I don’t think that specific test prep in high school is the only factor leading to more affluent kids having higher test schools. More affluent kids are prepping for tests since childhood starting with an enriched environment at home, the best childcare during the critical first three years, lower stress that comes with financial stability, and good schooling from K-12.
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It’s hard, perhaps impossible, for a single test to be both, which is what the older versions of SAT test tried to do. As more colleges accept ACT, more and more applicants predictably chose ACT over SAT, as the former is more prepable (in the sense that it’s easier to improve one’s score with practice). The current versions of the two tests are much less differentiable.
Few people like to be tested, espeically those who don’t test well. There have always been complaints against any test, regardless of its design.
“Elite” colleges do generally consider high school GPA as part of the admission decision, but that is far from the only consideration. They also consider things like which classes are taken, which classes have lower/higher grades, as well as many other additional factors that have nothing to do with grades.
Test scores are quite poor at predicting graduation rate, even when controlling for major. This is especially true at “elite” colleges, since hardly anyone fails out. What might be more relevant is chance of switching out of major.
Studies at “elite” colleges have found numerous contributing factors to switching out of majors. Test scores are correlated with switching out, but that correlation offers little beyond what is found in the rest of the application. The benefit beyond the rest of the application is relevant for test optional, not the benefit in isolation. For example, the Duke study found that with full controls, test scores were not a significant predictor of switching out of a quant engineering/hard science/economics major. However, the Duke admission reader rating of HS curriculum and gender were significant predictors with full controls. Both of these correlations may have implications on Duke policy, rather than being destined certainties. For example, it would be interesting to see if the math placement exams and many possible levels of math at Harvard and Caltech described earlier in the thread are successful in helping kids with weaker backgrounds catch up and stick with the major. Or seeing if colleges that are known for more female-friendly atmosphere and having more female role models would help with women remaining in tech majors.
Notre Dame also did a study about predictors for switching out of engineering. Again test scores were not a good predictor, but like Duke, they found measures of HS curriculum were predictive. They also found that things like motivations for becoming an engineer had a notable correlation, which relates to the more holistic side of the admission evaluation.
None of the above groups regularly report their SAT score, like they do with name of college attended, so there is little information. If you instead look at measures for which there is information, successful scholars have scores all over the map. As an extreme example, the study at https://arxiv.org/pdf/1803.00595.pdf">https://arxiv.org/pdf/1803.00595.pdf</a compares rate of mathematics PhD success based on GRE score. A good portion of the mathematics PhDs completely bombed the verbal section, with some scoring as low as near 0th percentile. The near 0th percentile score PhD students were almost entirely international students, presumably who speak English as a 2nd language. The near 0th percentile verbal score obviously would result in a poor combined GRE score (or combined SAT score), yet the majority of the ~0th percentile kids who attended a T100 college in China for undergrad were successful in their PhD program.
The quant GRE scores had some restricted range issues, with few math PhD students having having lower scores, so little sample to review how successful kids who scored poorly on the quant section were. Among the few with lower GRE scores, many were still successful in their math PhD program. However, the sample size was too small to estimate precise rates. The study found that the combinations of GPA + verbal GRE explained 6% of variance in PhD success, while GPA + verbal GRE + quant GRE explained 8% of variance in PhD success. 8% is better than 6%, but both combinations still leave >90% of variance unexplained by stats. The primary contributing factor to success as a math PhD student and likely becoming a successful mathematician, scientist, or economist is not score on a simple multiple choice test.
Chinese PhD students above are an extreme example, but the same general principle applies to domestic kids on the SAT. There are a variety of legitimate reasons why a student may have a score that is not reflective of their ability. Maybe they had trouble sleeping the previous over anxiety about a test that they believe will determine the course of their life; Maybe they were sick that day; Maybe they speak English as 2nd language; Maybe they spent too much time debating over the answer of an early question and didn’t finish the test; Maybe they attended a HS that didn’t teach the material well and would quickly catch up to other students with the higher quality teaching at university. There are countless explanations.
