Women average higher grades than men at all levels from elementary school to college. Women also average higher graduation rates from both HS and college than men. The fact that males average slightly higher combined college admission test scores than women in spite of males averaging lower college GPA and lower graduation rate may be suggestive of a problem. It is certainly not suggestive that we need a standardized test in which men average higher scores than women to compensate for males lower average GPA, in order to make things “fair.”
Note that the overwhelming majority of selective colleges are test optional not blind. In such a system, males who have higher scores than expected for their HS grades can submit their highs scores, and those scores will be considered. And women with lower scores than expected from their HS grades can apply test optional. We see this effect in which groups choose to apply test optional. For example, in my earlier post I mentioned that the Bates study found submitters were notably more likely to be male than non-submitters. Specific numbers are below. Other larger studies have found the same pattern, such as the study of 24 test optional colleges at https://www.nacacnet.org/globalassets/documents/publications/research/defining-access-report-2018.pdf .
Bates Submitters = 48% Female, Bates Non-submitters =59% Female
Other groups that tend to be overrepresnted among non-submitters and are more likely to benefit from a test optional policy include lower-income, URM, and first generation. Some specific numbers from the Ithaca are below:
Ithaca Applicants
Test Submitter – Mean family contribution = 10% Pell, 26% URM*
Test Optional – Mean family contribution = 17% Pell, 40% URM*
Ithaca Admits
Test Submitter Admits-- Mean family contribution = 15% Pell, 22% URM*
Test Optional Admits – Mean family contribution = 29% Pell, 35% URM*
Ithaca Enrolled
Test Submitter Enrolls-- Mean family contribution = 18% Pell, 19% URM*
Test Optional Enrolls – Mean family contribution = 30% Pell, 31% URM*
*Ithaca includes Asian students as part of their URM category. Only ~4% of Ithaca kids are Asian.
This didn’t happen at Ithaca. Note that test optional admits above were skewed to lower SES. It also didn’t happen at any of the other 24 test optional colleges linked in the NACAC study above. At all 24 of the test optional admits averaged lower income than test submitter admits.
More applications means the colleges require more resources to evaluate the applications, such as hiring more readers. Some of the colleges that have had especially holistic applications prior to COVID, also received tens of thousands of applications prior to COVID. The correlation with an especially holistic evaluation seems to more follow selectivity than having a small number of applications . Have we seen any evidence that colleges had less opportunity to conduct holistic reviews this year? We saw that some of the colleges with the largest application increase said they needed an extra week to finish going through the larger than expected number of applications, but I am not aware of any that said they had to take short cuts in their usual review.
That was what the UC study you linked suggested. It did not recommend keeping the SAT. It recommended that UC develop a new test to replace it, and UC has mentioned plans to do so in the future. However, it’s unclear whether that will ever happen.