We are, too. My D feels her score is a fairly accurate reflection of her as a student, and that anything falling within that middle 50 range is acceptable to submit. In my D’s case, it also provides balance and insight into her overall application. (For example, my D has had a few B grades in math and science, never English or social studies, but received her highest ACT subsection scores in math and science.)
My personal perspective is that for some schools, the published data is so skewed and compressed at this point that it is virtually meaningless. If a school has only had 30% of its applicants submitting test scores for multiple years in a row (presumably only the highest-scoring applicants), the published range is not really a true reflection of the class. I think admissions officers know this. I recently heard one strongly encourage submitting test scores during an info session.
This was D26’s reasoning. One school she was recruited by advised all athletes to apply test optional regardless of score. That was a turn off for her, because she thought her test scores represented her body of work. She wound up pursuing schools who encouraged submission of scores.
An interesting observation I made while perusing CDSs. Not all test optional schools classify their stance on standardized scores as “Considered”, I do recall seeing one or two schools where test scores were considered as “Important” or “Very Important” despite the school being test optional.
Your whole post is SUPER informative and interesting. Really glad it worked out, but also really good to understand just how important some of the “random” stuff may be.
This is really something, though! We don’t track demonstrated interest EXCEPT for merit! Wow. Really does make you wonder what other colleges are like this!
D26 is a very average student (although an extraordinary person IMHO!! ) so her college acceptances are definitely going to be based on her holistic profile. Her low SAT score was predictable given her testing anxiety and her struggles with math so she elected to not take it again and not submit it to any schools. I do find it interesting when schools highlight that they are test-optional in their marketing emails and emphasize that there is no need to submit scores. When I read those, I always wonder if that is really the case.
As an aside, S23 did not even take the SAT and had a lower GPA than D26 (although his class rigor was heavier in science and math than hers); he was accepted into 9 of the 12 schools he applied to and received pretty good merit from most. D26 is taking some comfort in that!
One thing that I am also curious about is how the other students in her high school and the stats will affect her application. I hear about parents and students getting the information about SAT averages and other info from the school- I did get some information from Niche but is there a more official way? The school doesn’t participate in Navience or anything.
Yes she was very surprised it is a school that states merit as a range starting at! and there is a considerable variation in that range. I have seen 20K -35K was never sure what the variables were. They do not look at test scores just GPA because they are test optional.
MY D26 just met with an admission councilor for a school that is test optional and she did make it clear that they do not look at test scores for Honors College or Merit. They looks at GPA and EC’s LOR’s
I have interpreted this as meaning that if you submit scores, then they carry important weight in the decision. But maybe it is a signal that they prefer them despite being TO?
I think this (as with everything else) is school dependent. When I was inputting GPA for C26 for an automatic merit calc, I did it one with and one without SAT out of interest to see what the difference was. The difference when I added the SAT was an extra $4k a year merit, and a box popped up to say “you may want to consider applying to the honors college”.
Usually mean SAT/ACT will be listed in the school profile, although I am not sure how school generated the mean SAT/ACT, since many kids may take more multiple times. Maybe school use the superscore, which will be one data point for each student.
Ours is on our school profile. Along with median and highest uw and w GPAs, they list SAT, ACT, # NM commended and NMSF, % passing APs and what the 3/4/5 distribution is. Maybe some other stuff but those are the ones I recall off the top of my head regarding student stats.
Another interesting about the admission, many colleges list class ranking as very important, but many high schools opt to not rank anymore (our HS did the ranking years ago).
The reasoning from high school would be ranking causes anxiety etc. Would the GPA, course rigor will cause anxiety too?
Our school profile does NOT have any hard data like this (no SAT scores, AP scores, etc.) However, I did see that our school’s average SAT is listed on my D26s SAT scores. So, for those high schools that don’t provide it, I guess they can at least get some from College Board itself.
That’s not the reasoning from our school. Their reasoning is that there are so many students with high GPAs that a ranking becomes meaningless. Providing highest (including number of students at 4.0 uw and at highest w) and median GPA should be enough for AOs to make a judgement on that.
I don’t think so for at least my D26s school. The class size is too small. There’s only 50 people in her class, and she was pretty sure it was only a couple of other students that took it on her testing date. The numbers feel more solid than that.
College Board website says “3-year average score of [# of] test takers from your school” (and all other comparisons are 3year too with # of test takers provided)
If this hold true, it would be also reasonable for the colleges to drop the “very important“ for class ranking. But currently many highly rejective colleges still highly emphasize on class ranking. Of course, if most high schools drop the class ranking, the colleges will not consider this anymore.
I think I read somewhere that something like half of high schools no longer provide class ranking so…I’m guessing it’s as “important” as a test score is at a TO school. I know a couple of CDS at least (ones I’ve seen) say “if provided” as an asterisk to that. Our school sends enough people to T20s every year that it doesn’t seem to have been an impediment. (Except maybe at Yale, where we never seem to send anyone…)
) so her college acceptances are definitely going to be based on her holistic profile. Her low SAT score was predictable given her testing anxiety and her struggles with math so she elected to not take it again and not submit it to any schools. I do find it interesting when schools highlight that they are test-optional in their marketing emails and emphasize that there is no need to submit scores. When I read those, I always wonder if that is really the case.