My daughter’s Chesterfield County Public Schools - does PSAT for all 8th graders (took earlier this year)
We know parents of players on my son’s team that spend $20,000+ on test prep and college “counselors.” Also, Russian Math School is very popular.
That’s crazy!!
Another death knell for these tests is lawsuits saying that the huge advantage that the test prep industry confers to students who can afford it makes unfair to use in admissions. I think I read this is winding its way through the CA courts and is related to UCs? If they win, could be a ripple effect – at least for publics.
I also saw that ACT was changing its rules starting in August (a pre-pandemic decision) so that kids can take a section at a time. That would definitely advantage kids who have the guidance and resources to prep over a longer period of time and have multiple test sittings. I had wondered if this would prompt SAT to do something similar (it amounts to superscoring except you literally don’t even have to sit through the sections you aren’t focused on).
They announced it:
https://vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2020/04/admissions-testing-2025.html?fbclid=IwAR0wuNsckidC-y8X8DJTd094nkfiUORPNIcBk62EXHoxGwuKXbJuoZHy4o4
I still don’t buy it … “no special consideration given to those that take the test”. So they are trying to say someone turns in a 1500 SAT and antoher person doesn’t turn in their SAT (all out factors being rather equal) … the 1500 SAT means nothing … I call Bologna!
@cbl1 I agree, it’s strangely worded. Although we’ve certainly seen evidence from the current admission cycle that sometimes they completely ignore high scores!
Generally policies like this serve to raise the average SAT score for admitted students. Expect the admit rate and SAT score for the Class of ‘25 to be through the roof due to the pandemic.
@rbc2018 – Tks for sharing this good news!
Yes - its all over the board anyhow. Still I never believe these schools that say test optional doesn’t hurt your chances.
It may not be good news for a kid that has a very good SAT score and they say they aren’t even going to factor it against someone who doesn’t even submit a score. There are so many spots - its not good or bad news as it depends on the kids. All they did was shake up the pile a bit. If it helped one kid it hurt another.
And personally (not recommending anyone follow my advice here) if the good news is “oh thank goodness my kid doesn’t need to take the SAT now”. I personally would have my child take the SAT. I don’t buy that it wouldn’t help and wouldn’t want to just stop my child’s momentum into college because they said I didn’t “need” to.
I do think that a lot of universities use scores to validate gpa somewhat. What I think is going to be tricky for them is that tons of applicants have good grades (grade inflation, etc.), so the scores have historically served as a bit of a differentiator. I know COE looks closely at the math portion of ACT and SAT. Scores aren’t everything, but they’re not nothing either.
So yeah, this decision is definitely welcome news to those kids with high grades and middle of the road scores. But VT will have to use other non-academic things to differentiate even more than they did before.
I wonder if they might now allow/require LoRs, at least for those who apply TO? That info might help in lieu of test scores.
@cbl1 – It’s certainly good news for the tens of thousands of kids who have not been able to take a single standardized test and have no idea when they will be able to! Many many juniors were slated to take their first test in March or April – didn’t happen.
While it’s possible testing will get up and going this summer, there are no certainties and a lot of anxiety. Also, for many low-income, first gen students the school-based tests (most of which didn’t happen this spring) is their ONLY standardized test. Colleges are going test optional partly to make sure college access door is not closed for these kids.
For more privileged kids, you’re right – if their test score is stronger than their GPA/rigor/ECs, this is not good news. But when you add in all the crazy expensive test prep that wealthy families do (as discussed above) and the research that GPA is more predictive of college success, I’m ‘over’ these tests. My opinion!
For the record, I have one kid was was a NMF plus scored very high on her ACT right out of the gate. My other kid doesn’t naturally test as well even though he’s a 4.0 GPA student (from a top 10 public HS in our state) and just as bright. That said, I am pretty confident with 2 or 3 tries (and yes, more prep – he’s also privileged though we don’t drop the serious $$ that some parents do) he’d get the score he’s shooting for and within range of engineering at VT and other peers. But so far he’s only had one attempt and then it was all shut down! This has been stressful and frustrating for him.
I have no insights on the ‘test optional’ vs. ‘test blind’ aspect of this – impossible to know how serious they are about not even looking at scores. Most schools are test optional so it does seem that VT may be moving farther away from these tests than other colleges.
Yes, @AlmostThere2018 , that is why VT and others have made this decision-- because of cancelled test dates and the uncertainty of whether future dates will happen.
Universities use scores in addition to gpa as an additional data point. It doesn’t negate the predictive aspect of gpa. But to your points, privilege also correlates to things like gpa and rigor, so it is a complicated issue, more than just standardized tests. There are plenty of kids with high grades coming out of high schools these days and they’ve taken away a differentiator (whether it’s fair or not), so that means they will have to look at other factors to differentiate. It will be interesting to see how it unfolds this coming year and going forward.
Also, I’m glad it will take some stress off of your son!
Hopefully they retool the short essay prompts as well to help differentiate students.
@GKUnion I agree. The current essay prompts are ridiculously superficial and poorly written.
The June SAT has been cancelled:
Yup. And I bet the June 13 ACT will be right behind them…
I expect to see even more colleges drop their test requirements since it looks like no tests again until at least Aug. That doesn’t leave much time – and a lot of students trying to test at once – before Fall application deadlines.
RIP standardized testing (at least this year)