thank you. and for submitting scores - will you further explain similarly?
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% of Fall 2020 Freshmen Submitting SAT / ACT â % of Fall 2021 Freshmen Submitting SAT / ACT
For example, in MITâs fall 2020 class, 77% submitted SAT and 42% submitted ACT. The totals exceed 100% because some students submitted both SAT and ACT. In MITâs fall 2021 class, 70% submitted SAT and 34% submitted ACT. Unlike the other schools on the list, it appears that MIT admitted very few students who did not submit scores.
Note that the % submitting is for entering freshmen, rather than applicants. Based on the sharp application increase, I expect that MIT had many applicants who did not submit scores, perhaps the majority. However, MIT admitted very few of these applicants without scores. This is consistent with MITâs stated policy of saying students should take and submit scores, if safely possible to do so. I expect many applicants incorrectly believed that MIT was a standard test optional college, with little preference for scores.
This was not the case with the Cornell numbers you provided
Cornell was one of the few colleges that provided information on % of applicants submitting scores, instead of just the standard % of enrolled students submitting scores that is part of federal reporting. The % submitting scores at each stage of the pipeline is below. I am only including A&S to exclude the test blind schools.
Fall 2021 A&S (first test optional year):
31% of applicants submitted scores
53% of admitted submitted scores
67% of enrolled submitted scores
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Iâm pretty sure that was the pattern in PA. I think Pitt and Penn State (main campuses) were both up a bit immediately post-COVID, and as I recall a pretty similar percentage. But I think many of the PA publics at the sub-flagship level dropped, some by a lot.
Penn State then continued to trend up steadily over the next couple cycles, but Pitt exploded upward. It reportedly kept increasing again last year, although not quite as explosively.
Not sure what all that means, but I do think it illustrates there are trends here other than just COVID/TO stuff, to the point a Pitt and a Penn State can actually diverge significantly in scale albeit not direction.
Ooh thanks! Yes I found it very strange that there would be such a sharp increase in number applying and yet test submitters also increased. Makes more sense now that the numbers reflect their freshman class.
I think Pitt has become the de facto safety for the north east. This could be because of rolling admissions. I see it promoted here a lot. This is similar to Oregon State for California which seems to have gained in popularity as a safety recently though I donât know how either schools numbers compare before and after TO. Penn State probably isnât seen as a safety for most kids - not sure what the difference is between the two regarding number admitted but one disadvantage compared to Pitt is that it does not have rolling admissions.
I agree Pitt seems to be becoming relatively more popular as an OOS application, particularly as a Likely option but also some OOS people I know are actually targeting Pitt as a top choice. And maybe that is happening in-state too. And I feel like there is a lot going on there.
Rolling admissions certainly helps. Merit helps (although bigger merit awards are apparently getting a lot more competitive, which makes sense). I think being in a city which itself has an improving reputation helps (there was a time when it would have been laughable for âright in the middle of Pittsburghâ to be seen as a positive, but now I think a non-trivial number of kids prefer that to being in a rural college town). I think being particularly strong for life sciences and by extension pre-med, in an era where pre-meds are increasingly realizing it is important to take undergrad costs seriously, is helping, and actually that ties into being right in the middle of a bunch of hospitals and such. And so on.
Anyway, just interesting to think about how many different things could be going on with any one institution. Which again suggests to me that even if most colleges revert back to TO (and I am not yet sure it will be a flood as opposed to a trickle), whether that will help or hurt much with any given type of applicant for any given college is a complicated question.
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Yes Pitt is very appealing for many reasons as you outline.
Given the numbers that Data10 posted regarding the increase/decrease in applications following TO, I expect many schools with >30% admission rate will remain TO. Of course, some schools below this rate still saw huge gains in applications so this is not something that would be true of all the schools in this category and those may or may not bring back testing requirements for various reasons. Also many of the schools that saw declines in applications were already TO to begin with. I think the very top schools that arenât worried about application numbers are the most likely to go back to testing and those that would benefit from knowing how prepared students are ie. possibly some tech schools or schools that have a large engineering school etc to make sure that the math preparation is adequate, especially as they do not want students stuck without the ability to transfer into another discipline since the rate of dropout for engineering is high.
Back when my D19 was applying, pre Covid, U Oregon which had been treated as a likely/safety by many at her school placed a number of students on waitlist and assuming that got more common in general in CA, may explain some of the shift to OSU. Boulder was regarded as a safety/likely for some but not all programs. At the counselor presentation that year they still felt the need to say âdonât regard any UC as a safety anymoreâ (for example UCSC had been treated pretty much as a safety till shortly before then but that definitely changed) so there may just have been a general trickle down shift around then - not linked to anyone going TO or test blind at that stage.
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Yes thatâs what I think along with the unpredictability of UC admissions more recently. Previously, there were schools that could bet on their top whatever number depending on school getting into one of the more popular UCs with a school like UCR or UCSC acting as a safety but thatâs changed not just because of more applicants - though that is one factor - but likely because of a shift into wanting certain majors such as engineering, cs and nursing causing some very stellar students to vie for the same spots and subsequently be locked out of most UCâs with possibly the exception of Merced.
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Although no UC has an assured frosh admission path that would make it a 100% assured safety*, UCR and UCM can be considered very likely for some applicants. However, those same applicants seem unlikely to want to attend UCR or UCM.
*ELC is the closest thing to that, but with the âif space is availableâ disclaimer.
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Yep. The school profile has all UCs (and all CSUs) as destinations in recent years, but there is little general appetite for UCM in particular, especially given the school has relatively good records placing at UCSB, UCLA and, in particular, Cal. