I got a 35 on the ACT on my first (and last) try. How much of a difference is this score going to make in my application, since most schools are moving away from standardized testing?
I think it differs at all colleges
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I ED’d at Cornell, but they are lowering their admit rate via ED
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Just because it’s not required doesn’t mean it’s not valued. Cornell is not one of them but several TO school still list test as “very important.”
A strong test score will give confidence on the quality of your transcript and will allow AOs to move on to other aspects of your application.
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Congratulations to that exceptional outcome.
Generally speaking: The more selective a college, the more likely it could benefit your application.
For Universities with high acceptance rates, it could help with getting into their honors colleges, or merit aid offers (to entice you not to take your high score and enroll at more selective colleges).
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Unless a college is test blind…this ACT score will likely help your application.
What college did you apply to at Cornell? A few are test blind, so it may not be consider at all depending where you applied.
A high score such as a 35 is a positive piece in the whole puzzle, but not the most important piece, and it is viewed in context with the rest of your application. Your transcript is the most important (the level of core classes you took based on what top courses are available at your HS, and the grades in those courses). A 35 plus top rigor and 3.9-4.0uw is excellent and is a large supporting piece of the puzzle. A 35 with top rigor and lots of Bs (in a school where As in the hard classes are common) is still a positive score, but the score will not make up for the much lower gpa at a school like Cornell. A 35 with less than top rigor even if you have a 4.0 is also not too helpful, as the 35 supports the fact that you should have been able to handle the hardest courses at your school but yet you didn’t try. In that scenario, the 35 is positive but raises questions in the context of your app.
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Obviously every college has its own policies, and some appear to be in flux.
What I would suggest is there is a lot of evidence these days that at least at highly selective colleges that accept (or require) tests, many are using some sort of initial academic screening process, and a high test score can help you get past that initial screen.
Which is good, but then assuming you do get past that initial screen, it might not do much more, if anything at all, to determine whether you are admitted among the many other people who also passed the initial screen. And depending on the college, it still may only be something like 1 in 15 people who will be admitted, maybe even worse, so a lot still has to go your way past that point which your test score may not really help you with.
Like, a Yale AO recently said this explicitly, that once you are past the initial review they then really focus on the story told by your transcript, and never discuss test scores in committee. The Dartmouth AO interviewing that Yale AO said it was the same with them.
All this makes sense because even the most charitable views of these tests must acknowledge they only require a relatively basic and limited (for college) set of specific knowledge and skills training. Their big virtue is they are standardized, unlike curriculums and grading standards, so using them to assess whether you meet a certain threshold basic college preparation level makes some sense. But then in terms of more in depth understanding of academic interests; evaluation of your abilities in terms of discussions, research papers, labs; and so on, an informed review of your transcript, teacher recommendations, possibly your counselor letter, and other such information will logically dominate.
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Thank you for spelling all of this out (again!)
It’s amazing to me how so many people are fixated on the admissions process, yet do not avail themselves of the many excellent sources of information out there. Am not picking on OP at all. Mostly just venting.
And just to flesh out your response a little further, those AOs were the actual deans of admission/financial aid at Dartmouth and Yale. So, not any sort of mid-level staffer or lower level readers. These are “the guys.” (I know you know this, just clarifying for others).
BTW @NiceUnparticularMan if you’ve not listened yet, the episode with the head of NACAC is great.
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I’ve reflected quite a bit on why so many people (not necessarily in percentage terms, but gross terms at least) don’t seem to be spending much if any time seeing what their colleges of interest have actually said about their admissions policies and practices. I think at least one issue is a lot of these people seem to have what I would call a conspiratorial mindset, in that they believe these colleges are routinely not just hiding important information, but actually actively providing false information. And they think they need to go to outside sources to get the “real” information that these colleges are hiding.
Personally, I have seen no evidence that these colleges actually provide false information. I do think they sometimes are reluctant to discuss certain things, and in that sense it is true not all the information you might want has been made public (whether then anyone else outside the college actually knows that information is a good question, of course). But if they do actually say something, at least if you pay close attention to what they actually said, I think it is typically safe to assume it is true.
