all your peers can see and easily duplicate.

As other posters are pointing out, these colleges are absolutely spending a lot of money on targeted marketing. They also do a whole bunch of other things to build their brand, and so on.

But to me, this particular marketing hypothesis seems like the kind of thing that would not be very likely to work from a competitive standpoint.

And by the way, implicitly application fees DO matter to this hypothesis. Because of course if indiscriminately increasing application volumes was all they cared about, it would seem to be a really cheap “marketing” strategy to just charge no fees at all. I am sure that would really drive up the volume of frivolous applications.

But they don’t, they just send out targeted fee waivers.

So I don’t think the hypothesis these colleges are looking to indiscriminately increase application volumes is looking very good.

Well, according to them, many have found they are satisfied with how they are doing admissions without requiring tests. And we know behind the scenes, they are adopting new practices and developing new technologies that essentially can serve as a substitute for these tests.

So it could just be a matter of COVID accelerating developments that might eventually have happened anyway. This has been true in many industries, and this seems like as good a bet as any for an industry that would experience such an effect.

It is useful to know that US News changed its formulas since then, and acceptance rate is not in the current formula.

Again, I don’t mean to suggest no one is gaming rankings any more. But this particular way of gaming rankings does not make much sense today.

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USNWR is eliminating class size from its ranking criteria. It would be interesting to see if Northeastern class sizes are less likely to be capped at 19, 29, 39, 49 in the future, since there will be no USNWR ranking advantage in getting them into the next lower size bracket (1-19, 20-29, 30-39, 40-49). Same with other USNWR rank gaming colleges.

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This is where cynicism of a more sophisticated sort becomes relevant.

Like, you can give out more in aid if you have more full pay students. This may sound paradoxical, but it really isn’t when you think about it.

And while the population of college enrollees in general is decreasing, not so much at the highest family SES levels.

OK, so if you are the sort of college which has a lot of full pay students already but is looking at an increasingly dire overall college enrollment pool, you might be thinking about how to leverage that resource into competing more effectively for a shrinking pool of serious need students.

Meanwhile, if you are the sort of college that can’t compete that way–well, you just might see decreasing enrollment. If you are a private college, you might go bankrupt. If a public college, you might be consolidated. Or so on.

So it is a pretty good bet the accelerating demographic problem that is soon going to nose-dive into a cliff is going to lead to a lot of consolidation, one way or another. And the likely survivors will disproportionately be colleges that at least had a healthy portion of high-SES kids to work with.

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This is at the core of many “we give merit awards” college strategies. Whether it works over the next ten years is anyone’s guess.

But it’s a LOT cheaper to offer 5K and 10K in “merit” so mom and dad have bragging rights at the club “Little Susie is so talented they are PAYING her to attend!” vs. funding a 70K need package (plus Pell and Fed loan) for a kid from a zero EFC family.

And it’s cheaper still than doing things that make a college “better”-- i.e. billion dollar investment in labs, libraries, beefing up academic rigor…

Every time someone on a college tour whined about “imagine how much financial aid they could fun without the fancy landscaping” I’d think to myself “a state of the art genomics lab costs hundreds of millions. But the parents of the Leisure Studies majors don’t care about the genomics lab, and they sure do like daffodils in March.”

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Whenever a marketing strategy doesn’t work with you personally, it is obviously a bad idea . . . .

Edit: Probably should have made clear I was agreeing, albeit sarcastically, with the post to which I was replying. Sorry!

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Worth noting re: percentages of students submitting scores per CDS that those percentages are SAT or ACT or both.

You can look at Brown’s pre-TO CDSs to get a sense of this overlap—the percentage of enrolled students submitting SAT or ACT ranges from 112 to 116%. That means 12-16% were submitting both tests. Today, Brown’s number is 81%, which seems very high…but if you assume the same proportion of ACT + SAT submitters (let’s call it 15%), it’s more like 68% of enrolled students submitted scores.

“Ivies still expect scores” is demonstrably untrue as a general statement; it’s school-by-school. Cornell has a bunch of test-blind schools, says test scores are only “considered,” and has only 60% submitting ACT or SAT or both (really 52% submitting if you assume the 12% overlap on their 2019 CDS). Meanwhile, Dartmouth says it’s TO but also says test scores are “very important” and doesn’t even provide data on the number of test score submitters.

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No, I don’t think anything of recent vintage is a good OR bad idea. It takes time for enrollment, reputation, academic rigor, etc. to shake out/improve/go down the drain.

But on its face- there are “tweaks” to a college’s operating plan which are a LOT easier, cheaper, etc. to implement than others. I remember visiting colleges back in the 1970’s which were absolute dumps- the dorms were falling apart, the rare book library smelled like mold (which usually means the end of an archive or old book- they fall apart in the absence of appropriate climate control). And then to revisit in the “modern” age- Wow. But the changes in infrastructure are not that apparent year to year (especially with a 20 year master plan which after all- takes 20 years). But planting hydrangea? Not so hard.

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Just to be clear, I was agreeing with you (or at least so I intended).

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Where that argument falls apart is that it just takes a handful of middling schools with few other options to start that fish rolling down the hill.

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So why are there still application fees? Supplemental essays? If the hypothesis is that the incentives built into the system move everyone to whatever application process maximizes the volume of applications for everyone, these things should not exist.

