<p>Students Paths to Small Colleges Can Bypass SAT
By TAMAR LEWIN</p>
<p>Many liberal arts colleges have made admissions exams like the SAT and ACT optional.</p>
<p>I was glad that one small paragraph in that article pointed out that most SAT-optional colleges admit nearly all of their applicants anyway. There are only a very few SAT-optional colleges that have a base acceptance rate below 50 percent. </p>
<p>After edit: I think this will work for a link. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/31/education/31sat.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/31/education/31sat.html</a></p>
<p>“very few” is a little strong, mainly because “very few” have a base acceptance rate below 50% to start with. According to the US News chart, only 50 of the top LAC’s have acceptance rates below 50%, but of those it looks like 10 have some form of SAT-optional policy. I wouldn’t call 20% “very few”.</p>
<p>I’m saying “very few” with reference to the FairTest claim that hundreds of colleges are SAT-optional. (Most of those colleges have explicit open-admission policies, and thus don’t reject any applicants.) But I appreciate you looking at the numbers and adding detail to the thread.</p>
<p>Fair enough (no pun intended). It was a very, very cursory look. Agreed, FairTest needs to be more upfront when they talk about the hundreds of colleges that are test-optional.</p>
<p>Boy, if I was a high school senior with good grades and taking the hardest curriculum, I would pay close attention to those few schools!</p>
<p>There are actually only 136 4-year schools TOTAL that accept less than 50% of students. That’s including LAC’s, research universities, and comprehensive & Master’s U’s. There are something like 2100+ 4-year schools in the country.</p>
<p>Do those schools want test scores for any merit awards? The value of this list is that some of these schools are considered “elite”. My friend’s daughter did dismally on the SAT and ACT both times she took them. But she is an excellent, excellent student–nearly straight A’s in a pretty tough,though not top curriculum at a rigorous private school. She is happily attending one of those school, one of the beneficiaries of the optional test scores. She also applied to a number of less selective schools, but found that she really preferred to be in the company of kids like the ones at her school who were pretty much all going to competitive schools. Sounds elitist, but there it is.<br>
I am somewhat in the same boat. Kid going to a rigorous prep school with peers tending to go to top colleges. Kid loves it there. Kid is a bit immature emotionally and socially. The unanimous consensus is that a small, academically challenging, but nurturing school is the best way to go. There is a difference in academic environment among schools that is often linked to the acceptance rate and average test scores. We are focusing on some of the exceptions, they exist, but you do have to look more carefully and visit.</p>
<p>Actually, from the article it appears that there is a good list of top-100 LAC’s that are test optional. The NYT article lists the following:</p>
<p>Bowdoin
Bates
Mount Holyoke
Middlebury
Hamilton
Union
Dickinson
George Mason
Providence College
Hobart and William Smith Colleges </p>
<p>I know (from memory) that the following LACs are also test-optional:</p>
<p>Bard
Connecticut College
Sarah Lawrence
Lewis & Clark
Pitzer</p>
<p>So that is 15 well-regarded LACs right there, and there probably are more that I’ve missed. Some are not fully “test-optional” in that they still want SAT II’s or have some other stipulations, but it is definitely possible for a kid to bypass the testing.</p>
<p>I’d note that even kids who do test could avoid the stress and hassle of retesting, by strategically submitting their scores to safety/match schools but choosing LACs that don’t require them. So the kid who scores 1950 on the first sitting might submit those scores to their state U – where the scores are well above average – but withhold the scores from schools like Bates and Mt. Holyoke.</p>
<p>cptofthehouse, I am not sure that I understand your question about merit awards, but I’d like to mention that my daughter was offered reasonably good size merit awards at some of the colleges she applied to. Her test scores were not strong, but her GPA was excellent. Northeastern offered her a $10K merit award and I believe the Fordham financial aid package included a $7500 merit award, as well as a substantial need-based grant. These colleges did have her test scores, but the point is that there was aid available despite lower scores (she had 28 on the ACT, 1930 SATs, but submitted ACT only). So its not all aobut the scores. I am sure the awards were more likely based on class rank & GPA, or other accomplishments, which made my daughter a desireable student. </p>
<p>So you certainly should not assume that your child needs top test scores to get good aid.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I familiarized myself with the test-optional schools at a time when I thought that would be the best option for my daughter, but she had her eyes on larger urban colleges – and despite the weak scores, was admitted to NYU, Chicago and Barnard. So I don’t think a kid who is otherwise a strong or compelling student should shy away from submitting test scores to reach colleges – obviously the schools that require tests are able to look beyond the numbers. I think there is too much emphasis on scores here at CC – we tend to forget that is only one piece of information that the colleges are looking for. Very high test scores are always a bonus, but mediocre scores are not always a disqualifier. The NYT article cited the example of a Vietnamese refugee who scored only 400 on the SAT Verbal – she did well as a biology and premed major at Bates … but I’m not so sure she would have been denied admission elsewhere if her application had included an essay revealing her background and addressing the difficulties she faced with language acquisition. She had a low score but a good explanation for it.</p>