It’s effectively a placeholder until the other half of the batch comes in. That number is if 30000 high scorers, which we have right now. If another 4% comes in, as expected, it will increase quite a bit. While he was conservative on the post, he does a bit more speculating in the comments.
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Spikes in NMSF cutoffs are more likely to be seen in the states that don’t already have relatively high qualifying indexes. As TonyGrace said, we just have to wait until the rest of the data are in. Here are a few of the relevant posts by Art Sawyer in the comments of his blog post:
TK,
I’m going to assume that you meant to type 218 for the Selection Index. I don’t want to get too far ahead of the data. If the second set of scores is like the first, then it’s likely cutoffs will go up. It doesn’t mean that they’ll go up in the same way in all states. In what I think of as the “high” years (Classes of 2018, 2019, and 2020) Florida saw cutoffs of 219. In those years, the Commended cutoff fell at 211, 211, and 212. In the “low” years, when the Commended cutoff has been under 210, the Florida cutoff fell at 216 and 217. Hopefully we have a better idea in the coming weeks which way things are leaning.
Paul,
I’ve been through a lot of high years and low years when it comes to cutoffs, and this is feeling like a high year. I hope to have more numbers next week. Only once — class of 2019 — has California’s cutoff reached 223. That class had the highest set of cutoffs ever across the country. Even with the full set of numbers, I don’t expect to be able to completely rule out a 223 cutoff. I’d reframe it as that you should be cautiously optimistic at 222 rather than worried! Good luck to your daughter.
This is the link that has the table you shared above, as well as Art Sawyer’s comments that I posted. Props to Art for tirelessly answering people’s questions in the comments. He will update/make a new blog post when the rest of the PSAT results are in.
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More tea leaves to read here, this time from Emory:
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That’s a great article. Saying out loud what so many people seem afraid to admit.
“We’re not as trusting, frankly, of GPA these days,” Latting said. “Students are trying their hardest … but grades are definitely inflated and not as connected to true class performance as they used to be.”
And that Emory admits to be relying heavily on AP scores.
I thought it was interesting that it touched on the issue being not just academic, but also social.
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And some interesting data from a survey of first-year Brown students published in the Brown Daily Herald. Brown is currently evaluating its ED, legacy, and test policies; the survey aims to contextualize that process with data.
Looks like about 23-24% of students in the first-year class did not submit test scores; for non-legacy, non-first gen students, the percentage is slightly more than 20%. N=708, which is ~40% of the class.
I hope students and counselors get that message. So many don’t report their scores, even if they are good.
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Going forward, will this be a caveat or asterisk to the common advice that colleges care more about AP course grades than exam scores and/or don’t care much about AP exam scores?
I think they are saying AP scores give context. An A-/B+ with a 4 is better than an A with 3…
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I think the known problem has long been that some high schools give out high grades in AP classes to many kids who then do not score so highly on the tests. This article suggests problems like this might have gotten worse with the pandemic cohorts, which makes sense, but I don’t think it is entirely a new problem
And I suspect there are likely still multiple ways around this problem, including at Emory. One thing Emory mentioned is actual AP scores. Another thing they mentioned is a new policy of contacting some students to ask them to submit some of their best classwork, something other colleges also use at the initial application stage, and likely for similar purposes. Although they didn’t say this, I suspect Emory also still has confidence in high grades in advanced classes at specific high schools, just not every high school. And so on.
So personally, I think any advice about whether or not to take the tests and submit AP scores as well as the class grades should depend on issues like how the college in question saw your HS. But if you don’t know the answer to that question, including because you don’t necessarily have a lot of confidence in your HS counselors . . . probably there should be a lower bar to taking and submitting AP scores, same as with SAT/ACT scores, than some have recently suggested.
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I was wondering about that. Do kids with good scores really don’t report it? And to be clear - I don’t think this means colleges expect more APs, I think they just want see that your grade and AP scores make sense.
The threshold for “good scores” has changed since "test optional. Scoring, for example, a 30-31 on the ACT - better than 94%-95% of the country - is no longer a no-brainer for submissions not just at the top 20 colleges but deep into the top 50-100! If you look at scores before and after COVID-19 at so many of these schools that were regularly below 30 average just a few years ago - this has most certainly changed.
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Anecdotally, I have seen a lot of people online worrying about whether or not to submit 4s.
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IME yes. And a 3 is a good score for many kids when taken in context. Some kids might not report because someone tells them not to send scores of 1, 2, 3, even 4.
Also IME many kids just don’t even think to include AP scores, especially if they are applying ACT/SAT optional. True story, I was going thru the app of one of my highest achieving students from a few years ago, who was applying with an ACT score. App looked great. My feedback…let’s get your 8 AP scores of 5 in there. Oops.
