Yes, I agree with you there. Subscores are where they may show their weaknessses.
I also agree that students need to look for their “matches”. But it’s much easier said than done. They have aspirations, and no one wants to deny their aspirations. If there’s 0.001% chance, they’ll still try. After all, lots of people buy Mega Million lottery tickets with much lower odds.
Cal Tech, MIT, stem programs at Stanford, CMU, ivies, HMU, Berkeley, maybe a few others have self-selecting applicants. They’ll have things like the math competitions, olympiads, international science fairs, research, that have been discussed, in addition to taking a couple courses beyond Calculus BC.
“The elite profs don’t dumb down a class for the weakest link or two.”
Classes aren’t dumbed down but the students will be placed in different level classes, data10 and ucbalumnus have mentioned the math placement tests that are required so you can be in the right class. I’m assuming there could be similar ones for non-stem.
You might be exaggerating the pre-college achievements of applicants and frosh at most of these colleges other than Caltech and Harvey Mudd (and maybe MIT). Yes, the other colleges (UCB, Purdue, Michigan, Ivy League, top LACs) get some such applicants, but the bulk of applicants (even if just considering STEM major applicants) probably do not fit your description. If all of their applicants and admits were as you describe, they would have no need to offer regular calculus 1 courses, for example.
@theloniusmonk my kid only took the SAT once in October 2019… she wanted to take it again despite having a high score (1570), but never did. Maybe if Covid hadn’t happened she might have tried again (she really wanted to get 800 in math, she got a 790). She had done minimal prep. Just based on her experience with the SAT it seemed like a test that an academically talented student could easily score over 1550 with almost no prep, something that could benefit certain lower SES students. She had taken old version as a 12 year old (for a talent search program), went in totally cold, and had scored quite high so she never thought about doing serious prep.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but the only point I have tried to make (in response to the original question and keeping in mind that at any given school, ED is a defined number of applicants applying for a defined number of admission slots) is that some kids benefited from TO, some kids were hurt by TO, and some kids (most kids) weren’t affected one way or the other. However, there are some people here who want to believe that TO had zero effect on ED admission results this year notwithstanding the fact that it led to a large increase in the number of ED applications at elite schools. For example, one poster suggested in response to one of my post yesterday that every single one of the ED applicants who was accepted to Penn this year without submitting test scores (24% of the admits or nearly 300 kids) would have gotten in even if Penn was not TO this year - in other words, TO had zero impact on who did and did not get into Penn ED this year. To me, it’s obvious that’s not the case. Some of them would have gotten in, maybe even most of them would have gotten in, but an unknowable number of those kids would not have gotten in either because of a low test score or because they wouldn’t have applied in the first place. Those kids benefited from TO, and good for them. I don’t know why so many people get up in arms about this simple observation, but there it is.
Personally, I have no position on whether TO is a net positive or negative, and in any event, it hasn’t impacted upon my kids one way or the other.
Absolutely, my own DS21 had almost the exact same experience, also took the SAT once in 7th grade prior to taking it in October 2019 as a junior, but with a little more prep this time around (although I am not sure that the prep in fact made much of a difference).
We have seen plenty of wealthy and very motivated students in this cycle who could not come close to the 7th grade score, even after intensive and expensive tutoring. From that (and from many other pieces of data) I conclude that the SAT is measuring, at least in part, more than preparation and family income.
The SAT measures a bunch of things, some of which a given college may want to see, but others of which the college may consider useless confounding information.
I said it was for their stem applicants. Calculus 1 will be there for some of the kids that couldn’t take it in hs, for students that want to take an easier schedule, and for non-stem majors that need to take a math or science elective.
Test score ranges are still reported at test optional colleges. For example, Chicago didn’t stop reporting test score ranges when they went test optional a few years ago. More importantly, if a student is deciding what college is a likely admit/reject based on reported test score ranges alone, there are going to be a huge number of surprises at highly selective colleges since test scores are only a small part of the decision. This probably has a lot to do with the common perceptions that admission decisions at “elites” are random, crapshoot, reach for everyone, etc.
Yes, all TO colleges report test score ranges, but one needs to know whether or not it includes the scores of those who applied TO.
For example, UChicago does not require matriculants to report test scores (not even recruited athletes), so ranges are only for those who applied with a score, while Bowdoin does require all matriculants to report a score (not this year though), so their test scores ranges are for all students.
Kids go to college for different reasons, and sometimes they don’t want to meet different people, or it’s not a big deal if they don’t. African-Americans look for a college that has other African-Americans, people who are like them, so they can feel more comfortable if they decide to enroll. A Latino I met a local college said that even though the college has a good percentage of Latinx, he felt like he didn’t fit in till jr year, because there weren’t enough people similar to him (not different).
