<p>@MrMom62
Agreed. I wonder how it would affect the academic “banding” process which only allows a certain number of standard deviations from the college SAT/ACT median? Presumably, a recruited athlete would be one of those categories that would be obliged to submit scores. @alum88 How do they handle that at Bowdoin?</p>
<p>Ah, a timely question…
<a href=“Great Piece out of Bowdoin on NESCAC recruiting - Athletic Recruits - College Confidential Forums”>Great Piece out of Bowdoin on NESCAC recruiting - Athletic Recruits - College Confidential Forums;
<p>The real culprit is the NCAA which pushes all colleges more and more towards competitive team sports. The NESCAC has become too big a deal. D3 schools in other conferences don’t try to mimic their athletic competitors’ admissions practices.</p>
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<p>And there is little need to question WHY some schools go test-optional. It is crystal clear why they do it! It pays dividends in rankings, attracts more applications, and with the help of morons and pseudo-scientists a la FairTest does not carry much reputational backlash. </p>
<p>In the end, it is not that important! And will stay that way until Morse and the other people paid to produce “reasonable” rankings apply the Sarah Lawrence treatment to all test-optional schools and start listing them alphabetically in a separate category. </p>
<p>Something that should have been done eons ago. </p>
<p>Another link on the topic…
<a href=“http://offices.depaul.edu/emm/test-optional/Documents/HistoryOfTOinHigherEd_EMatters3-18-11.pdf”>http://offices.depaul.edu/emm/test-optional/Documents/HistoryOfTOinHigherEd_EMatters3-18-11.pdf</a></p>
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<p>Although the anti-test people would prefer to think that the Bates study “proves” test scores are are poor predictor of college success, it brings to mind the old joke - “You think it’s hard to get into Harvard, try flunking out!” There is nothing to indicate the grading system at any college is in any way objective, especially in an era of rampant grade inflation, short of administering an exit exam.</p>
<p>The ultimate in irony is the fact that standardized tests were introduced to eliminate bias and subjectivity in college admissions. Now the anti-test people want to eliminate standardized tests under the belief that will eliminate bias and subjectivity in college admissions.</p>
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Both test submitters and non-submitters are subject to the same grading scale and professors have no way of knowing who did or did not submit, so I don’t think you can argue that non-submitters at test-optional colleges benefit from a lack of objectivity. In the 20 year study there’s also little evidence that non-submitters somehow benefitted from grade inflation. Submitters had an average GPA of 2.88, non-submitters 2.83. While this is a statistically significant difference it’s also important to remember that non-submitters are more likely to be low-income, minority and first generation students than submitters. These populations tend to have lower college GPAs as a whole than average, particularly in the first year.</p>
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I don’t think schools are arguing that not requiring testing eliminates subjectivity in college admissions. Rather, they assert that standardized testing just isn’t nearly as good predictor of college success as other measures, specifically a student’s past performance in high school. Dropping the testing requirement can be a way to encourage applications from smart kids among the populations I listed above, who might otherwise be intimidated by average scores that seem out of their reach.</p>
<p>^^ LOL! So Bates has had the scores of the entire freshman class like Bowdoin all along, but presents only those that submit them at the time of application to the US Department of Education, on the Common Data Set, and to USNWR.</p>
<p>Talk about gaming the system. " SAT-I scores of non-submitters were 160 points lower than scores of submitters at Bates." 38% of students reported scores for the purposes of Bates’ CDS, but the reality is the institution knows that average scores are 80-100 points lower.</p>
<p>Bates is a fraud!</p>
<p>@rhg3rd
Don’t think of it as fraud. Think of it as “superscoring” lol.</p>
<p>Not a chance that this isn’t willful misrepresentation by Bates. Both Colby and Bowdoin are Maine NESCAC test-options colleges who report their data truthfully.</p>
<p>USNWR, CDS and USDOE ask:</p>
