Going "Test Optional" a low risk from the school's perspective

[Papa Chicken]

certainly heard this before, but reiterated within an article on Lawrence:
No-test option gives Wisconsin college a different look - News

When Lawrence went test-optional in late 2005, about a quarter of its roughly 2,300 applicants chose not to submit scores. About a quarter of admitted students were also non-submitters. A study of students admitted in 2006 showed non-submitters had lower test scores, but ended up with roughly the same GPAs as submitters at the end of their first term.

The school also experienced a 12 percent increase in applications when it went test-optional.

Lawrence's results mirrored the findings of a 20-year study at Bates College in Maine, released in 2004. The school, test-optional since 1984, found no differences in academic performance or graduation rates between score submitters and non-submitters. Bates also nearly doubled its applicant pool in the two decades after making testing optional.

I believe I have seen internal reports from Colby concluding the same about no significant difference in student performance between those who submitted SATs and those who did not, normalizing for other factors like HS GPA & transcript if I recall.

[happymomof1]

Haven't seen this new article, but I have read all the links at The National Center for Fair & Open Testing | FairTest
Thanks for keeping us updated!

[Papa Chicken]

I found my printout of the Colby report I mentioned above. It was a study by Colby's Institutional Research group apparently assessing the possibility of going test optional, dated 2005. I originally found the study, amongst many others, on a Colby url that has since been made unavailable to the public.

This report gave me much hope for the population of smart kids that don't test well, although I don't think Colby ever went test-optional (correct?)...at least it appears that they must appreciate this group when making admissions decisions.

What the subject analysis did was take a population of past Colby enrolled students with discordantly impressive HS records relative to their test scores & segregated that group as their likely "non-submitters", modeling the hypothetical test-optional case.

Here's the report's executive summary:

This analysis models the characteristics of likely test score "non-submitters" under a hypothetical test-optional policy by examining past enrolled students who had excellent high school records and relatively low SAT scores. So-called "non-submitters" were distinctive in many ways, but did not differ from the general population in terms of their first-year GPA or their GPA at graduation.

"Non-submitters" were, however, more likely to be "first-generation", female, African-American or Latino/a, to reside in Maine, and to receive financial aid; they were also more academically ambitious, more involved in pro-social co-curricular activities, more likely to apply early decision, and more likely as graduating seniors to report satisfaction with Colby. Thus this group has many favorable characteristics in terms of enhancing Colby's academic and social climate and increasing the economic and cultural diversity of the entering class, all without sacrificing academic quality (i.e., college GPA). The main constraint to admitting more students from this desirable pool of "non-submitters" is the limited availability of financial aid, which as a group they are almost twice as likely to require.

[mountains]

You're correct; Colby still requires scores.