Community colleges, particularly those in CA (which are better conceived), are viable options for many students for a variety of reasons.
USNWR would have no choice but to revise its methodology as some elite colleges (both private and now public) have become test blind.
This year they made a separate ranking for test blind schools. But going forward I would expect more changes.
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Iāve known a student who transferred to an elite private in CA, primarily based on the strength of a professorās recommendation.
No, not really. As noted, CC transfers are primarily grade based. And the schools are as capable of interpreting high school grades as they are CC grades.
It seems that some are insistent tests are necessary no matter the facts. But for decades droves of students with low (or no) standardized test scores have been thriving at UCs, and the system hasnāt experienced the sort of catastrophic impacts that some here predict.
CA community colleges have a uniform standard unlike high schools. They also have a guaranteed transfer program with UCs and CSUs:
https://www.cccco.edu/Students/Transfer
BTW, only 80k transfers to all UCs and CSUs each year, contrary to the impression you left in an earlier post.
āOnlyā 80,000? LOL.
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At least I was left with the impression that thereāre far more transfers based on
your post below:
BTW, that 80,000 number includes transfers to all CSUs. Someone corrects me if Iām wrong, but Iād assume that more community college students transfer to the CSUs than to the UCs.
Noticed this the other day - a school planning to return to scores required. Itāll be interesting to see what happens down the road. About 39% of their admitted pool was TO, and then about 51% of its enrolled class was TO. (All I get from that is TO = increased yield.)
Test-Optional Policy 2023-24
At Boston College, standardized testing provides meaningful context as we evaluate candidates with varying degrees of curricular rigor across more than 8,000 high schools from which we receive applications each year. Our research routinely demonstrates that the inclusion of standardized testing as part of our holistic review process provides the greatest predictive value toward ensuring student success.
With this in mind, we expect to restore standardized testing as a requirement for applicants once the testing challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic have subsided.
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I will give Boston College a lot of credit for understanding the meaning of the word āholisticā. Most TO colleges use that word in a way that is exactly the opposite of what it means.
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Fair enough. Still, every college guidebook and website puts scores front and center. Same issue as with rankings. They have to keep scores as high as possible because people use those score ranges as a measurement of elite-ness. That need to keep appearances up hamstrings AOs.
Some quotes from the previously linked Ithaca study are below. Note that the comments imply that the score requirement acted as a barrier that prevented students from applying. Ithaca cannot admit students who do not apply. URMs were more likely to apply with the score barrier removed by test optional than were non-URMs.
Furthermore, the enrollment management team proposed a test-optional admission policy in order to increase applications not only from its primary markets, but also from more racially diverse communities. Approximately 15% of Ithacaās freshmen class was from the ALANA (African-American, Latino/a, Asian and Native American) communities in 2009 while the institutional plan aimed to grow the ANALA student population from 15% to 20% by 2020.
ā¦
In fact, the Collegeās freshman applications increased by more than 13% in 2013. ALANA applications surged by more than 23% while the non-ALANA group was up by 10%. Twenty-eight percent of the total applicants opted out from the submission of SAT scores. 40% of ALANA applicants chose to opt out of the test score submission while 23% of non-ALANA students selected this option. A chi-square test indicates the test-optional difference between ALANA and non-ALANA students is highly significant
ā¦
Building upon this robust application base, Ithaca College successfully enrolled 1789 freshmen, 89 students more than the goal of 1700. The 2013 class is the most diverse in the Collegeās history; that is, students with minority backgrounds account for 22% of the freshman class in comparison to 18% of the previous year.
Specific numbers are in the 2nd follow-up study, which are quoted below. I
Applicants: Submitters = 26% ALANA, Non-submitters = 40% ALANA
Admits: Submitters = 22% ALANA, Non-submitters = 35% ALANA
Enrolled: Submitters = 19% ALANA, Non-submitters = 31% ALANA
Retained: Submitters = 18% ALANA, Non-submitters = 30% ALANA
If you are referring to USNWR, USNWR penalizes schools for not reporting scores of a large enough portion of studentsā¦ or at least they did before COVID. USNWR also only weights scores at 5%. Going test optional is not likely to be a particularly effective strategy for increasing USNWR ranking. Although I suppose itās better than going test blind, which has historically resulted in greater penalties. Going test blind largely related to Sarah Lawrence being removed from USNWR rankings in the past, which was no doubt costly for the college. Eventually Sarah Lawarence gave in to USNWR and switched from test blind to test optional.
