Yes, you could make a strong argument that those tests should also be dropped like the SAT/ACT. But they are not. They are strongly embraced by graduate schools AOs. That is the contradiction I am trying to point out.
The anti-test movement would like to see those tests go away as well, wouldn’t you think?
Most business school, law school, and medical school students at established programs successfully graduate, so there is almost never a question that anyone they select won’t be able to handle the work.
My impression is that the highly selective graduate schools use the standardized test scores to quickly weed out the applicant pool to a more manageable number to evaluate. That is the main and potentially the only purpose they serve. I’m not sure why highly selective undergraduate programs don’t use test scores in the same way. If fairness is the issue, why do schools from the same university (and throughout the country) have opposing practices?
I can speak a bit to graduate schools. I’m not in law but I do know that the ABA actually has been recommending the elimination of the LSAT. I don’t know what will come of it. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/06/15/aba-proposes-eliminating-standardized-tests-law-school
I am in the MBA world, and schools use a variety of test score approaches right now. There are some schools with test waivers available still, but not many of the very top names (the only “M7” with a waiver is MIT). Usually interested applicants have to submit an essay about why they need/want one and show evidence of academic readiness and wait for approval or denial. Interestingly, in an opposite approach to their corresponding undergraduate arms, MIT Sloan makes a waiver option available, while Berkeley Haas does not.
I think it’s incorrect to suggest that the only thing that MBA admissions officers care about with test scores is ability to graduate/do the work; high scores feed into rankings and many schools seem to very much care about where they fall in the rankings even though they might wish they didn’t have to. Cultivating and protecting prestige is absolutely essential. One business school dean recently was sentenced to prison for trying to manipulate the numbers.
Another interesting new testing trend in business schools apart from waivers is the acceptance by 2 year programs of a new test originally designed for executive MBAs, the EA (executive assessment). The EA average is not widely reported on profile pages and is off-radar for rankings, so it is a friendly alternative test to submit for those who might not test wonderfully on the GMAT or GRE and are worried their scores might hurt them in the process. It’s just not accepted everywhere, but the list of schools that take it is growing.
ETA in an attempt to get more on-topic - what I am saying is that graduate business schools are not really a model for fairness or clarity in terms of testing options but just as messy and beholden to the same pressure to rank highly but also admit those they want to admit…and also inconsistency across undergrad/grad programs re: tests is common.
With a 23 applicant this year, I am trying to make sense of it from what I know on the graduate side and what I’ve seen there would say that it depends on the program…there are business schools where I know the test matters less, and schools where the test matters more, and the rules will be applied based on a combination of chance and how much they want the candidate for their institutional priorities. I suspect it is the same for undergrad. Also, one point I don’t hear a lot is that on the b-school end, size matters. If a school is small, a lower than average score hits harder. So think about a small program that’s test optional - I might think twice about submitting a test in the 25th percentile, because it’s already a small pool of scores coming in to begin with- if some of those don’t submit, your lower than average score drags the mean down more.
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Unc (online) mba waives with 5 years experience. One of my colleagues is considering for next year.
https://onlinemba.unc.edu/admissions/application-requirements/gmat-waiver-policy/
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Yep, online MBAs are often very forgiving across a lot of fronts, and test waivers are definitely possible at a number of programs. For the full time program, UNC also offers a waiver option, but you have to apply for it and gain approval. I believe for the online program, you just have to check a box or something- no application - if you meet the 5 year minimum.
Let’s move on from grad / professional school admissions please.
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Take a step back and think about why schools want to be test optional…1)Increases applicant pool 2) makes school appear more competitive 3) Outcomes of success in college and beyond and test scores may not not correlated 4) increase diversity pool as URMs who don’t have access to tutors may not apply if their score is too low.
Scores are just another piece of evidence that help determines if a candidate may be successful.
Schools are no longer looking to take only the most high achieving student. Applicants are competing only against their same demographic so you need to determine whether to submit your test scores with that context. Schools purposely keep their evaluative criteria vague because it is in fact partially subjective.
