Accommodations for extra time in standardized tests are strongly correlated to the SES of the area (probably much more so than the standardized tests themselves), since it is wealthier parents who are better able to push the buttons to get legitimate accommodations, or manipulate the system to get not-so-legitimate accommodations.
@ucbalumnus Accommodations do tend to be higher in higher SES areas. But there are also many others who are not in high SES areas and still obtain accommodation on false premises. It’s an ethical thing. Obviously, if someone needs it, they should get it. If not, it’s an ethical issue for them.
And this was exactly the reason why Harvard introduced SAT to the college admission process - to find smart students who did not graduate from the North-Eastern boarding schools and award them scholarships based on their scores.
SAT score back then was supposed to reflect IQ and raw intelligence that would shine in spite of the inferior schooling of the candidates.
Add Stanford, Duke, Georgetown, although Georgetown is still requiring all scores.
@izrk02 thank you for the list of TO schools with post #21. I can not find any information though that says University of Texas is going Test Optional for this fall (even on their website). Do you have a link or article?
@ChillyCow I used FairTest for that info.
The list on the FairTest web site is not completely reliable. Whether a college is test optional (or some other variation) should be checked with the college itself, rather than relying on the FairTest web site.
@ucbalumnus My bad. Someone in another thread had mentioned that it was a reputable source for test-optional colleges. I was just looking for somewhere to get the information without having to go to every flagship’s website.
@izrk02 Thank you!
There are hundreds of test optional colleges that would probably disagree with you.
Regarding TO at top colleges/Ivy’s. I’m not sure if anyone here sat in on the bi-yearly Exploring College Options put on by Georgetown Harvard Duke Penn & Stanford. If you did and REALLY paid attention to the Admissions Director when she talked about TO admissions for this coming application cycle you would have probably heard… not direct words but MY take away from what she said and HOW it was said…
(while we are “saying” we are TO this year I STRONGLY suggest you try to take AND submit test scores).
Guys… if you do want to apply to top colleges… I’d suggest being safe than sorry. IF you can that is. Can’t do anything about it if there are zero options.
Praying her Aug test isn’t a repeat of this past PSAT test!! Ugh
The data from admissions officers disagree:
https://www.nacacnet.org/globalassets/documents/publications/research/2018_soca/soca2019_all.pdf
Factors considered of Considerable Importance:
Grades - 74%
Strength of Curriculum - 62%
Standardized Test Scores - 46%
Essay - 23%
Recommendations - 15%
EC - 6%
Even adding Considerable and Moderate importance, the top three are each at 82-90%, Essays are at 56%, Recommendations at 55% and nothing else is over 50%.
I think that schools in low SES areas are going to be hurt on this all the way around. Low SES schools often don’t have science clubs, olympiads, speech teams, math clubs, model nations, robotics & coding clubs, etc. etc. There are very few opportunities to shine outside of GPA and test scores and sports.
Our low SES school completely has grade inflation; basically to get these kids to pass and graduate.
How on earth will low SES schools show kids with potential if there aren’t opportunities for them through the school? those standardized tests are very important to identifying raw talent in the low performing schools.
EG: Recently an immigrant kid from a school in the district got in to Harvard with 28 ACT - showing raw potential. No way that kid would have made it without that test because that kid spent all their time working for the family after school; no ECs, national competitions, etc.
On the flip side is that low SES schools do have some families who have figured it out; and their kids are involved with everything possible and look great on paper. Top 5%, AP classes, leadership positions. Yet, in reality, the kids are not passing any AP tests and are getting lowish ACT scores. Big fish in little ponds; the quality is not there though.
I just don’t get how AOs will discern from these low SES schools . Or if they will even look at them.
Here is what colleges said that they used in admissions a year or few ago, based on their common data set section C7 entries:
Includes charts for all, public, private non-profit, private for-profit, USNWR top 25 national universities, and USNWR top 26 LACs.
As you can see, colleges generally saw grades, rigor, and test scores as being the most important factors, but the most selective colleges also increased the importance of other criteria, especially recommendations, essay, talent, and character/personal.
Is there any way to find out if US News will eliminate the standardized test scores as a metric for ranking colleges in 2021 due to coronavirus-caused test optional policies?
The title of this thread is about the Ivy League. The vast majority of the NACAC survey colleges are less selective ones that accept the majority of applicants – very different admissions criteria from the Ivy League. You can get some clues about how the weightings may differ at selective private colleges by looking at the regression coefficients in appendix B. Appendix B suggests lower admit rate private colleges tend to have the following differences compared to the typical surveyed NACAC college.