This statement is offensive, and just not true for all African-Americans. I agree that some people do not want to be around others who are different than them, but one can’t generalize that to entire races or ethnicities or whatever group one wants to analyze.
Well I mentioned Latinx as well, but of course it applies to whites, Asians, it’s generally a good thing to want a supportive atmosphere and for some people that means similar background, race, income level. UNCF has a top-6 reasons to attend a HBCU, and #1 is education, #2 is supportive community.
“With HBCUs’ special focus, your college experience will be one surrounded by many people with similar backgrounds and cultural experiences. You’ll experience a unique community of support and understanding among faculty and your fellow students.”
Similar backgrounds and cultural experience is important to people, any race or ethnicity, I contend it’s a bigger part of fit than different backgrounds, that’s my point.
I think that’s a gross oversimplification and misrepresentation of the situation at HMC. HMC has gone through some radical changes in their student demographics in recent years. For example, in 2006 HMC was 29% female and 7% URM. Today it is 50% female and ~27% URM. There was a radical change in student body over a few years.
There were also changes in classes meant to support some of the groups above, such as classes being taught in ways that were more friendly to groups other than White men. This includes things like having a larger portion of lecturers and role models that are not White men. The core curriculum was also modified.
As I understand, one of the key triggers for the breaking point was an internal report leaked to the campus newspaper that discussed student and faculty opinions the each other, and about classes at HMC. In the report, many students complained about the high workload. Faculty were more divided. Some said the workload was too high, others did not. Some faculty also noted the recent large demographic changes and associated it with reduced ability. For example, one faculty member wrote,
"We’ve had admissions changes and no one has helped faculty understand how to deal with a more diverse student population. We get students with perfect ACT math scores who can’t pass our math placement tests. Because of the increased student diversity, students need more help.”
There were protests and cancellation of classes as you noted, which were related to the report above. There was also a suicide at nearby Scripps college at a similar time. And 2 HMC students died in car accidents.
While the situation at HMC is complex and multifaceted. One aspect that is more straightforward, is SAT scores did not drop. So whatever possible problems that occurred soon after the large increase in portion of students who were not ORM males, they could not have been predicted by SAT score averages, and likely would not have been impacted much by going test optional. Specific numbers are below. I listed 75th M+ 75thV and 25th M+ 25th V.
2006 (29% female ~7% URM) – 1560/1380
2010 (42% female ~10% URM) – 1560/1410
2015 (44% female ~17% URM) – 1560/1400
2020 (50% female ~27% URM) – 1560/1460
Everyone knows that the tippy tops are a crap shoot for almost everyone (recruited athletes, international medal winners aside). I am talking about if kids do not take a test because they do not have to, they may not have a gauge of their standing.
You should know better that the averages, 25th or 75th percentiles do NOT represent the whole distribution, especially the tails.
If “'tippy tops are a crap shoot for almost everyone,” then how would they know their chance of admission if they had scores? It would be a crap shoot both with scores and without scores. “Almost everyone” still not would not have a good gauge of their standing, regardless of whether they had scores.
However, I don’t think that it is crap shoot for everyone is accurate. Instead I believe that the bulk of the admission decision depends on factors other than scores. If you just look at scores, the decisions don’t follow scores, so it looks like a crap shoot. However, if you consider the many other criteria beyond just scores, then the bulk of decisions would follow expectations. Unfortunately few people have a good sense of the rest of the application. For example, few people know how their LORs, essays, ECs, … compare within the national pool of applicants.
So the end result is few students have a good understanding of their chance of admission and “gauge of their standing”, regardless of whether the college is test optional or not. There are no doubt some students with lower scores will incorrectly believe that they have a good shot upon applying test optional, who wouldn’t otherwise apply if test required. However, this is a different statement.
I listed the information that was available. Regardless, do you think the HMC issues relates to test score ranges at the tails? Some numbers from the available CDSs are below (not available in 2005). The lower tail range did not get worse during the time of the report and protests, and I see no reason to assume the degree of non-normal distribution changed dramatically.
2020 – 7% 24-29 ACT, 0% <24
2019 – 2% 24-29 ACT, 0% <24
2015 – 6% 24-29 ACT, 0% <24
2010 – 6% 24-29 ACT, 0% <24
We got that distinct impression from the first couple TO cycles at UChi. It appeared at least anecdotally that not all applications were expected to be TO. In fact, they changed the policy specifically in order to allow low income applicants who can’t invest in expensive and time-consuming prep a chance for admission. While the TO policy is open to everyone, and no one really knows one way or the other, I suspect that you needed a pretty good reason not to submit a score. This take is a tad different from the advice some GCs were providing, such as don’t submit a high 1400’s because it’s below the average. I believe some students were served poorly by such advice.
Amen.