Or ignoring studies and stats, and just looking from an intuitive perspective. The math SAT covers simple and basic (by “elite” college standards) multiple choice questions in low levels of math such as algebra, geometry, and understanding data. It certainly does not resemble the types of questions one would see in college math courses. In an earlier exam I reviewed, if you made 3 careless errors, you’d get a 720… which would put you below 25th percentile at HYPSM… type colleges. Do you think if a teen makes a few careless errors on simple multiple choice algebra/geometry/… questions on one particular day during HS, then they are guaranteed to fail to become an accomplished mathematician, scientist or economist as an adult? Or is it more a loose correlation, with a lot of exceptions for a wide variety of reasons?
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Graduation rate isn’t a good measure of college success. It’s just too low a bar. With such a low bar at most colleges, the primary reason students don’t graduate is financial.
An accomplished scientist, mathematician, or economist could have made some careless mistakes on SAT/ACT, but could s/he have made enough mistakes to score in the 600s on a math portion of the test that should be considered ridicularly easy for someone who is quantitative inclined, especially with opportunity to take the test multiple times without penalty? I don’t think so.
Is a math score in the 600s with no consideration of verbal score a good bar for admission to “elite” colleges? 3 careless errors can be enough to be <25th percentile for HYPSM… type colleges.
That’s assuming they have a regular internet connection and regular access to a computer.
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This would still hinder the student who just isn’t a good test taker. It’s not any different, in that regard, than the SAT/ACT.
Here’s an excerpt from an article by Selingo in The Atlantic. It shows how a high stats applicant was evaluated at Emory. I think more parents and students need to see this.
"High test scores don’t guarantee admission, as I saw one morning while observing application reviews at Emory University in January 2019. Lupe Monterreso, the admissions officer I was sitting with, opened an application and set the timer on her iPhone. Seven minutes. When the alert went off, it was a gentle reminder to move on to the next file.
As Monterreso pored over the student’s transcript, she did a double take. She wasn’t familiar with the high school, and the senior class was much bigger than she was used to seeing, about 1,000 students. This applicant ranked No. 3.
The student had taken more than a dozen AP courses and earned nearly a 4.0 GPA. Her lowest grade in high school was a 91—in ninth grade. The applicant’s SAT score? A near-perfect 1570.
Monterreso asked her colleague Nicole Dancz for an evaluation of the applicant’s extracurricular activities. The grades, curriculum, and test scores were among the strongest they would probably see that day. If the selection process were conducted by a computer programmed to look only at the numbers, this student would have been an automatic acceptance. But Monterreso and Dancz were reminded of something their boss told them often: Academic metrics are important, but they are not everything.
The applicant had solid activities—band, National Honor Society, tutoring—but they read more as a checklist, without a sense of deep commitment to any one in particular. Although the student said she wanted to be a doctor, she had “no activities related to premed.” Monterreso suggested scoring her a three out of five for activities. Dancz wanted to knock it down to a two.
Dancz turned to the essay. The applicant had written about conquering the slide on the playground as a child. “A missed opportunity,” she said. “We didn’t learn much about her.”
Monterreso typed a few notes in the file, and then came to routing the application. “Great kiddo. Incredibly smart,” she told Dancz. Emory accepts almost half of students with credentials like this one’s, but the application illustrated the vagaries of admissions: No special combination of attributes exists that guarantees acceptance. “I’m okay with ‘deny,’” Monterreso said. And that’s where the girl with nearly a 4.0 GPA and an almost perfect SAT score ended up."
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I was responding to a comment about “affluent” students doing better because of test prepping services. Socioeconomic classes are not a binary - either impoverished or affluent. We are not affluent by any stretch. Firmly in the middle class. My son only prepared using Khan Academy as we didn’t have the excess resources for any of those prep companies. He took the SAT a single time and scored a 1590. I agree that when families are living below the poverty line or where are serious monetary problems, those kids are at risk of not being able to prep meaningfully. But I wasn’t addressing that. According to this 88% of household with children have internet access because of a PC COE - Children’s Internet Access at Home
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I don’t think this anecdote is as much about high test score as it is about not having a focus on her premed track. The student says she wants to be a doctor but shows zero activities in HS that would demonstrate passion, commitment, or interest in medicine. This is the idea about “packaging” the applicant that I’m a big believer in and that MCS and other adcoms talk about.
