NESCAC Spoken Here:

College Search & Lists
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2078

They aren’t required to submit scores (for pre-reads), but it’s preferred. And many recruits are told to apply test optional after admissions sees the test scores. Some schools will do that (tell an applicant if they should send their test score or not) for any applicant who asks.

Regardless, there is 100% differential treatment in a holistic process…different treatment based on upbringing, parental education level, income level, where one lives, the HS one attends, the major one is applying to, activities that one has done and on and on. Required testing doesn’t fix any of that, it only serves to keep certain students out of the pool.

But we have debated and rehashed that on a dozen CC threads, so not looking to start that here on this well behaved thread. :laughing:

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2079

Bates has been test optional since 1984 - interesting narrative - https://offices.depaul.edu/enrollment-management/test-optional/Documents/HistoryOfTOinHigherEd_EMatters3-18-11.pdf

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2080

I believe that Colby was “test flexible” pre-pandemic, meaning that they wanted scores, but you could use SAT Subject tests, maybe AP, instead of standard SAT if you liked. Their current policy is TO.

2081

For serving both the student and the college, this may have represented an ideal policy.

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2082

My student was a recruited athlete at Wesleyan and Bates and was not asked for test scores at either. She ended up attending one of these two.

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2083

Ditto for my Bates athlete. Although I guess that makes sense given Bates’ historical test optional philosophy.

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2084

Test optional seems like the right mode for most colleges—it puts the decision in students’ hands. I know most believe TO is meant to support kids who don’t test well, but it can also support kids who do well on the tests but had a bumpy semester/year that brings down their overall GPA (which was the case for my S26). We were frustrated by test blind schools that wouldn’t even consider scores.

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2085

This is a question that is much larger than test optional policy. There is a different process for athletes, with or without test scores being required, and I think the schools are perfectly transparent about it. Who out there doesn’t know about the recruited athlete? Requiring a test score doesn’t fix that. Stanford requires test scores and I can promise you there is a vastly different admissions process for its athletes.

NESCACs are always going to practice admissions holistically, like it or not. They’re too small to just use quantitative cut-offs and admit only the very top GPAs and test scores. I would argue you probably would not have the enviable roll of alumni these schools boast w/o holistic admissions, but that’s an argument for another thread.

I would also not hold my breath waiting for the NESCACs to de-emphasize sports. It’s part of their DNA and who they are as a collective, and, yes, including Williams.

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2086

What are test blind schools besides UCs?

2087

Thirded (is that a word?) Bates athlete parent here and none of the NESCAC’s he was looking at and who were looking at him needed a test score, but he applied right after the pandemic when it was hard to find a testing site…

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2088

I think I saw on another thread that Pitzer’s test-blind, but I don’t remember from when D23 applied.

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2089

It won’t let me post it, but college vine has a list. No idea if it’s accurate or exhaustive.

I didn’t realize that Dickinson and Reed were test blind. I also didn’t realize that WSU is as well.

2090

University of Washington is 99 percent test blind, also on S26’s list. And yes, UCs, which as CA residents, was frustrating for us. Pitzer is also test blind and it discouraged S26 from even applying.

Didn’t matter in the end bc S26 was admitted to Wesleyan in ED2 :slight_smile:

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2091

All good comments but the concern is that TO makes the holistic process more arbitrary and open to complaints that it’s just a way of rationalizing favoritism. The introduction of the SAT opened the doors to high testing merit based admissions for large public school kids vs the boarding schools with inside tracks to the Ivies. If Williams and Amherst remain TO while Harvard, MIT and Stanford require testing, they risk being left behind.

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2092

And with holistic admissions the doors are closed? That sounds counterintuitive. I read the Student article and as much of the article in The Atlantic as I could up until the paywall. The argument seems predicated on the belief that even a relatively low score, given the right “context”, is better than no score at all and that adcoms have been picking the “wrong” FGLI kids (i.e., kids with lower scores than the ones they should be choosing.) IOW, the whole thing rests on the very premise that caused adcoms to resort to holistic admissions policies in the first place: the idea that narrow differences in standardized scores were legitimate predictors of how an individual candidate would perform college level work.

It’s pretty clear that the real fear is that Dartmouth or some other Ivy will use standardized testing to cherry pick “the highest of the low scores” in order to lord the results over Amherst and Williams (“and we simply can’t have that.”) But how does that old New England saying go? The proof is in the pudding? Not the recipe.

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2093

The SAT test was specifically started to keep a certain type of student out of elite schools. (All the ugly history is just a google search away.)

When President Howell of Bowdoin made the pioneering decision to adopt a test optional policy in 1969, one of the reasons was specifically to increase access. Howell felt that holistic admission, which Bowdoin had already been using, allowed Bowdoin to select students who best fit the qualities the school was looking for.

From the Bowdoin Orient at the time, a quote from the then director of admissions Richard Moll:

According to Richard Moll, Director of Admissions, Bowdoin’s admission policies have been emphasizing “use” more than “ability." “What good is the person who has high ability and limited powers of application?” he asked. “We want a class with both high ability and strong powers of application, but innate ‘bright’ aren’t as important as developed powers of application.”

https://digitalcollections.bowdoin.edu/file/60139/content

The words from that day are obviously dated, and from a time when the SAT was seen as an aptitude test, a claim which Bowdoin’s leaders were skeptical of.

This policy change was incredibly forward thinking at the time. The next school that adopted a test optional policy wasn’t until Bates did so in 1984, 15 years after Bowdoin.

Data show certain types of students with low test scores just don’t apply to elite schools that require test scores. So, Dartmouth and other test required schools never even see apps from these students.

Similarly, it can actually be difficult to get certain types of students with low scores to apply to test optional elite schools, which is why some schools have hired AOs to specifically find and encourage apps from these students. Some test required schools also have AOs with this focus.

IMO, a school can have whatever test policy that suits them. The idealist in me just wants schools to be honest about the reasons for their policy.

IMO standardized testing discussion should be on a different thread, maybe this one Stanford, Harvard, Dartmouth, Yale, Penn, Brown, CalTech, JHU, and UT-Austin to Require Standardized Testing for Admissions

or maybe the race thread:
https://talk.collegeconfidential.com/t/race-in-college-applications-faq-discussion-14/3627043/2287

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2094

Last comment, at the end of the day, the Top 20 schools require testing, if small liberal arts colleges remain TO they risk becoming even more of a niche that mainstream students ignore.

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2095

It seems so odd that you are the forum champion for Williams…soon to become a lowly ‘niche’ school.

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2096

Exactly! Dont’t know what the best course forward is to remain competitive for the best students, but TO may not be the panacea.

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2097

Well, the small college inferiority complex has been around since anyone I know can remember. If you are serious about it, I’d like to continue the discussion. But it’s a much bigger issue than the one you have described so far.

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