Curious, is there a segmentation by major? When we look at mean GPA and overall graduation rates, it potentially blurs the distinction between more rigorous majors and majors where there tends to be more grade inflation. Even looking to see if certain majors at graduation over index TO students may be instructive. I don’t have the data on this, but I think it would be important.
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The NACAC study mentioned above lists the following major distributions (approximate, as I am taking numbers from graph).
Humanities – 15% Submitter, 20% Non-submitter
Social Sciences – 15% Submitter, 17% Non-submitter
…
Biology – 8% Submitter, 6% Non-submitter
CS + Math – 5.5% Submitter, 3% Non-submitter
Education – 4.5% Submitter, 2.5% Non-submitter
It also compares cumulative GPA of STEM vs non-STEM majors between submitters and non-submitters over 20 colleges and >30k students (again reading from chart, so not precise). They do not review graduation rate by major or graduation rate of STEM vs non-STEM.
STEM Majors – Submitters = 3.3, Non-submitters = 3.2
Non-STEM Majors – Submitters = 3.3, Non-submitters = 3.2
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There is only one reason schools have gone test optional, to game the rankings. There is literally no other reason to do it. If schools think tests are useless, they shouldn’t use them. I think Test-blind is wrong, but I can respect the commitment to not using tests. The fact that most schools kind of are and kind of aren’t using the standardized tests is ridiculous. The schools know they are useful, but they also see an easy way to boost their reported scores by discouraging applicants with low scares from submitting tests. If they want to take those applicants anyway, they can, but now the schools can report an inflated SAT and ACT range. This would be like a pharmaceutical company only reporting the positive results from a trial of a new drug.
The good news is that this level of hypocrisy is usually self-defeating.
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Bowdoin might have a different opinion, as they have been test optional for 50 years – long before rankings, and they provide score data for all students to USNWR and in CDS (or at least they did prior to COVID). Bowdoin is far from the only test optional college that provided score data for all students prior to COVID.
There are numerous reasons why a college might choose to go test optional. For example, in the previously linked Ithaca report, Ithaca was quite explicit about considering test optional as part of effort to increase applications, particularly among non-White and lower SES kids. They did the linked to study to review whether that benefit was worth the potential loss in predictive ability without scores. They found little loss in predictive ability, so decided to continue as test optional.
Last year, a huge number of colleges went test optional, including many highly selective ones. The primary reason was not to “game the rankings.” It was because COVID made it awkward to take tests. However, after seeing the huge increase in applications upon going test optional and what I expect to be little loss in quality of class, I expect a good portion will continue to remain test optional. This isn’t the same as gaming rankings. I don’t think rankings is the primary motivation for this group. If you look at USNWR rankings of selective colleges before and after colleges have gone test optional, there is generally little change.
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Pro-test CC members: “but eliminating the SATs will be bad for smart students! I have no data supporting this, but it seems to be right”
Other CC members: “here are three articles that demonstrate the opposite”
PTCCMs: “Eliminating SATs will reduces students quality in college! I have no data for this either, but doesn’t it seem logical?”
Other CC members: “here are three studies that demonstrate the opposite”
PTCCMs: “Eliminating SATs will make it more difficult for URMs to be accepted to college (still no data)!!”
Other CC members: “here are five articles that demonstrate the opposite”
Bottom line, I have yet to see, on this thread, that any of the claims regarding the importance of standardized testing have much by the way of data to support their claims, while there has been a steady stream of articles and studies demonstrating that standardized testing is not all that helpful.
Here is another piece of evidence indicating that standardized tests are biased against URMs:
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If the tests are useless, then don’t use the tests. I would not have a problem if schools refused to take an applicant that had even sat for the test. Make it a scarlet letter for all I care.
I have posted in other threads that schools should be entitled to use literally any criteria they want for admission, as long as that criteria is clear and publicly disclosed. I wouldn’t have a problem with a T20 school literally selling spots to the highest bidder. It is their school, they can choose their student body any way they want.
I do have a problem with wrapping the opaque, arbitrary and unfair process so heavily weighted towards privilege in the patina of social justice.
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If SAT/ACT scores are so important for frosh admission, why do many colleges not use them (or lobby the College Board for a similar test) for transfer admission?