The very high test score is one data point that kept her in the conversation. If the student had a 1250 SAT, I’m pretty sure they would have passed on this applicant fairly quickly and would not have been so conflicted about not accepting her.
Whether we want to accept it or not, standardize tests tells us one part of a complicated admissions story.
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Food for thought as to why standardized tests may not make a come back with some compelling points. So you think you're going back to the SAT and ACT?
Will be interesting to look at migration data for 2020 down the road to see if the lack of testing availability that affected some states more than other makes a difference.
One thing I find interesting when it comes to test score discussions - Some assume that all upper income families test prep their kids to death, which is not the case (my kids have enough advantages as far as I am concerned…so they take practice tests, review weaknesses with a tutor for a few hours, and let the chips fall where they may).
D21 is not a good test taker (has a LD), took ACT once Feb jr year, all other sittings cancelled. I feel strongly she would have improved scores with another sitting or two… but simply not available here in broad swaths of CA and we chose not to go out of state to seek a test. D21 never wanted accommodations and didn’t seek them. Some think that’s crazy. She doesn’t. I am now with her on that thinking. Nothing against those that seek them. But if we want to talk about unfairness in testing, it’s already been brought up in this thread the significant difference in accommodations in wealthy vs non-wealthy districts.
As to the top 40 schools, D19’s thoughts based on her conversations with friends at her school: “30 or more, it really doesn’t matter”. They all seem to be able to handle the rigor no matter what their scores were, but it’s relatively challenging - for all them. Knowing how to study and manage time seems to be far more important in terms of learning success.
This is an unpopular opinion, but I believe at the top 40 schools or so, it’s a lottery anyway…they could have replaced my D19’s entire class with another class full of 35-36’s. But her school has the ability/desire to seek some students with lower test scores as well and I hope that only continues.
smh
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A few observations, from someone slightly removed from this:
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The overall “supply” (college slots) and “demand” (seniors) is virtually unchanged this year. Applications are up, not applicants, and that’s a natural response to higher uncertainty. The constant supply/demand, means there will be a shuffling, but likely a minor one. Maybe a top student goes to Harvard instead of Duke, or Duke instead of Harvard. But the top student is still going to a top school.
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There’s always been randomness in who top schools pick, there might be MORE this year but it’s always been a coin flip at the top schools.
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I’m a believer that if your student got into the final rounds, then cut by essentially a dice roll - that your student’s long-term outcome is pretty indistinguishable from the student who “won” that dice roll.
Basically, your kid is going to float up and down (more up and down than usual, this year) and in the long-term, they will end up about where they belong.
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It’s not just the ECs. It’s also likely the essay about childhood. You’re applying as a hs senior. Narrative is a good format, but the topic still needs to be relevant to college. And it’s not just the “missed opportunity,” but also the fact she made the choice to write about her younger years.
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I think this is an oversimplification of the process. The “best” high school student (“unhooked”) I have known who is now a junior at Harvard got into pretty much every top college she applied to in regular decision including H, Brown, UPenn, Duke and UC Berkeley (Regents). If the process was random or a lottery, she would not have had all of the acceptances that she did as an unhooked applicant. Something in her file resonated with the adcoms at a dozen colleges, including top 10 colleges.
I know we like to think that the process is random, it helps us sleep better at night when our child doesn’t get into their top choice colleges, but the process is far from random or a lottery. It’s insulting to adcoms to think that the reason they choose certain applicants is purely by a coin flip. I like to believe they take their job very seriously and can find the applicants they are looking for to shape their freshman classes.