That said, I also completely understand that there is a comfort in talking over these issues with other applicants and parents and such. I do think ultimately we are all subject to the same information limitations, but to the extent we can share information, or sources of information, or suggest takeaways grounded in decent information, and so on, that seems useful to me and I am happy to participate.
Agreed.
I do think too that there exists an understandable desire for a sense of control, or at least some degree of predictability. So I think people take comfort in deciding that the process is “random,” not because it’s actually random, but because it does not conform to their understanding. Or desire.
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Yeah, I struggle with how to communicate about that issue personally, because I think a lot of people get overly anxious about maximizing their application in every way their “dream” colleges ever mention, which ironically is one of the things such colleges often say you should not actually be trying to do. So information overload could potentially be counterproductive in such cases.
On the other hand, I think sometimes if you carefully study colleges of interest, you can pick up some potentially actionable information about how to best present yourself. And sometimes, in fact, you might learn that maybe one college you thought you would like is not such a great fit for you, but another you didn’t initially have high on your list sounds really promising, and so on.
So personally, I tend to err on the side of being more informative, or at least pointing people in the direction of where they can get more information. But on some level I also understand this whole process is creating a lot of anxiety, distorting important decisions about how these kids are spending their time, and so on. And obviously I can’t stop all that as an individual, but it doesn’t feel great knowing it is happening.
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It is less random than it appears to outsiders, but it appears more random to outsiders because outsiders have very limited information – usually see only a tiny number of applicants and admits, and know nothing but maybe stats and some ECs for must of them (and may not even know all of their own applications, like LoRs).
But even when colleges are more transparent about admission (e.g. Arizona State University and San Jose State University), many still seem not to realize that the answer to their question is on the website (e.g. “why rejected from CS at SJSU with a 3.7 unweighted GPA?”).
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I think this is true. Students, and their parents, are often looking for a roadmap that will make elite college admissions more predictable. Unfortunately, since we are not privy to each schools’ institutional priorities (and these can change somewhat every year) it is almost impossible to predict what an attractive combination of grades/rigor/test scores/ECs will be in any given year. That is especially true for the masses of unhooked applicants (mostly very well qualified academically) who apply to these schools.
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Some schools at Cornell are test blind and some are TO - where it will weigh in your favor.
Having a good test - where it’s possible to submit a test - is a big positive - maybe moreso at some schools than others but it’s a great thing.
But be proud and confident.
And also often/usually out of date information. The “back in my day” stuff. Or even, most recently, “my kid who applied in 2020.”
The more I think about all this, the more I feel like the two-part episode bt the deans at Dartmouth and Yale (and Clarke) should be pinned as a “you must listen to this before posting on CC” requirement. I’m only partly kidding.
ETA: @NiceUnparticularMan your continued patience and efforts at informing are deeply appreciated
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Actually, for elite colleges, just to be in the game as an unhooked applicant means having top end grades, top end rigor, top end test scores (if preferred by the college), and as high achievement in ECs as possible. But the unknowns to the applicants are how essays will be seen in comparison to other applicants, how the institutional priorities match or do not match the applicant, and how good their LoRs are in comparison to other applicants.
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I think this is an oft missed or slept-on aspect. And way more important IMO than sometimes perceived.
All the other stuff listed (grades, rigor, scores, ECs) won’t much, or at all, get to the question of “What kind of community member will this kid be, in the classroom, on campus, etc?”
My two cents is ECs can shade more into the unpredictable side than academics.
There are just so many different non-academic activities that are important to “residential” colleges in the US, and ECs are also ways of demonstrating non-academic personal characteristics. And so most highly selective holistic review colleges tend to cite a lot of different ECs as potentially being good ones, and I think that is one of those things that is likely true.
But then it is hard to predict what ECs will be good ENOUGH, including because to the extent they are looking for a variety of different types of people to round out their classes, you do not necessarily know exactly what the competition looks like within your type of applicant.
I would again not call that random. But to get sort of back to answering the OP’s question, standardized tests are useful for basic purposes because they are standardized, but also limited in use when drawing fine academic distinctions, including because of what it took to make them standardized.
ECs are then even less standardized than grades/transcripts, but that doesn’t mean they are less important. It just means it is hard to predict how, say, a committee will discuss specific ECs, what they will see as merely good or instead very strong for a certain sort of EC, and so on. Because there is no such standardization, at least not for most ECs.