You can take up to three Subject SATs in one outing, if you wanted to make it more worth your while.
I think you make a nice point, but there is a good chance your D20 is better off having not applied. Many Caltech freshman have taken college courses or participated in out of state academic competitions. That the two hour drive wasn’t worth it was a fortunate hazard sign for applying to a wicked competitive environment that attracts highly aggressive students.
My point is that Caltech shouldn’t be making it easier to apply. I understand that the SAT Subject Math doesn’t mean as much on the Caltech app when it is also asking for AMC and AIME scores. What I’m offering is that the SAT Subject provided a slight little speed bump so that less competitive students do not waste their money and hope applying to Caltech.
The biggest benefit of dropping the Subject SAT is that more students are duped into applying to Caltech and thus driving down the admission rate. Perhaps this helps Caltech’s ranking or gives admitted student families more bragging rights. For those that had no real business applying, the lesson could be a painful one.
CalTech’s admit rate was 6.4% last year. I doubt they have any interest in driving down that rate.
Subject tests are access barriers and I take CalTech at their word…“This move will definitely widen the door for talented candidates we may not have been able to reach in the past who deserve our consideration.”
That’s an erroneous description of Caltech. It’s not “wicked competitive” at all. Like MIT, Caltech’s students are encouraged to be collaborative. All their homework, while very challenging, is designed to be done collaboratively.
Caltech’s admission rate is already sub-7% and its admission office is tiny compared to its peers. It doesn’t need or want to increase the number of applications. The applicants to Caltech are the most self-selected anywhere, and it has the least number of frivolous applications. The reason it wants to drop SAT Subject tests is because they’re least useful and can’t serve as a filter or a “speed bump”.
@polishcalculator wrote:
Wow, you’re making a lot of assumptions here about my kid, based on her choice not to drive nearly 4 hours for a 1 hour test. She has excellent stats, has won multiple national competitions, and is currently in the running for top scholarships at UVA (Jefferson), USC, and other T40s. She simply decided that “fit” for her included whether the schools were understanding about SAT subject tests, since they’re barriers for rural students. This might mean Yale/UChicago/Duke (and now Caltech) might get her consideration rather than Harvard. The conclusion that she’s not a competitive student because she doesn’t want to surmount this rural-specific barrier is surprising, and a form of prejudice. We should be working to reduce barriers and inequalities, not making negative assumptions about the kids who face them.
They already do that.
I think Caltech and MIT are the two schools that aren’t even remotely interested in playing the ranking game. MIT works incredibly hard to communicate what they are looking for and Caltech tries but they’re so small.
My guess is that Caltech is fed up with the stats race they see on the applications and is trying to send a signal. They could have made SAT 2s optional, but they went all they way to not considering them. They’re trying to tell applicants they want more than just high stats. They want collaborators and creators instead of people who have been prepping for the SAT since middle school or taking math over the summer to get ahead.
They’re tired of applicants that are chasing prestige and the starting salary, and want to accept more true thinkers.
just my 2 cents.
@AlwaysMoving I think Caltech is trying to attract a wider if not bigger audience of applicants. If Caltech wanted to say it is not about stats, it should not ask about AIME scores. A few years ago, Caltech modified it’s science core curriculum to soften the requirements a degree. Again, it’s trying to attract a more diverse audience whether that is gender or whatever. Don’t forget that Caltech is a business and a prominent one that is constantly under political pressure to make everyone happy. And of course they want graduates to make a lot of money and donate back to the university. This allows the university to make more improvements, more financial aid, etc…
This was my dream school, but I didn’t even apply because my subject test scores were terrible (not 800s…) and I thought I would receive a guaranteed rejection. I wish I was in the class of 2021 because I would have applied… but anyway, I can’t control that
And in completely unsurprising news…Harvey Mudd announced they will not require subject tests starting with 2021 app cycle. https://www.hmc.edu/about-hmc/2020/02/06/harvey-mudd-will-no-longer-require-sat-subject-tests/