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The admission process at the most selective colleges is not random, but it looks random to outsiders, because many of the important factors are those which outsiders have no ability to compare with those of other applicants or the general applicant pool of a college.
The easily comparable factors that are visible to outsiders are:
- Stats, but they really can only say that lower stats applicants have diminished or no chance of admission; high stats merely mean that the applicant is not an obvious reject.
- Hooks like legacy or URM. While advantageous, they are not a guarantee, and such applicants still have to be at least somewhat competitive on the not-visible-to-outsiders factors.
Perhaps my comment was unclear.
I said nothing about your “best” student getting in. Some kids are so far above (and many more, so far below) the acceptance line, that their outcome is already set.
But, there are many kids right around the margin - right above, or right below the acceptance line. With less data available, those kids will be shuffled. But they won’t be shuffled very far - they might go up or down a few slots. If they were shuffled up or down due to Covid, I am stating, their long-term outcomes are not going to change very much vs. normal.
If anything, my comment was about long-term outcomes are relatively stable, even though this year feels very unstable.
The part I disagree with you - randomness is anxiety-inducing for most. It doesn’t help people “sleep better at night” at all.
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Outsiders have a great opportunity to research deeper. Unfortunately, after 11.5 years in the k-12 structure, they don’t always move past that perspective. They believe what makes them top dawgs in their high school is all it takes. Again, I’m speaking re elites.
“Sorry to say, too many applicants have the impressive stats, but present weakly in the rest.”
The issue is not that they present weakly, it’s that too many present strongly. If your assertion were right, the test score averages for the selective colleges would be much lower than they are, probably like 1200-1300, not 1500-1550, because the lower stats kid presents better. These colleges would only have a few, relatively speaking, high stats kids to admit, because many, maybe most, don’t present well. The 25-75 numbers show a different story, they have a many high stats kids that present well.
“Caltech is the only elite school that has gone test blind, at least temporarily during this pandemic.”
Cal Tech is a outlier, probably along with MIT and Harvey Mudd that don’t need SAT/ACTs or subject tests to evaluate a class. They do though expect you to, if the opportunity is there, to take AMC and AIME. These scores differentiate the students that apply. That and rigor, specifically when you took Calculus, what courses you took after Calculus. That gives them, MIT, HM, a pretty good idea on the academics. This also applies to many STEM programs at Stanford, ivies, CMU.
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It depends if you mean all colleges/seniors in the United States or the very small subgroup of “elite” colleges and students who apply to “elite” colleges. Many “elite” colleges have had a lot of deferrals due to COVID-19. For example, it was reported that 20% of Harvard’s class of 2024 chose to take a gap year and defer their start to the class of 2025. This reduces the supply of available remaining spots in class of 2025.
The total number of total seniors applying to any college in the US is down this year, presumably due to COVID-19. However, the number of seniors applying to “elite” colleges is up… at least for the early round. Whatever your threshold is for “elite”, if you count the number of unique seniors who applied to at least one of those colleges, I expect that the total is up significantly from previous years. There appears to be a good number of unique seniors who are applying to “elite” colleges this year who would not in other years.
How this impacts a particular applicant depends on the applicant and the college. With fewer available spots at “elite” colleges and more unique seniors applying for those spots, there are expected to be more rejections than previous years and more students who are disappointed with the admission results. However, I agree that on an individual student level, most students are not going to have dramatic changes in their evaluation. Kids who would be strong applicants in previous years are still likely to strong applicants this year. If the high test score is the only thing that the student really excels in among a national pool of applicants, then he/she probably wouldn’t have been a strong applicant for “elite” colleges in previous years either.
End up about where they belong? Most colleges accept a wide range of students… It’s not a simple ranking like the best kids belong at Harvard, and their next tier down belong at Duke, and the kids below them belong at Emory, Instead the different colleges are best fits for different students depending on their goals. Selectivity and being surrounding by high achieving kids is one consideration in the decision for some kids, but not others. Most high achieving students do not apply to any “elite” colleges, regardless of test optional policies.