Transfer admission is based on prior courses and grades (plus any supplemental stuff like essays etc. if the college uses them). The UCs, CSUs, and many other colleges are test blind for junior transfer applicants. Granted, the courses and grades under consideration are college courses and grades, rather than high school courses and grades. But they come from many different colleges (so grading and rigor may not be consistent across all of them, the usual argument in favor of SAT/ACT for frosh applicants), and most transfer applicants to UCs and CSUs come from community colleges that are widely disdained on these forums.
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Could someone walk me through why schools have to eliminate testing to allow URM’s into their schools? Why are those two things related? Aren’t schools allowed to use any criteria they want to accept a student? I would have no problem at all with a school having different test scoring scales for different under-represented groups they think should be admitted. And, as I have said about 4 times in this thread, if the school wants to take an applicant with a low score for any reason at all, they are welcome to do so. Their school, their rules.
So now that we have established that the schools can use the tests any way they want, why would they need to go test optional? The only place that schools get penalized for accepting students with subpar test scores is in the reporting of those test scores for rankings.
Finally, why is less information about a candidate better? The TO advocates claim that admissions should be “holistic”, but I wonder if they really understand what “holistic” means.
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Because these students have a record of college courses they’ve taken and the recommendations from college professors. For UCs and CSUs in particular, they’re very familier with all the CA community colleges where most of their transfer students come from.
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Let me ask the opposite question. If the tests were useless, why didn’t most colleges stop using them prior to the pandemic? They have the best information about their own colleges (that is better than a study of some other college), don’t they?
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The UCs have decades of information on the high schools too.
The UCs were looking into dropping the tests prior to the pandemic.
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Yes, but there’re hundreds of thousands of these HS students with similar GPAs applying to the UCs, and only a small fraction of community college students with more distinguished college track records are looking to transfer to UCs.
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Ok. This is in the “I read it somewhere that I can’t remember” category.
SATs drive USNWR rankings. Admissions offices are pressured to keep their scores as high as possible, to boost rankings. When the pandemic hit, justifying “test optional”, it gave AOs the opening to admit a wider range of applicants that they deem qualified but would cause their USNWR rankings to drop. That includes URMs, under the theory that they are more likely to not have prepped as much for the SAT. Likewise, more of those students would apply if they didn’t see standardized testing as a barrier.
It is the opposite of gaming the rankings. It is escaping the tyranny of the rankings. The hope is that the rankings will be dismantled if the classes they admitted without requiring scores do just as well in college as prior classes did. It will require a critical mass of schools getting rid of scores, and that might well be happening.
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There are about 2 million students in the California Community Ststem. Many of them end up in UCs.
Nearly half of students earning a bachelor’s degree from a University of California campus in science, technology, engineering and mathematics transferred from a California community college.
https://www.cccco.edu/About-Us/Key-Facts
This isn’t new. UCs do quite well without relying on test scores.
Maybe their number is greater than I would have guessed, but they do have recent college track records (with college English, math courses, etc.) that make test scores on more elementary skills/knowledge in the same subject areas unnecessary.
Standardized testing is the problem that everybody has talked about. As for individual testing, it is expensive to develop, expensive to administer, and nobody has been able to yet figure out a way to create a single test which actually measure what the colleges want it to measure.
Of course the real problem is that K-12 schools are messed up, from things like
NCLB, to direct attacks on public K-12 schools and school funding, poor kids have worse education, and there are multiple political interests in keeping public schools failing. Some are purely racial, others are religious, and others are political/social.
So long as there are these interests in the destruction of the public K-12 systems, there is no way to make admissions to college more equitable.
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It is the same with high schools, especially with APs and honors classes. UC’s have fairly extensive requirements re: high school course loads, including detailed high school specific lists of what courses count or don’t count for extra points on the UC gpa calculation. As with the CCs, they know what they are getting when they admit students from school x with x grades in x classes.
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There’s much greater variability with high schools than with community colleges. Don’t you agree? Also, for transfers, recommendations from professors at community colleges play a much greater role in admissions.
Seems that forum posters mostly disdain community colleges generally.
UCs do not use recommendations for transfer admission.
https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/how-to-apply/applying-as-a-transfer/
https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/how-to-apply/applying-as-a-transfer/how-applications-are-reviewed.html
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SAT/ACT scores represent 5% of USNWR rankings, so that’s far from ‘driving’ the rankings. With that said there are schools who are actively trying to improve their rankings in any of the measurable ways they can. It will be interesting to see if USNWR keeps the standardized testing at a 5% weighting.
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