And I was talking about cheating on an SAT not an AP. Kids could easily have a friend who is done testing swing by to help. Pretty soon, we really are going to be in a situation where all SATs going forward for the 2021 kids are just going to be questionable. I hope the TO schools are serious about TO.
âIn addition, each studentâs AP teacher will receive copies of the work the student submits to us, enabling teachers to spot inconsistencies with studentsâ known work.â
https://apcoronavirusupdates.collegeboard.org/students/taking-ap-exams/security
I donât think that the SAT or ACT will move online. If students canât annotate their readings or write on the math diagrams, the tests wonât represent an accurate version of the studentâs capabilities.
@VeryFishyFish I heard directly from a CB rep that they are working on the possibility of an online SAT.
@homerdog I wonder if colleges will give any advantage to high scoring students who reported scores from before March? I would be unfair, but not improbable. I know that some schools such as Columbia and Cornell said that they would not be considering AP scores during admissions for the 2021 cycle, so they might also give online SAT takers a disadvantage.
FYI this is how the online SAT might work: (source reddit)
They have online proctors through a service called Proctor U
can you explain how that works?
Iâm also unaware but it might be a proctoring service like what Iâve used in my online classes. You had to video your surroundings on your laptop, to show you donât have notes or a phone, share your screen with the proctor service so no opening other tabs or windows, and itâs all recorded. My online classes had a service like that, also if you looked away from the screen for more than 8 seconds youâd be flagged lol
Well if schools are doing TO correctly then, no, they wonât give an edge to kids with scores. They will evaluate each app for its own merits and not judge what is not there.
Art Sawyer update:
April 11 Update: The Commended cutoff has fallen to from 212 for the class of 2020 to 209 for the class of 2021. This was the score that Compass had dubbed âmost likely,â so it does not dramatically change state estimates. It does mean the highest and lowest values in our predicted ranges are a bit less likely, since we now know that the Commended level fell in the middle of the expected range. There will still be variation among states â we wonât see identical moves everywhere â and changes at the Commended level are not always replicated at the high end of the scale.
Yes, my understanding is that CB is proposing live proctoring for online SAT tests as you describe above, but I expect they still have many details to work out.
Maybe we should buy stock in live proctoring companies, lol!
Anything on the application-grades, test scores, activities- before March 2020 will have greatly increased importance, because anything thereafter is unreliable.
I agree it seems likely that if SAT went online it would be with some sort of virtual live proctoringâŠI donât see how it could be something that flagged if you looked away for more than a certain number of seconds since itâs not purely a reading test - on the math section, my kid might look down to work out a problem on paper for a LOT longer than 8 seconds. Heâs slow with math (and has time and a half accommodations due to slow processing speed and ADHD), and Iâve seen him work on an SAT math problem for several minutes.
Heâd also be totally thrown by having that camera/eyes watching him - having that camera looking specifically at you (and not at a group in a room) in your own bedroom (for example if thatâs where he would test) would weird him out. He loves in person discussion based classes but hates having the camera on him for a Zoom online class. Itâs just an awkward camera kind of thing with him, and Iâd hate to see THAT be the reason he struggles even more with the SAT. He did get one SAT in but it was back in October of his junior year, and we never expected that to be his final attempt - it was more about getting him acclimated to the process. For his test taking abilities, the score was reasonable (1230), but weâd been hoping he could bump it 50-100 points since that was a very early sitting.
Unfortunately, TO wonât work well for him because he is a homeschooler without any dual enrollment classes and just one AP so far. We were counting on the AP score (though the DBQ on APUSH is unfortunately maybe not his best question type) and the SAT score to validate the rest of his transcript (as is necessary for homeschoolers). I think heâll still do fine with applications to some of the schools on his list, but he really needed the potential bump he might have gotten from the AP exam and SAT in terms of validating his grades/transcript for applications to about half of his schools.
Finally got the refund from the March SAT. Fingers crossed for June though Iâm pretty doubtful.
TO means that a student doesnât have to submit test scores. However, students that submit a strong score (75th percentile + for that college) will have an advantage during admissions. Test-blind means that test scores are not considered during admissions. You should ask schools you and your kids are thinking about if they are TO or TB (test-blind).
@VeryFishyFish I get that but this year will be different than, say, last year at schools that were TO. Bowdoin has been TO for years and uses it however they use it. They do accept a good percentage of TO kids. BUT this year will be different.
Kids who apply TO to colleges in 2020 will sometimes do it because they werenât happy with a score but sometimes they are doing it because they flat out could not test. Thatâs very different. Some very strong students will just not have a score to report. Period. Could be a student with exactly the same rigor and grades as your S. Maybe they also have impressive ECs. Just no score.
So AOs this year, even more than any other year, cannot assume that withholding a score is because itâs a low score and therefore cannot hold it against a candidate.
Iâm not saying itâs not a good thing to have a score. It will be considered of course. But a school is not going to necessarily take a larger percentage of kids with scores than without scores.
There are two test-blind 4-year colleges in this countryâŠHampshire and Northern Illinois.
@homerdog Yeah, I 100% get what you mean but I just wanted to clear up that TO doesnât mean that tests arenât considered. And as you said, AOâs will be more forgiving this year for students who didnât take a test.
@Mwfan1921 YeahâexactlyâŠ
Hmmm I am sensing a new business opportunity. And to think Rick Singer went to all that trouble to bribe some proctors lolâŠ
Seriously, though, I really think online would be very difficult to pull off successfully. Even if the cheating issues could be solved through some form of online proctoring, it would still remain that CB has no real experience with the online format for a high stakes test like the SAT. Scoring curves, standard errors of measurement, discriminant analyses, differential item function analyses - how in the world could they do any of this effectively without any historical data based upon online administrations?
I mean I guess they could ignore all that or kludge it if necessary, but I would imagine that any online scores would then be at least a little suspect. At least they should be in my opinion.
I canât remember if I posted this concern on this page or not - but how does one take an online SAT? You canât annotate the passages on the EW sections and you canât draw on the diagrams in the math section. It seems kids would have to learn different strategies. Plus, D21 says she hates reading online. Canât focus as well without it printed out and a pencil in hand.
Whose kids have tried online practice SATs? @BingeWatcher ?
Iâve taken several board exams on computers at testing centers. There are programs that allow you to highlight, eliminate answers, make notes. We were given a whiteboard to work through problems. You could flag questions to go back later. So there are platforms where it would be doable.
The international ACT has been done on computer for a few years (though proctored in a testing center - not on your own at home). Those scores stand alongside paper and pencil ACTs.
I believe that kids in the US will have a choice for paper/pencil or online ACTs in September. Single section testing is all online. Benefit being 2 business day scoring for everything but the essay.
I just think online will be an issue for D. S19 also hates reading on a screen. There are all of those studies that say reading on paper allows for better comprehension. Highlighting on a screen isnât the same as a pencil in your hand underlining. We never bought our kids video game systems or digital readers so they are just hard copy reader kids! Still donât get how you can do the math section without extra time. Youâd have to redraw the drawings on some of the problems.