But that’s just it… Considering the “low bar” – Is a high score a measure of aptitude, or is it simply a measure of having had a private tutor?
In reality, it’s almost certainly both. But given that low bar, nearly anyone with access to a private tutor can pretty much guarantee themselves a 650/700+ on math.
So then what is the score really telling the college? It’s telling the college – Well, either this is a person with great natural math ability OR someone who worked really hard at learning the math through their regular school OR it’s someone whose parents got them a private tutor.
I’d have to see the stats, but I wouldn’t be surprised if SAT scores are far more correlated to wealth than they are to innate intelligence.
And that also might be a cynical reason schools don’t want to entirely abolish the tests – They aren’t going to ask you directly your income on an application and favor full pay students. But unless they have a Harvard-endowment, they NEED full pay students. So how do you get full pay students? How do you build a system that rewards wealth, without saying you’re rewarding wealth? Well… favoring those ultra high SAT scores. If 70% of students with 1500+ are full pay, then admitting more 1500+ students will directly increase the number of full pay students.
So yes, it’s cynical… But to some degree, schools may continue to welcome high scorers to submit their scores, so that they have a reason to admit the Beverly Hills kid with a 3.8/1500 over the working family kid from Scranton with a 3.8/TO.
Sure but you could say the same for grades wrt tutoring - wealthy will always have more opportunity - maybe they should cap the test at one and done instead of multiple sittings. Same goes for ECs / paying thousands of dollars to perfect skills in travel sports over the years - or violin lessons - none of that comes cheap and poor kids don’t have that luxury. (Though for all of these things including grades and ECs and testing, there are those who excel without tutoring and just with good old fashioned practice and hard work.)
I would also argue that a perfect SAT score is not the only data point- you’d have to look at additional data, but again I go back to - more data is good, not bad, when evaluating thousands of applications that on their face may look similar.
And on the flip side, a student from a poor area/school with few opportunities to demonstrate aptitude in more advanced classes or ECs can show some objective/innate aptitude through SAT so why discount the data? Maybe they didn’t have chance to take AP Calculus but they have innate math skills. Include all the data but evaluate holistically.
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So we have a whole industry/culture built up around sticking with test that “might say something about” whether an applicant’s grades in Algebra and English Comp are truly an accurate reflection of their ability? Seems like overkill. And extremely inefficient. And probably not all that accurate. And perhaps more than a little misleading.
Among many other reasons, the test requirement itself acts as a barrier to admissions. AO’s cannot evaluate/admit students who do not apply, and the test requirement drives away the subset of qualified students who AO’s are trying to bring in.
All standardized tests suffer from the same disadvantages that affect the ACT/SAT.
Using Yale as an example, the pre-COVID statistics suggest that reported standardized test scores are a stronger determinant for admission into their graduate schools (law and medicine) compared to their undergraduate school. This is especially true since it is much harder to score in the 99th percentile on the LSAT/MCAT than on the SAT. One can make the argument that the ACT/SAT exams should be made to be as rigorous as the LSAT/MCAT, but is that a desirable goal when the revised test puts underprivileged test takers at a greater disadvantage? That doesn’t seem to be an issue for them for evaluating graduate school applicants. They still find some space to holistically evaluate and admit “low” test takers and grade point averages
Yale Law School Class of 2024 admission statistics
Low 25% Median 75% High
GPA 3.25 3.88 3.94 3.99 4.20
LSAT 153 (51.7%) 171 (97.8%) 174 (99.0%) 177 (99.8%) 180 (99.97%)
Yale Medical School Class of 2024 admission statistics
GPA Overall median 3.85, GPA Science median 3.84
MCAT median 519 (98%)
Yale University University Class of 2024 admission statistics
25% 75%
SAT- EBRW 720 (96%) 780 (99%)
SAT- Math 740 (95%) 800 (99%)
There probably are no such stats, because how do you measure innate intelligence in a way that completely excludes other things like prior learning, test prep, etc.?
