Bowdoin’s comprehensive reporting of standardized testing profiles on its CDS for 88% of its students entering in 2022 has been reduced to 58.5% for students entering in 2023.
I’m not sure I understand what it is you are reporting. It sounds like there was a drop in the number of Bowdoin entering students who took standardized tests (Bowdoin has, famously, been TO since the 1970s.) But that isn’t what your thread title says .
Bowdoin’s CDS has been particularly thorough in most recent years by reporting standardized scoring information for students who did not submit their scores with their applications. This information has been available because it has been required for matriculation. It appears that in the most recent year Bowdoin did not include the information for these TO students. This appears to resume the practice of a three-year period several years ago (as can be seen through available Common Data Sets).
Did this affect SAT range? I wonder if keeping up with rising reported SATs from peer schools had to do with the decision.
Yes, substantially.
How do you you know those TO students actually had scores to report? Fewer students now take the SAT or ACT at all given how many schools went TO.
Year-to-year reporting at Bowdoin declined by 34%. The magnitude of this does not reflect national trends for these particular years with which I’m familiar.
Deleted.
Like a few other schools, Bowdoin historically showed a very high percentage for test scores submission on the CDS since the scores are required after the student is accepted. It was misleading as a much lower percentage of students actually submitted scores for admission.
Bucknell shows the same thing on the CDS.
Interesting. So you’re saying that the percentage of enrolled students submitting test scores on the CDS does not reflect percentage of enrolled students who submitted scores as part of their application but rather reflects the percentage that submit scores as part of matriculation? If that’s the case, that’s a really significant difference and certainly not what most people understand that datapoint in the CDS to mean….
You can see the Bowdoin test score data trend here, where they do note at the bottom of the graph that test scores are required for all matriculants:
https://www.bowdoin.edu/ir/data/admissions.html
It does seem that Bowdoin has changed the scores they are reporting on the CDS though. It’s not clear they still require test scores from all matriculants who have one. Testing volume for both SAT and ACT is down vs pre-covid times, but one would have to guess to know how many aspirational Bowdoin students aren’t taking a test at all.
I am sure someone in institutional reporting would answer any questions people may have regarding how they are reporting scores.
Bucknell’s CDS appears to represent a good example of comphesive reporting of standardized testing information. At this time, Bowdoin appears to have headed toward limited reporting.