I think ultimately more transparency is almost always better. You cannot eliminate performance stress, but stress over whether you are using the right strategy can at least be minimized.
By the way, my understanding is at least some colleges have found that standardized test scores are sometimes more predictive than raw grades/GPAs, but part of why is that there is very little standardization of curriculums or evaluations. Whether they are more predictive than carefully normalized grades is a different issue. But then normalizing grades is tricky, and sometimes test scores may play an important role in that process.
What seems increasingly likely to me is at least a lot of highly-selective but nominally test-optional colleges de facto value very high test scores because they help validate very high internal academic ratings. Like, they just may not be confident giving very high academic ratings to all the applicants who have gotten near-perfect grades in the most rigorous classes available to them. And of course all those applicants have done what they can. But if these colleges are not confident that every applicantsâ most rigorous classes are really all that challenging, then absent validation from a very high test score, they may still have uncertainty about how to rate that applicant in terms of likely academic performance at their college.
What the Yale AO said is not necessarily inconsistent with all that, or maybe could be seen as a variation. For example, he noted Yale saw high math scores as indicative of persistence in science majors. This is interesting to me because of course MIT quickly went back to test required. And I suspect this is all consistent with the idea that at least at these colleges, just having all As in your HS science and math classes isnât necessarily enough to show you will really be able to handle the science classes at these colleges.
Or maybe it would coming out of some high schools, but not others. But whatever that means exactly, it could be a version of this idea of at least often desiring a very high test score to help validate a very high academic rating, sufficiently high in this case for the purpose of being confident the applicant will be able to succeed in advanced science classes at their colleges.
On the other hand, he suggested that while high test scores were equally important to the basic question of whether the applicant was prepared academically for Yale, once you were past that threshold, the transcript, and specific stories told by the transcript, were more likely to be actual difference makers. Again, at least loosely, this sort of fits the validation theory in that once they are confident enough in the general level of academic preparation indicated by the transcript and test scores combined, then the test score has served its purpose.
In fact, he made reference to the fact this is usually done quickly, and that fits with the fact Yale now does an initial quick review by a senior AO, who is basically filtering out all the applications where they think there is very little chance that the applicant will qualify for admission. Those that pass that initial review then get sent on to regional AOs for full holistic review.
Obviously passing that initial review at Yale is critical, and therefore if high test scores can help you get past that stage, they will almost automatically âimprove your oddsâ. But it sounded to me like that may really be most if not all of what high test scores doâlike he said they donât even look at them again in committee, but do often look again at the transcript. But again, helping you get past the initial review is not a small thing!
OK, so if nothing else, the practical takeaway of this seems to be that if you have high test scores, you might want to submit them even if they are below the median, maybe even below the 25th (although maybe not too much below). Because it may be more helpful than harmful in a broader range of cases than some originally assumed, even if all they do is help you avoid getting weeded out in the initial review stage.
And something like that is probably happening at many highly selective colleges these days.