Not to the same extent, as we congregate in wealthy and poorer neighborhoods.
Thus, everyone in the wealthy neighborhood might get tutoring – And they might all get 1500+ on the SATs, but they don’t all become valedictorian. And nobody in the poor school might score over 1300 on the SATs, but the top students are still awarded A’s. SATs are likely more perfectly correlated to wealth than grades.
Absolutely!
And that’s yet another way schools are implicitly trying to find those full pay students.
For everyone URM or 1st Gen, they will also seek out the unhooked kid with “great character” – which means outstanding ECs, etc. Which in many cases, again correlates with wealth.
And note, just like test scores – ECs are “optional submission.” You’re not required to submit your ECs.
I don’t disagree except it does depend on the quality of the data. Worthless data in, worthless results out.
Whether the SAT results have anything more than marginal value is hotly debated.
That’s what social scientists do for a living… built studies and analyze data to come up with those answers.
Of course, colleges don’t really need those with innate intelligence – They want those that will thrive at their school, which may be a combination of innate intelligence, learned experience, hard work, etc.
So it’s not whether standardized tests do a good job of measuring innate intelligence – It’s whether the standardized tests do a good job of predicting collegiate success. And there, it’s a mixed bag. Most studies I’ve seen do suggest a definite positive correlation but I haven’t seen sufficient studies that correct for wealth. That is, a rich student with a 1500 will do better than a poor student with 1200, because a wealthy background correlates with college success. But a poor student with a 1400 isn’t going to do better than a rich student with a 1300. So yes, 100 kids scoring 1500 on the SAT will do better in college than 100 kids scoring 1250 on the SAT… but is it solely because wealthier kids do better in college, and that room with the 1500 SATs has higher average wealth?
The studies do show that grades, rigor and class ranking have much stronger correlation with predicting college success.
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I don’t think AOs at most highly selective universities (possible exceptions being MIT/Cal Tech) worry too much whether the students they select will successfully graduate with a degree from their institution. It seems like failing out of these schools is an extremely rare event. The probability of failing is probably significantly lower than the already extremely low probability of getting accepted by these ultra-competitive schools. Even the admitted students with strong hooks (such as recruited athletes) and marginal academic records all seem to graduate without any problems. If that’s the case, what’s the purpose at looking at anything on the application?
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I have to wonder too - if standardized tests like SAT/ACT don’t serve any value according to AOs why don’t they go test blind? In fact, not only do they continue to rely on test scores, but many continue to require them for merit award consideration. If it’s not a predictor of merit then why require it for merit award?
So is it just SATs you’re against or standardized tests in general? How about AP tests? Are there any standardized tests that would be ok? I mean at some point any test or criteria is going to weed out, even to the point of discouraging some from applying - we have whole areas of study (CS for example) that are so competitive they discourage kids from even applying. It’s the nature of admissions process. And grades alone are insufficient- as someone else stated, most of a school could be moderately proficient in math and a kid will still be valedictorian and may even get mostly As because compared to the rest, he/she is more proficient. But “more proficient” doesn’t mean ready to tackle Harvard or MIT.
I don’t think that AOs are arguing that the tests never serve any value. It is just that they don’t serve the value that many parents would like to believe. Some AO’s seem to believe that their mission is better served by not requiring the scores. This is a balancing of costs and benefits, not a statement that tests have zero value. Not sure why this is so impossible to many to accept or believe.
Not sure who “they” is, but many of the schools most commonly discussed here don’t give merit aid. Some of those that do use it to attract a limited number of certain types of students, but that is no indication that those are the only students they are trying to attract. I wouldn’t be surprised if colleges moved away from relying on test scores here also, and some may already be doing so.
Point taken on that. You’re right that most selective schools aren’t giving out merit anyway.
This is an interesting topic, and I do think standardized scores offer one measure to compare students across the country and even internationally. But at the end of the day, what I think doesn’t matter! TO is what we have to work with. And maybe not even that for long.