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If we’re being honest, the “handful of middling schools” are already circling the drain. One year of poor enrollment forecasting, and there are empty beds in the dorm and empty seats in the classrooms. TWO years of poor forecasting (and then the loss of revenue- even with “generous” merit discounting) and the trustees are eying various restricted endowments to see if they can be redeployed. One shock to the system (sudden rise in energy prices which hits both Northern schools which heat their buildings, and Southern schools which need A/C) coupled with rising health insurance? Boom. Debt gets downgraded, maintenance gets deferred, the ever-so-desirable full pay International students come for a tour and see shabby dining halls and figure they can apply elsewhere.

Gaming the system-- any way you cut it- is likely not a sustainable strategy for those middling schools given the demographics.

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It’s a good question. I’m sure it has been and will be discussed. Indeed, many schools have eliminated supplementals.

Sitting through enough c-suite strategy sessions over my life makes that answer seem instinctual.

It’s not a race to the bottom. It’s incremental and they took the best option to start. Those options are flawed.

There’s no Crazy Larry hacking prices and barking about it.

Many schools give waivers but “free” applications would sound desperate and cost money. It also doesn’t boost test scores. Bad option.

One or two essays gives just enough challenge that you think they want you less than you want them. Going to no supplements erodes the exclusivity they’re trying to sell. Bad option.

The 3rd option, TO, is perfect. At absolutely no cost, they get to juice their admission % and get a strong bump in test scores all while claiming it’s some great deed for humanity. They’re keeping it going by saying it’s all for “equity”. Yeah, right.

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Your daughter will be fine without SAT. Mine was accepted to many colleges including the University of Rochester, University of Richmond, and UMD test optional. She had very high GPA and many DE classes (we avoided APs). She also stepped up at the end and got a good SAT (1430 with 750 in math) but it was in November of 12th grade and it was submitted only for BS/DO programs and for some merit awards after the fact.
You need SAT only for top programs like Ivies, top Engineering programs, and possibly top 50.

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Well, exactly.

This is true if, but only if, you believe they can just as efficiently fulfill their other institutional priorities for admissions with a test-optional approach.

And then if that is true, you do not need any additional explanation.

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My sense is that the schools use the TO approach to fulfill some institutional priorities - number one, to attract more URM and low SES applicants. That has seemingly worked. Secondarily, a TO strategy allows the schools to select the students they want without worrying that later they’ll be sued for admitting “lesser” candidates (meaning kids who got lower test scores). Considering the SC decision, I think there is zero chance that top schools eliminate TO.

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It also allows highly selective schools to accept some high-achieving, high-SES students who they believe will enhance their community in some way without worrying about bringing their average scores down. The 4.0 kid with 10 APs who is student counsel president and a debater but couldn’t break 1400 on the SAT is someone a lot of schools want, and those schools are happy not to have to factor that student’s scores into the decision (or their averages).

To your point, they can prove TO isn’t only an equity tool by admitting TO students from all sorts of backgrounds.

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That’s true. I’ll be honest, though, I feel my S24 needed a score he could submit. We are UMC and he comes from a nice suburban school district in MA (an over represented demographic just about everywhere). He has near perfect grades (1 A-), a good array of ECs (though, typical) and has a rigorous schedule but he is “unhooked”. My fear was that TO (for him) would suggest a low SAT and drop him out of consideration. Fortunately, he did well and his score is at, or above, the 75% for any school so it is a moot point. Not sure what our approach would have been had he not improved his score (probably a mixed strategy since the original was good enough for some of the schools).

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My two cents is I suspect increasingly sophisticated software, using Big Data/machine-learning/AI approaches, is also making it easier to deemphasize test scores. There are a few hints of that in things some AOs have said, but mostly this is just something that makes sense to me.

As I see it, their biggest single admissions problem is that raw HS GPAs are a very poor indicator, significantly worse than tests. However, carefully processed grades, folding in course rigor, school rigor, recommendations, internal historic data, AO experiences, and so on, is a very good indicator, much better than tests.

But historically, that has taken a lot of human resources for each application. However, these new technologies might be changing that, such that after an initial fixed cost, you can then start processing all that across an arbitrary number of applications. And it doesn’t have to be perfect, as long as you think it will get it mostly right, and that a quick human review will be able to see if something went wrong, then you might have something that works very efficiently and also very well.

Test scores of course could remain an input to all that, but they probably don’t need to be required for that to work well anyway. And I personally think that is why so many schools have continued what they describe as an experiment with test optional–they are developing this sort of thing behind the scenes, and seeing promising results.

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So I assume this is conditional on the school in question not being one where his grades/rigor combination would make him very likely on its own.

Because of course such colleges exist. A lot of TO colleges are admitting a lot of their students without test scores, and with reasonably high overall admit rates. So if a given applicant with a good enough grades/rigor combination applies to such a college TO, they are still going to be very likely for admissions. Indeed, in some cases they are going to be a strong contender for merit aid, and so on.

This is not to disagree with you, I just think sometimes it is worth being explicit about the fact that people worrying about whether to submit are usually looking at a specific sort of case, namely one where their grades/rigor are not enough on their own to make them likely.

Of course there are certain colleges where that condition applies to basically everyone who is unhooked. And any given individual might be facing that situation at more TO colleges.

But still, for anyone, there will likely be colleges where they can very safely go TO. They just might reasonably prefer some where it is a harder question.

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Are they? Even The College Board seems to think that HS GPA is (slightly) better than SAT for predicting college GPA.