Criteria That is Generally More Important at Selective Private Colleges
Essay is much more important
LORs are much more important
ECs, Work, and Awards are much more important
Race, Legacy, First Gen, and Gender are much more important
Ability to Pay is much more important
Grades in College Prep Classes are somewhat more important
Strength of Curriculum is somewhat more important
Interview is somewhat more important*
Demonstrated Interest is somewhat more important*
*More/Less important for private, Little difference for low admit rate
Overall GPA is slightly more important
Criteria That is Generally Less Important at Selective Private Colleges
Test Scores are somewhat less important*
*More/Less important for private, Little difference for low admit rate
Essentially every criteria except test scores tends to be weighted more heavily at selective private colleges than at the average NACAC college. I don’t find this result shocking, as highly selective colleges are more likely to emphasize holistic criteria and less likely to focus on stats. The reverse is true for less selective publics, which are more likely to focus on stats and less likely to emphasize holistic criteria.
We have much more detailed information about Harvard’s admission system due to the lawsuit analyses. Harvard has 4 core ratings on which they rate each applicant on a scale of 1 (best) to ~5 (worst) – academic, extra-curricular, personal, and athletic. These 4 ratings have a similar degree of influence between a rating of 3 (typical) to 2 (well above average), which is the most common distinction among applicants. Academic rating does not appear to be more influential than everything else, as is commonly assumed. Harvard also rates applicants in several subcategories such as teacher LORs, counselor LORs, and interview. These sub-ratings influence some of the core ratings above, as well as the overall holistic decision.
Both sides of the lawsuit created models that could explain the majority of variance in admission decisions using these ratings and many other criteria. The model created by Harvard’s expert could explain 64% of variance in admission decisions, with a r (correlation coefficient) of 0.8. When only the following criteria was removed from the admission model, the model created by Harvard’s expert lost the following degrees of explanatory power.
Full Model – Can explain 64% of variance
LORs and Interview Removed – Decrease by factor of 50% to 32% explained
Personal Rating Removed – Decrease by factor of 19% to 52% explained
Academic Rating Removed – Decrease by factor of 17% to 53% explained
EC Rating Removed – Decrease by factor of 13% to 55% explained
Athletic Rating Removed* – Decrease by factor of 12% to 56% explained
*Estimated based on individual contribution
Removing LORs + Interview were by far the most influential. Among the core categories, personal rating was most influential. The two most influential areas both have little direct dependence on scores, although there is no doubt that there is a correlation with test scores – students with higher test scores are more likely to have top LORs than the average applicant.
Among the categories above, the analyses suggest test scores have little direct influence beyond the academic rating… A report by Harvard’s Office of Internal research found that a combination of test scores and GPA stats could explain ~70% of variance in academic rating – the vast majority of variance in academic rating. It’s unclear exactly how much relative influence transcript and test scores have towards the academic rating, but highly selective private colleges generally claim that transcript is much more influential than scores. If this is true, then removing test scores alone is expected to decrease predictive ability by a small fraction of the 17% reduction listed above… most likely well under 10% decrease in variance of admission decisions explained.
In short, removing test scores from admission consideration is not expected to influence the overwhelming majority of decisions in past classes since the different admission criteria tend to be correlated with one another. Students who ace the rest of the application and have incredible grades, course rigor, LORs, essays, ECs and out of classroom activities, interview, personal traits, … compared to the overall Harvard pool rarely bomb the SAT. The more criteria that is significantly considered, the less likely SAT is to change the decision based on that other criteria.
Don’t assume that Harvard expects low SES kids in such schools to win national competitions or that Harvard doesn’t value supporting their family by working every day after school. Harvard actually has a special EC rating category for supporting family by working:
I expect this kid did well in both the EC and personal ratings categories, and also received the “disadvantaged” flag, which is associated with a significant admissions boost. I expect excelling in these non-stat criteria allowed Harvard to overlook the 28 ACT, which is very low for Harvard. Only ~4% of Harvard’s entering class scored below 30 ACT. I can’t imagine that the bottom ~4% ACT score is helping the applicant, so I expect the decision would have been the same, if Harvard had not considered test scores.
Grades are inflated in US high schools-----
“Obviously, with similar applicants with the only difference being a good test score, you’ll choose the applicant with the test score over the one without.”
Well you are kind of backtracking there, you said you wouldn’t get hurt if you didn’t submit a test, and now you’re saying you could.
And you can definitely hire tutors for classes, like many do here in the bay area, they actually spend on both test prep and tutors, so if you take away money for test prep, it’ll go into more tutors, help on essays, more ECs.
Your high school peers will determine whether you take a test or not, not the college policy.