Schools like Emory preferring AP scores also raises a huge access issue, one that is larger than SAT/ACT. Lots of HSs don’t offer APs, more won’t allow a non-student to take an AP test there, and many schools don’t allow APs until junior and senior year, so at app time they would only have junior classes to report, if they even sat for the test (sitting for the test is another access issue because of $).
It makes me wonder if applicants at Emory will be advantaged solely because their HS allows APs in 9th/10th, or disadvantaged if their HS doesn’t offer AP tests. Is IB a lesser curriculum? Nope. And on and on. IMO, it certainly wouldn’t be a good development if more HSs started offering APs earlier as a response to certain colleges wanting/valuing AP scores.
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I guess so. We didn’t hesitate for a second to include a 4. It may not help you but it’s not going to hurt you.
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I really don’t think they are looking for volume. At our school APs (for the most part) start 11th and typically no more than 3. 2 if you take Physics 1 since that is Honors. I really believe that they are just trying to understand the grading system and maybe care about English and Math in terms of preparedness. So maybe you have English and Physics 1, or APUSH and Calc AB… a 5 in both tells them you have sufficient reading and writing skills and fundamental math understating to handle the college coursework. You don’t need multiple tests.
And I think this extra scrutiny in the absence of an SAT/ACT score.
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I agree with everything you said. But, not many kids get to Calc AB by junior year, that’s two years advanced. It can also be tough at some AP schools to get an AP science before senior year too…need to complete physics, chem and bio first, before taking any AP.
It’s all about access.
I agree it seems Emory is looking more closely at AP scores because of a lack of ACT/SAT scores. They could just require test scores again if they think they are valuable, or if they have data that show value.
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A few thoughts here….
Look, from what I can see, when trying to gain acceptance to T20s, if you’re unhooked, you’re not getting in with anything less than 1500/34. Scores matter at the highest level, especially within certain financial brackets. In our circle, we saw a half-dozen students with rigorous 3.9uw/1550+ stats with fair ECs – full pay, too, btw - getting rejected from T20s, to the point where parents were absolutely baffled. Some were alumni.
I do believe that once you pass the stats threshold at the highest levels, your application has to compellingly grab an admissions officer to get them to fight for you, which may mean that your essay needs to be stellar. You need to have something to say.
A friend I know in admissions at a prep school said to me recently over drinks, “It’s not like 1990. The lazy kid who scored a 1520 but has a 3.2 GPA isn’t getting into a top school these days. The SAT or the ACT can’t save you anymore.” I know that’s an academic observation for most of us here but this was his view of 3 years in admissions data for “unhooked” students.
Re: state schools, if you’re 75% above range, always submit. DD submitted some places, held back in others. Submitted to publics at/below her range, got really nice deals.
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Same at our HS, we get lots of people accepted at Emory, and usually people only have 2-3 APs by the time they graduate, let alone apply, because we offer very few APs (just the Calcs, modern languages, and CS).
That said, I think both of our high schools (from what I gather) fall into that category of Emory likely trusting our transcripts without such external validation. I think IBDP high schools are similar.
But–and again this isn’t a new problem–what if your HS simply does not offer many advanced classes at all?
My two cents is this has already happened. I was actually shocked to find out how many APs some kids were taking, and then I learned it was normal for the college prep kids in some high schools to start taking AP classes as sophomores or indeed freshman. And then I further learned that at these high schools, APs had often largely taken over as the advanced/elective college prep classes.
And when I looked into why that had happened, it seemed to me it was often at least in part because this was a backdoor way to standardizing curriculums, and it was helping their college prep kids get around the problem of colleges not necessarily trusting their grades/transcripts otherwise.
So while what Emory is suggesting is that they see this as even more of a problem recently, I think it had been going on much longer than that. And in fact some high schools appear to have long ago done exactly what you suggested.
Haha. True. My point stands but now that you pointed that out…my own D will not take a STEM AP until Sr year since the school reverted back to Honors Physics. They tried AP Physics 1 for 2 years and did not like the curriculum constraints.
The bottom line is that the school needs a test they understand to properly evaluate your preparedness - they don’t care which.
If you are applying to an elite school, do not fall into the mindset of “my time is better spent elsewhere instead of prepping for a test.” It’s the truth. Prepping in not that time consuming. And send a 1490. It will show you are ready. If you don’t get in its not because “of your lowly score” but it sure might be because they wondered if you had easy As. (Yale AO on the podcast - “we know kids don’t send scores is because they are low”
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Here the literal quote:
Emory’s admissions office has retooled its rankings system for applicants…
…also weighing “external assessment” more heavily than GPA, with a particular focus on AP scores.
So, yes, it sounds as if test-optional applicants would do well to offer an AO alternate means to support the relevancy of a high school’s GPA.
Any AP/IB classes taken before senior year vs. the grades on the transcript in those particular classes, could raise the confidence in a high school’s grading – and GPA.
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