That’s a very good point. What I was thinking of was some of the results in the Chetty study comparing test scores to GPAs, but those were post-graduation outcomes and only at Ivy-Plus colleges.
I think you are correct when looking at things like college GPAs, graduation rates, and so on, across all colleges, HS GPA becomes a better indicator. Here is a report about such a study with a link:
I do think for the most selective schools, this relationship gets complicated. But I very much overstated the general situation in what you quoted.
And there are other programs where universities and colleges have straight out come and said they see a difference. Dartmouth’s Provost said just as much last week on YCBK podcast – they they are starting to see differences in SOME classrooms. Purdue has published their data.
Lesson here is that it depends on the school and the program.
Couple of other things – a lot of hail Mary applicants are international students too. Their numbers have swelled and they are applying to the same 20 selective schools. Second, Ivy+ schools will always prefer scores from expected demographics. Provost Coffin on YCBK joked that scores disappear as class rank falls. Ivy pretend schools will look the other way because they have revenue targets.
We are going through this dilemma now. DD24 is literally at the 50% or 10-30 points below the 50%. Wants to study engineering and has an 800 Math score. How can you not submit that even if your composite it 10-30 points below the average?
As long as your D has the appropriate list of matches, reaches, sure bets, etc. you submit and don’t look back. There are never guarantees that even with a higher verbal score those reaches would become matches… so just check your list for a good range of schools and don’t overthink it.
I also would submit. There are two ways that I come to this conclusion. One is that the reported scores are skewed since people with low scores don’t submit them and people with high scores do. Thus if you are at the 50th percentile of reported scores, I would expect you to be well over the 50th percentile for all scores for all students. Also, engineering is math intensive, and an 800 in math looks to me to be something that should be reported for a potential engineer.
We are so lucky that the flood of TO happened before his year. He has dyslexia and a math disability (GC will disclose). He took the ACT once to see whether it was worth a greater effort, and it’s not😄.
I do wish that he could just go TO for math and submit the rest…maybe someday that will be a thing.
S24 is one of the most emotionally intelligent people I know, and often sees connections that others don’t. Plus, he has grit. These things will make him an excellent college student, so I’m glad he doesn’t have to submit his biggest weakness (long, cumulative math tests).
With TO, the AO’s put more weight on grades, rigor, ECs and LORs. Fingers crossed for all the 24s!
We all remember when universities shifted to test optional admissions because of Covid. I always wondered if some students were being admitted to difficult universities where they couldn’t handle the rigor. I couldn’t help but think about that again when I saw this article:
Unfortunately that article doesn’t tell us the proportion of those students who had academic issues in 2021-22 who were admitted TO. Only first years at that point (2021 HS grads) would have possibly been admitted under H’s TO policy (the vast majority of 2020 HS grads had test scores and had already gone thru the admissions cycle before the pandemic hit).
It seems to me the increase in Harvard’s academic suspension numbers in 2021-22 are much more likely to be due to the many nefarious effects of the pandemic…such as the negative impact on students mental health and having online only classes.
One definitely can’t assume that TO is an issue in this Harvard data, as the overwhelming majority of those undergrads attending in 2021-22 were accepted with test scores.
I do think a not insignificant proportion of students who have had academic struggles at Harvard have also had mental health struggles. I will look for a citation for that…@skieurope do you know?
Regardless, I believe in the data that show no difference in academic performance among test submitters and non-submitters that several schools have published (Ithaca, DePaul, Bates). Other schools, like Bowdoin, haven’t published such data, but verbally state there has been no difference over the last 50+ years in GPA/grad rate of test submitters and non-submitters.
However, this spike also aligns with the first full academic year of a large number of students admitted as test optional. I am open to the idea it is a mix of test optional students who couldn’t handle the rigor and students reeling from the effects of the pandemic, are you?
Not sure until I see the data…we don’t know how many first years are in that group of non-performers (and only first years in 2021-22 would have been able to have been accepted TO). I expect Harvard knows the data, and if they were concerned I expect they would have gone back to test required…which they still could do. We do know Harvard initially said TO would go through 2026, and then they extended that through 2030.
It also aligns with a freshman class that spent most of their senior year doing school virtually. Obviously that was highly variable across high schools, but you get the idea. Lots of weak spots in terms of academic preparation. Though, I might also suspect that this angle would affect younger students more. My point is that learning loss may be difficult to untangle from test optional policies when it comes to a downstream effect like college students struggling.
In 2021-22 CDS 85% submitted. 83% the next year. While I’m not a fan of TO, there’s no way you can jump to that conclusion.
I think schools let in not necessarily qualified due to diversify. That can be part.
Or it can just be kids lost focus, couldn’t handle zoom or weren’t well prepared because of zoom. Maybe it’s the most in a while but 51 isn’t that many. What were the other years? It might be a slight increase which wouldn’t be meaningful.
I think there are a lot of factors that are all part of holistic admissions (diversity, TO…) and many people are waiting to see if this results in less success at college, with some students upnprepared for the rigor. it seems possible that at least at Harvard and MIT (who re-instituted SAT scores) this is panning out.
those of us with kids in the admissions process currently or recently have all heard many anecdotes of great students getting rejected from all the top schools while less accomplished peers get in. is this a case of sour grapes and entitled whining, or is a case of where there is smoke there is fire?
Was just talking to friends yesterday with students in HS who said this was the first year since Covid that it seems like classes are back to their pre-pandemic rigor. Not sure if that’s unique to our area or if others are feeling the same way.
My D was a course grader in the Fall of '21 and said students were so used to online/open book exams that they really really struggled transitioning back. I can’t imagine that was unique to her university.
I do think part is covid (I’m guessing it hurt education) and part is diversity efforts. Covid impacted both high schoolers and college students. Imagine taking the first year of class on line. You may have gotten through but if that was preparation for the second year, it may have been bad preparation and you may have struggled.
In regards to diversity, these schools make no effort to hide their diversity efforts.
In the end, if we allow a baker to say no to a client because they don’t want to bake for them (for whatever reason), a college has the right to say no to whomever they want for whatever reason.
Why the Harvard paper says the # is unusually high, that still doesn’t give me frame of reference to compare it to. And we don’t know the ethnicity or socioeconomic situation of those in trouble. So we don’t know is it diversity, is it Covid, test optional, just bad choosing by admission counselors or something else.
At least the school isn’t passing them through like many would to keep up the grad rate.