Your premise is incorrect. The AO is not always trying to determine who will succeed at the school. There are other priorities.
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I don’t disagree with you about other priorities, but there is a base level of preparation for any student these schools admit. That base level is likely lower than many think, especially at highly rejectives.
If AOs felt they needed the test to evaluate students, they would require it.
Perhaps it would be best described then as useful but not essential.
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Yes, some definitely find it useful, but not useful enough to require it (and make it harder to find some of the types of students most highly rejectives are trying to find…getting at your priorities point).
Clearly, some schools see it as essential (most of those that require the test score like Gtown, Purdue, MIT). I won’t include FL, GA, and TN publics in that group because A) some of those schools suppress the required scores on applications and B) IMO the tests are being required for political reasons, not academic/educational reasons.
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There are of course schools which would find it useful but supress it for political reasons as well.
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Auburn said their test optional acceptance rate was 9% last year. Most schools don’t acknowledge this but the obvious fact is if you are test optional then your other stats need to be that much better.
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Auburn is test preferred, not test optional. Only students who have a 3.6 GPA and haven’t been able to test can apply TO.
Auburn University is a test-preferred institution; we recommend that students take and submit official ACT and SAT scores for admissions. Freshman admission is based mainly on your high school courses, grades, and academic rigor. While we encourage students to submit standardized test scores, they are not required to be considered for admission or scholarships.
Applicants with at least a 3.6 GPA who cannot secure a test will be considered for admission under our test-optional pathway.
I haven’t seen that Auburn’s TO acceptance rate was 9%, but for class of 2027, ‘less than 9%’ of the EA acceptances were under the TO pathway. Many third party sites have misinterpreted that number as an acceptance rate.
The university’s 2023 early action decisions extend from October to January, with regular decisions being announced in March. The acceptance rate for Auburn’s early action periods was 44% for a total of 20,000 acceptances. Those students had an average ACT score of 28.2 and an average GPA of 4.2, with less than 9% admitted under the university’s test-optional pathway.
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This is only good at the level of an entire school - if the school’s GPAs do not correlated with the SAT scores that can indicate grade inflation or deflation. However, like any statistical data, it is only meaningful in aggregate, and tells you very little about each individual.
Many kids have test anxiety, a bad day, etc. Over an entire high school, this washes out, and you can also get around this by looking at changes over years, since the number of kids with test anxiety or having bad days isn’t going to change much between years. So if, for example, the math grades in a high school are going up, but the SAT scores are not (and they haven’t ceilinged), you can take that into consideration.
However, judging individuals, based on the high school averages is ridiculous, especially for colleges which are specifically focussed on selecting outliers.
It’s like refusing to recruit a 6’ 7" student for basketball because the average height in their city is 5’ 4". The students who is excellent
Right, so if the more holistic schools do have different “buckets” (sex, SES strata, band and choral talent, athletes, geographic needs, etc.) that they toss the apps into… how could a test score not help them to rank the apps within each of those cohorts?
Unless, as some say, they don’t need a score to evaluate and rank applications.
No one says that, and no one has said that for quite some time. Certainly not anyone who knows what they’re talking about.
At least at some point, more than one finance firm (PE, hedgies mostly) I’m aware of required these, even for hires not coming straight out of school. It surprised me but it’s a thing. DE Shaw was known for this…not sure if still the case.
As for the larger “why?” in addition to the reasons already cited, I would simply ask “why not?” Other than a little time and money (the latter of which can be waived by need), it cannot hurt you to take the test. Other than Georgetown, which technically requires you to submit all test scores (though they cannot actually compel this, nor prove that you did or did not), scores are not automatically submitted, anywhere. Taking the test cannot hurt you. Why are people afraid of taking the test?
Further, why would you box yourself out from schools which still require it?
Finally, if you score at/above the 50th/75th%ile for a given school (and remember that because of TO these %iles skew higher, so being at/above these levels is even “better” than the numbers would indicate on their face) then you may in fact help yourself, even if only slightly at the margin. Why leave that possibility on the table?
It was a typical hot take there, and is one here too.
Perhaps the current norm of extensive and expensive test prep may mean that many students and parents consider taking the SAT or ACT to be expensive in terms of time and money. How many students would do as I did decades ago, which was taking the SAT with 15 minutes of test prep (doing a few sample questions from the booklet with the sign-up form), and how many parents would be fine would their kid doing that amount of test prep for the SAT or ACT?
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Lots of them. The reality is that, at some schools, there are plenty of kids who are strong test takers, always have been, and can walk in and get 750 or higher with little to no prep. Ivies have quite a few.
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I mean that’s a choice on their part. One separate from taking the test. If people conflate those things that’s a them problem IMO. And frankly it’s part of the fear complex surrounding these tests which is a sad state of affairs IMO. Taking the test cannot hurt you.
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OP has not posted after the initial post.
I agree with this 
I’m not taking the bait. I’m done with this thread.
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Right. And if you don’t do well (or as well as you wanted to), you can always go TO. I’m a believer in having kids at least try the test and then go from there. I had one who opted to go TO after a mediocre score - and given the schools he was interested in that worked out well. S24 has an aggressive list of schools so when he didn’t do as well as he anticipated, he did some targeted practice and ended up with a 1580. Well worth the second try - he didn’t do copious prep, nor did he have a tutor or attend a prep class (all self study).
I’m seeing no new discussion here, and the OP appears to be one-and-done.
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