Test optional has been around for a while but the pandemic has increased the stakes in the process.
For years there has been evidence that a 3 hour rapid fire pressure filled test process is no indication of how a student will perform in school or certainly in life. No where else in life ( except maybe applying to graduate schools) is this experience ever encountered - some schools realized this earlier with test optional (TO). In addition, the bias of having resources to prep for these exams invalidates them more. But with the pandemic things have been magnified in a different way and most have gone test optional for now.
The Good - understanding many students may not have access to testing TO has allowed those students to over come the inability to test. On the surface showing a university’s soft side. For the good student but poor standardized test taker a chance to overcome their problem, also good.
The Bad - ( full disclosure I’m not a testing fan) - applications skyrocket creating anxiety, lowering acceptance rates ( since slots don’t increase), reported score acceptance ranges by universities increase ( only those with high scores report - so these ranges are only a partial truth of the scores for those accepted), more anxiety. For universities it may be bad (more work) or good ( chance to see/admit some people that they would have otherwise rejected before - or might never have applied).
The Ugly - the crazy anxiety TO created is seen all over these boards when students or parents ask to be evaluation for chances to certain school or should they submit a 1500 or 33 to a school they are in the 25% but not 50%. Next year because only those with 34 or above submitted their scores the admitted average will be 35 so will 34 be too low?
Quite simply they should either keep the original testing as it was but devote time effort and money into making the process more fair ( again I’m not a fan of standardized testing) or scrap the entire system ( college board/and all the people who profit from the system will lobby hard against that - but as has been shown by increased applications universities will have to work harder to sort candidates too) - No test optional. just No test (or test blind). This hybrid system in different ways is no better than the original
Is this a true statement? That would imply that if you knew nothing else but an SAT score, you couldn’t rank the performance at all. Your best guess for the performance of an 800 and 1500 SAT would be the same. That is different than saying we have other characteristics that diminish the value of the test in predicting results.
The ugly: For many typical High School students, for whom standardized tests are just… another test (like A/P Tests, Regions, or even mid-terms, etc.), standardized tests gave them a normative tool to evaluate their own “standing” vs. others’, who might have been educated by other teachers, at other schools, in other states.
Without standardized tests, admission will be even more unpredictable, with decisions/criteria left even more to the “whim”/subjectivity of admission officers.
Agreed. Someone’s getting in who otherwise wouldn’t, and someone else is getting denied who would have been in. I think one question to ask is where the trends lie, if at all: are there patterns among kids with better test scores than grades or vice versa? I wouldn’t be shocked if it correlated with EFCs.
We were having a variant of this discussion on another thread.
Standardized tests to me are necessary and the best chance for a kid without too many resources to catch up. ACT and SAT test what every junior in an American HS should know. I agree that not everyone will perform at his/her best on a given test date but one can retake. There are many excellent resources available for free or at a very reasonable price. The whole idea that this is somehow wrong as so incorrectly laid out today on CNN by some hack is simply mind boggling to me when the latest research from UC system shows that without standardized tests, poor and minority kids would be left out even more.
Also consider how holistic admissions came to be. It was tool developed in the 1930s to allow more non-Jewish white males to get into colleges because Jewish kids were outperforming their peers in the same way Asian Americans are doing now.
When I was at Alumni Weekend at my T15 college a few years ago, I went to a forum on college admission. I found it fascinating to hear that they frequently have first years that have never been required to write a paper throughout their four years of high school. And most of them make it through to graduation. I think this probably runs parallel to the test scores… Show us a smart and driven kid with loads of potential and we’ll teach them, no matter what kind of educational background they may have had (or not had). I think a lot of folks don’t realize how much catching up a smart kid who didn’t have a lot of resources in high school can actually do. Especially at a supportive LAC.
I think having resources confers advantages for pretty much every aspect of admissions (money for tutors to boost GPA; money to pursue and excel at extra curricular activities, better connections become aware of and to land good extra curricular opportunities, money to hire people to assist with essays, better connections to relevant people who can provide informed advice re essays and the admissions process in general, money to afford a private school with more resources devoted to college placement, etc. )
I would argue that having more resources is more of an advantage with GPA than with test scores. And that it might be as much or more of an advantage with other aspects of the application.
If colleges are interested is sorting this issue out they will simply take the data they are now being handed (via the pandemic) and track those students now admitted with a submitted test vs those who didnt. Give it a few years to evaluate things like college success (grades, courses, grad school/job starting salary, drop outs /transfers etc. You now have lots of data from two groups (do it for several years). Not knowing any thing I would guess the two groups would be similar showing that standardized tests do not make a difference - their big benefit is to an industry that thrives on them and universities that may use them to make their job a little easier.
