“Or they will remain need-blind, but adjust their admission criteria to increase favorability of characteristics associated with higher SES / lower FA need”
Exactly, if need-blind was misleading back then, it should be taken with a ton of salt now. Interesting that 99% of wealthy families have students at need-blind colleges. If these were need blind, how do they end up with the income distribution that they do? I’m not saying that colleges shouldn’t be need aware, just they should admit they are.
I am on a NACAC counselor email list. There has been a lot of chatter regarding pressuring colleges to drop the SAT subject test requirements or recommendations. Part of it is that tests are being cancelled right and left, part of it is that these tests are viewed as negatively impacting lower-income kids (and those students will only be increasing.)
International students have less access to these tests, as well.
These counselors are actively pressuring selective colleges to drop these tests.
@Helen13 It’s interesting that there is pressure, because one would think the college AOs could figure this out all by themselves. The writing was on the wall for subject test recommendations for some time, and the spring date cancellations will probably deep-six them, just so that the selective colleges can maintain current app levels (considering the expected gradual decrease in the demographic age group).
Now that the top two schools that required SAT subject test (Caltech and MIT) will no longer even consider them starting next year, those tests are as good as gone.
Generally speaking, I suspect more schools will go test optional next year, and many of them won’t go back.
Hebegebe’s assumptions seem on point. One other dynamic to add to the mix is how many upperclassmen/women, will decide to not return for their next year … for financial, emotional or travel reasons. That leads me to believe they will look to create a larger freshman class to fill the void. And wait lists will be much, much longer due to all the uncertainty, creating an even more difficult guessing game for admission depts.
Yes, I think colleges for this fall’s freshman class can’t rely on historical data for determine their yield.
Some students and their families will just want to be closer to home. Many more families will have some hard arithmetic to do: investment plans will be decimated, in addition to savings and even monthly income.
How about the situation two years from now? That’s when college financial aid will really be stretched. I expect to see changes in need-blind admissions, especially for international students. You are going to see a large dropoff in full-pay international students who help subsidize full need domestic students. It would not surprise me if the Chinese student population plummets.
Probably most of their applicants present 800 in math level 2 and 800 (or very close) in one or more sciences anyway, so they do almost nothing to distinguish between applicants to MIT and Caltech.
While SAT subject tests have been found to be more predictive of college performance than the SAT, their non-default/incumbent status means that the few colleges requiring them also screen out students who may not have heard about them in time, or have other non-academic barriers to taking them. As colleges drop them for this reason, the same reason becomes even more of an issue – a vicious cycle for them.
Wise words. And a great explanation - “clock just stopped.”
Our high school senior won’t even talk about college selection right now. She is stressing about the 45 minute AP essay exams that she wants to go ahead and take, but won’t really know if she is thoroughly prepared. Her high school just began their second week of remote learning. The teachers are doing a great job, but it’s just not the same as being in the traditional classroom setting.
She has friends who never finished touring colleges, and they are overwhelmed by the possibility of selecting a school they never visited.
I can’t even count the number of senior parents who have had to close down their businesses or have been laid off from work. Some of them were helping older children pay college off-campus rent, but can’t come up with the funds now. Some are still paying elementary and/or high school tuition, but now have little to no income. Adding college expenses for 2020-2021 might seem like an impossibility.
I predict that many of the seniors have no choice but to select the affordable safety school.
What about extra curriculars and programs that have been cancelled? I know that the hospital I was going to be volunteering at this summer has suspended the program and there’s a good chance I won’t have anything to really do this summer since there aren’t many places still accepting applications.
Even if schools go test optional, they will remain very test-aware at least for student that colleges expect can afford them (some discussion of this on the UChicago forum). Standardized tests are a primary way those with resources can flex some muscle - test prep classes, multiple test attempts and super scoring allow an affluent student with low-mid 1400-leveltalent to put a score that’s 80 points higher on their application. That is not going away anytime soon. Any real threat to the standardized testing cartel will be met with attempts to reconcile the utility of the tests with evolving social opinion. The controversial adversity score was a poor first effort but they’ll figure it out. Most billion dollar industries adapt quickly when facing an existential crisis.
I do think subject tests are at risk of disappearing. They have already been undermined by 1) the relatively limited selection of offerings other than the absurd proliferation of languages, 2) the increased availability and comparative value of AP exams and 3) the lack of top end resolution in several subjects. An 800 in Math2, Physics, Chinese or Korean is roughly 80th percentile. When 1/5 is getting a perfect score the test is essentially useless for highly selective admissions.
It’s going to be a great year for waitlisted applicants at selective colleges. These colleges can’t raise admit rate significantly as it would be bad PR, instead after declines from internationals and high EFC, they’ll dip into waitlists.
This will be the year we test-run living without state tests for K-12, NYS regents may finally die, and the College Board could finally be a thing of the past for all except the highly selective schools who will still want them.
Think of the cost savings if all of this went away.
I think students will be choosing closer to home and affordable. It will be a buyer’s market for a few cycles.
“Some of the nation’s most selective colleges became slightly less selective this year, as Harvard University, Dartmouth College and the University of Pennsylvania posted increased acceptance rates for the first-year class that will begin in the fall.”
^My understanding is that slightly higher acceptance rates are expected due to demographic shifts (fewer high school seniors) over the next few years, unrelated to COVID. With COVID happening just as final decisions were being made, it’s hard to guess the add-on effect.
Could be; I was under the impression that classes of 2022 and 2023 were the high-water mark due to births in the year 2000. Such that, perhaps, we would expect acceptance rates for 2024 similar to classes of 2021/2020 etc. (I haven’t looked but might be an interesting comparison.)
College enrollment has been decreasing since 2012 I believe. However, the number of college age kids will drop-off significantly starting in 2026…18 years after the “Great Recession”.
I think there will be many upcoming changes. My high school senior son has been watching online classes provided for AP classes. One teacher is from Mississippi. He says she’s quite good. We’ve been talking about online learning being a public and higher education disruptor for years. This might be the time it finally happens. A paradigm shift in the higher ed business proposition.
He’s going to take a summer class online. I think it’s 50/50 this fall will be online for all colleges.