Doesn’t quite show up in the image, but this is much larger than I would have expected:
The median SAT of those who asked not to have their score considered for admission was nearly 300 points lower than those who wanted them considered (1160 vs 1420).
I’m not surprised. The 25-75% test score range at most good schools is just insane, in large part because in the test optional environment, the ones reporting are the ones who got great scores. They’re just incredibly skewed right now.
My daughter is borderline on report/don’t report. Her scores are solid, but not to the point where it’s an auto-report (that’s better than “obviously don’t report them,” though). I think she probably will report them because I think they’re good enough where they won’t disqualify her, plus I don’t want her missing out on any possible scholarship money where scores might be required/desired.
If this was 30 years ago when I applied to colleges, there wouldn’t be a question about reporting her scores. They would have been more than good enough.
SHIT NOW MY KIDS WILL HAVE MORE TROUBLE GETTING INTO HARVARD
So is the general consensus now that these schools don’t have to worry about Affirmative action, they can reinstate the (historically biased) tests and keep out even more undesirables than before?
who were the “anti-test crusaders”? and did removing testing actually get any more underprivileged kids into these nepo-schools?
I’m open to contrary evidence, but my strong belief is that the alternative admissions criteria are substantially more likely to bias against historically underrepresented groups. I think the anti-testing movement, despite its presumably good intentions, was a terrible mistake.
I agree with you personally. Do you feel like institutions are reversing course because they feel they made bad selections without test or because it was too burdensome (expensive) to evaluate candidates without these scores?
Well, the data is that test scores are more predictive than HS grades, and I would assume much more predictive than volunteer activity or letters of rec. It may be easier to evaluate candidates, but that’s only because there’s more readily available information predictive of success.
This article has relevant information (free link).
I don’t think more information (even if it’s good predictive information) makes it easier based on selection committees I’ve been on. It’s super labor intensive to try to integrate multiple factors from multiple evaluators to come up with a final good decision. So test scores are good way to potentially use less information depending on resource restraints.
Wait, did our big brain Libertarian VC friend here think that people who choose to not submit scores scored as high as those who did submit scores, but just didn’t report for reasons? Because he seems really surprised that there’s a big difference.
I took the point as being how large a gap there was in both the scores and the grades. One expects some gap in scores, but not like 2-3 standard deviations.
I still don’t follow. The gap between submitted and not submitted scores is largely dictated by ranges that the schools decide to publish. Read @dlk9s’s post. The part about the GPAs is even more puzzling though. Bro says
Test-optional admits had a first semester GPA 0.86 points lower than those who submitted SAT/ACT. A whole grade!
but I can rewrite this statement using the information he provides in the very next line as
The group with 1160 (70th percentile) median SAT had a first semester GPA 0.86 points lower than the group with 1420 (94th percentile) SAT. A whole grade!
Is that supposed to be the lady jumps out of the cake moment? This phenomenon has been known for decades. College Board has published plenty of research on it that is freely available. He also says “the Ivies” will never publish this out of embarrassment which seems to be a common theme of his posting and also this:
I don’t have any good information on this, but I think the following plays at least a small role:
There’s an increased scrutiny on college admissions following the SCOTUS affirmative action decision, where college admissions offices (well, really the legal offices) are focused on making sure that the admissions process complies with the SCOTUS ruling. The best way to do that is to minimize/eliminate the weight placed on subjective factors (where people could argue that they’re being used as a proxy for race), and more weight on objective (not to say unbiased) factors like GPA/SAT/ACT. So if you’re, say, the Senior VP and General Counsel of a university, the very first thing you’d want to do is require students to submit standardized test scores in order to minimize future legal headaches.
My only interaction with admissions is at the doctoral level. But I can tell you that this year, after the SCOTUS decision, there was a flood of communication with the legal office to make sure that our admissions process was free of any explicit or implicit racial/ethnic considerations, and that we had documented (and gotten approval for) our review criteria before we could even start reviewing applications. It was an enormous headache.
I knew that there would be self-selection involved, and that the scores of the reporters would be substantially higher than non-reporters. But I’ll admit that I was stunned at how large that difference was.
That’s interesting because in the small sample I have from admissions directors/staff, it’s kind of the opposite.
I believe I mentioned it earlier in this thread, but I attended a college admissions panel at my daughter’s high school. Four schools were represented: Agnes Scott, Georgia Tech, Ohio State, and UAB. The first three said the most important things (undergrad) were the grades/academic rigor combo and the “soft” stuff like activities, community involvement, leadership, etc. The things that show you’re a well-rounded person. Georgia Tech - the most difficult school to get into of the group - said they barely look at test scores. There’s clearly going to be a floor that you’d better be above, but they care about other things more.
The one exception of that group was UAB. They’re the opposite. They just look at grades/GPA and test scores. Meet a certain minimum qualification and you’re in.
The entire process is weird. That friend of my daughter who got into Duke and Northwestern and is going to UGA? Didn’t get into Georgia Tech, which was where she wanted to go. Go figure.
Is that mostly gut / intuition or did you have a deeper thought process on it? To me there’s one really obvious answer but it’s from the social psychology bag of tricks which isn’t a natural way of thinking. That way of thinking is seeing everything as a 2x2 ANOVA with the sole intention of manipulating human behavior. So in this case I want to trick people into not submitting pretty good SAT scores they’d otherwise submit. I’m positive I could get a huge effect there just by choosing which information to provide: for example, the range of scores of accepted students was 1160-1600 vs. the 25th-75th percentile range was 1400-1500 or whatever.
That was just my caveman brain - gut/intuition without thinking deeply at all.
Here’s the Dartmouth paper which should blow your mind even more. Blue is SAT required red is optional binned in 50 point segments. Massive decrease in score reporting below 1550 (!!!). These are for admitted students not applicant pool.
Published test score ranges for Dartmouth suggest that a score of 1400 places a student well below the 25th percentile of test scores, and our data show that most students who score (or would score) 1400 or less opt not to submit a score.
The most shocking thing to me is that they seem surprised by this behavior. Here’s the main takeaway and impetus for requiring scores again:
For example, at an SAT score of 1400, less-advantaged students have twice the probability of admission of more-advantaged students. These relatively high-achieving less-advantaged students likely should submit their scores, as their score would benefit their application.
The estimates imply that there are 1,000 less-advantaged students in each applicant pool who have a score greater than 1400 but do not reveal their score to Admissions under test-optional.