There are a lot of tests/ courses that are in place in life that just have no place in the actual performance of the intended task. Lets take courses like Organic chemistry for premedical students. It’s purpose is to “weed out” students and limit applications to medical school ( some would argue Calculus etc also). But I would challenge any practicing physician to say Organic Chemistry has helped them in medicine. As mentioned a 3 hr rapid fire test has little reflection on ones overall day to day performance (except maybe if you want to go on Jeopardy).
It’s my understanding that the UC report found that among low income students who were near guaranteed admission by either ELC (top 9% UC grades) or statewide eligibility index (grades + scores); 26% were admitted by grades + scores and not ELC, suggesting that the scores were strong in comparison to rank within their HS . Scores helped a minority of low income kids be admitted who were outside of top 9% class rank. I’d expect that this group with higher scores and not top 9% rank is quite common in selective magnet HSs, which tend to have a HS full of high scoring kids and also a good portion of lower income kids. . Most of the high scoring kids in such HSs are not among top 9% of their class.
However, this is not the same as saying test optional hurts poor and minority kids. If you look at colleges that have gone test optional, literally every college that compares average income of test optional applicants/admits/enrolls to test submitter applicants/admits/enrolls find that the test optional kids are lower average income. This includes dozens of colleges. Some example links are below:
Applicants
Test Submitter Applicants – Mean family contribution = $37k, 10% Pell, 26% URM*
Test Optional Applicants – Mean family contribution = $31k, 17% Pell, 40% URM*
Admits
Test Submitter Admits-- Mean family contribution = $37k, 15% Pell, 22% URM*
Test Optional Admits – Mean family contribution = $30k, 29% Pell, 35% URM*
Enrolled
Test Submitter Enrolls-- Mean family contribution = $34k, 18% Pell, 19% URM*
Test Optional Enrolls – Mean family contribution = $29k, 30% Pell, 31% URM*
*Ithaca includes Asian students as part of their URM category. Only ~4% of Ithaca kids are Asian.
The reason for this pattern is not surprising. Test scores tend be a relative strong point for kids from wealthy and/or well resourced backgrounds. Test scores also tend to be a relative strong point for various other groups, including men. So these groups for which test scores are a relative strong point of their application tend to be overrepresented as tests submitters.
Schools that have had TO policies for a long time (not schools that instituted it due to Covid) have done research that shows exactly what you’ve said - there are negligible differences in performance between kids that submitted scores and those that did not.
Yes, test optional is not a new idea. Roughly 1000 colleges were test optional prior to COVID, so many colleges have compared outcomes between test submitter kids and test optional kids. The 25 years of test optional Bates report at https://www.bates.edu/admission/files/2014/01/25th-Year-SAT-report-Stanford-6.3.11-wch.ppt is particularly detailed. Some example numbers are below:
Mean SAT Score: Submitters: ~620/~620 , Non-Submitters: ~540/~535
Gender: Submitters = 48% Female, Non-submitters =59% Female
Financial Aid: Submitters = 34% received FA, Non-submitters =42% received FA
Race: Submitters = 3% URM, Non-submitters = 5% URM
So if there is so much evidence that testing makes no significant difference and students with TO vs submitted scores are similar, why do the majority of schools continue ( pre-covid) to rely/ask on them? Is the testing industry and the associated organizations who benefit from the process that powerful? Do schools simply find the consequences of TO ( sky rocketing applications) too difficult to deal with (wanting it to be easier to get through fewer apps - or not having staffs big enough to handle the volume - or whatever)?
Bates is a pretty expensive liberal arts school that attracts a certain type of people.
What about larger (and smaller) state schools? Can a kid that is performing at a 10th grade level perform as a freshman in college without significant support? Is that realistic?
Here’s what I like about TO — a school can consider a test score and not merely consider something INSTEAD of a test score.
For instance, students with great letters of recommendation, leadership positions, and clever essays are likely young people with strong social/emotional intelligence — likable kids that a college might want on campus.
But I would argue that there are other kids a college should ALSO want — awkward but brilliant and good-hearted nerds who have been so obsessed with their own engineering or historic research projects or whatever that they are late bloomers when it comes to social skills. But they just might be great test-takers with a lot of potential.
I agree that great test-takers and not-so-great test-takers can both succeed at a school. But I also think each student should be able to highlight their strengths. Telling strong test-takers that they cannot submit scores or that scores will be ignored feels a little like telling a great musician they cannot list musical accomplishments or an athlete to omit sports achievements.
A number of test optional schools have published/released data that show no statistically meaningful differences in graduation rates, GPAs, etc between test submitters and non-submitters. These schools (beyond Bates) include: WPI, DePaul, Ithaca, GWU, and Wake Forest. Then there’s this 2018 study where 28 public and private institutions submitted data: https://www.nacacnet.org/globalassets/documents/publications/research/defining-access-report-2018.pdf
Reading these studies is critical to understanding the test vs no test issues.