I think that people who are on either extreme are missing a key point. Not only can schools can be successful using either a ātests requiredā or ātests optionalā policy, but that they in fact complement each other.
Schools that require tests can point to two benefits to using them. First, that the predictability of student success increases marginally as a result of considering test scores. Second, in cases where the schools has a huge number of applications, test scores provide a useful way of winnowing down a huge number of applicants into a more manageable set that they can consider in more detail. This makes sense for colleges that have single digit acceptance rate and for state schools that cannot afford to carefully read 50k-100k+ applications. There is a reason why all the HYPSMs considered them (CalTech is a different case, in that the ceilings were too low for the tests to be useful).
The test-optional schools can benefit from the fact that test scores often incorrectly predict how well a particular student will succeed in college. These schools, through a careful reading of an application, can pick out the students where students are likely to succeed despite poor test scores. Itās no surprise that LACs adopted this approach first, and it was smart of them to do so, as it enables them to pick off the bright students that the test-required schools overlooked.
The mistake people make is assuming that because some schools are successful with a test-optional strategy that all schools could then successfully adopt this strategy. If that actually happened, the current test-optional schools are likely to be the biggest losers in terms of quality students that end up elsewhere.
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Note that, in the just past first year when most colleges became test optional, with consequent large increases in applications, applications to Bowdoin, which has a long history of being test optional, went down slightly.
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So I understand this point, are the schools saying that they could not let more URMs in unless they made standardized tests optional in admissions? Were they not allowed to let in URMs before TO? That seems like a very strange linkage to make.
Why so much discussion of test optional, thatās not what the UCs are doing,
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Ithaca had a >70% admit rate at the time of going test optional. Like many colleges, Ithaca struggled to find a large number of academically qualified applicants. While Ithaca is legally allowed to increase URM enrollment by admitting every URM who applies, they also consider things like whether the applicant is likely to graduate or able to be successful in the college. Upon going test optional, more persons applied. URMs and lower SES were especially more likely to apply. Many of these new applicants had similar expected chance of graduating and similar expected GPA to their usual pool of applicants. A larger portion academically qualified URM applicants leads to a larger portion of URM admits and ultimately a larger portion of enrolled URMs, without sacrificing expected graduation rate or other key values.
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I donāt understand why you would have that impression. In context you can see that I was addressing your post which minimized the the impact of community colleges on the UC system and I provided you with a link with numbers you are now quoting back at me.
And 80,000 transfers per year is a huge number of transfers. To give you an further indication of the the impac in each system, keep in mind that the combined freshman enrollment across both systems totals only about 160,000 students, so 80,000 additional students per year into the higher classes via transfer is hardly a āsmall fraction.ā
Also, there is no need to estimate the amounts, because the facts about Community College transfers are in the link I provided to you:
- Nearly half of students earning a bachelorās degree from a University of California campus in science, technology, engineering and mathematics transferred from a California community college.
- Twenty-nine percent of University of California graduates and 51% of California State University graduates started at a community college.
Try as some might, there is really no way to minimize the impact. And the systems havenāt collapsed. Drop out rates havenāt sky-rocketed. Rigor hasnāt been watered down.
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With regard to the claims that the SAT helps rich kids because they benefit from test prep, this study concludes that itās only East Asian kids who see any effect whatsoever from test prep: Project MUSE - Who Benefits from SAT Prep?: An Examination of High School Context and Race/Ethnicity
So it is certainly plausible to believe that the objective of some people is to reduce the overrepresentation of Asian kids at top UCs, just as Harvard has been doing, and as weāve seen at Lowell high school in SF (Judge Rules San Francisco's Lowell High School Admissions Changes Violated Law - CBS San Francisco).
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I agree- sort of the elephant in the room that no one wants to really address. After Harvard was sued, these whole TO/Test blind policies were embraced to perhaps address the backlash schools received and protect from further lawsuits. I wonder if they hadnāt sued, would this be happening now?