<p>Test Score Submission (CDS C9) : In the following questions, please provide the percent and number of first-time, first-year students enrolled in fall 2012 who submitted national standardized (SAT/ACT) test scores. Include information for ALL enrolled, first-time, first-year (freshman) degree-seeking students – full, or part-time-- who submitted test scores, including students who began studies during summer, international students / nonresident aliens, and students admitted under special arrangements. Do not include partial test scores (e.g., mathematics scores but not critical reading for a category of students) or combine other standardized test results (such as TOEFL) in these items. Do not convert SAT scores to ACT scores and vice versa. </p>
<p>The word “ALL” is even capitalized. Bates is lying and should be sanctioned for such.</p>
<p>Further, the Bates finding of lack of “statistical significance” in GPA’s of the two groups says more about how little it challenges its students than anything else.</p>
<p>Test optional, willful misrepresentation of statistical info, and low academic standards for high graduation rates are the formula for success at supposedly “highly selective” LAC’s like Bates. </p>
<p>Why is Wes going test optional? No doubt, it’s sick of Midd’s consistently higher rankings. </p>
<p>Wait a minute, what evidence do you have that Bowdoin and Colby submit the standardized test scores of all matriculated students but Bates does not? Do you have something to back up your assertion or is this just foil hat thinking? :)</p>
<p>Curious to know @rhg3rd - where are you getting “low academic standards” information? Cite, please?</p>
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<p>Wrong. Colby is not test optional.</p>
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This info is a little old, but since I’ve never seen an updated list here goes…</p>
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<p>So, uh, no.</p>
<p>That Boalt Hall study is not quite twenty years old yet, but give it a couple of years.</p>
<p>Hey, I admitted it was old, but if you’ve got more recent studies I’d welcome them. In any case, the Boalt Hall study was done 13 years after Bates went test-optional-plenty of time for those old standards to fall if they were going to.</p>
<p>That study says Brown is as difficult to get an A as Stanford and that Harvard is one of the more difficult places to get an A. Anecdotally, this doesn’t seem correct. Too bad Davidson isn’t on the list, a notoriously hard grading school. Does anyone get a 4.0 there?</p>
<p>However, given that Bates reports the average GPA as below 3.0, it is possible that Bates is one of the tougher schools in grading standards.</p>
<p>The Boalt Hall study is interesting, as it attempts to correct for grade inflation, by using LSAT scores. However, we’re talking about a self-selected group of students (folks applying to Boalt Hall/Law School). For example: Purdue’s has a score of a 73.5, but the pool of applicants from Purdue likely doesn’t reflect the engineering and STEM folks (that in general don’t pursue law school in California). Keep that in mind when using the rankings to compare universities. </p>
<p>More info on grade inflation (than anyone would ever need):</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.gradeinflation.com/”>http://www.gradeinflation.com/</a></p>
<p>About 21% of Wesleyan undergraduates receive Pell Grants, so the school was already fairly SES diverse. Bates, for example, has only 12%.I don’t see why going Test Optional would be needed, since the school already has in place holistic admissions. It can already compensate for “social” factors when reviewing test scores. Either they are doing it based on principle, or it’s to improve the US News ranking. Good Luck figuring out which. :)</p>
<p>Not certain that the Boalt Hall study says anything except about the percentage of A’s of all students from same institution who applied to UCB Law. It certainly isn’t more difficult to get an “A” from Colgate or Bates than Penn or Yale in any absolute sense. It’s hard to imagine an Ivy physics “C” isn’t an “A” in physics at Bates.</p>
<p>Boalt study proves nothing about Bates or any test optional LAC! Of the very few Bates applicants, who had at least a 90th percentile on the LSAT needed to submit an application to Berkeley that wasn’t frivolous, how many had earlier opted not to submit SAT’s to Bates? None! Top LSAT scorers were all top SAT scorers, especially on verbal sections. Maybe, the Bates applicants thought they would be admitted to Berkeley Law for reasons of geographical diversity? 
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<p>It’s not clear why Wes didn’t try test flexible, like Midd and others, before taking the low road of completely test optional.</p>
<p>@rhg3rd
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<p>I think it cuts through a lot of the b.s… For example, Middlebury’s 2013 Common Data Set entry for whether standardized tests are required, is identical with Wesleyan’s even though one is supposedly test-flexible and the other one won’t be until next year. Yet, for all of their circumspection, test-flexible schools still get lumped together with test-optional schools in the public mind. </p>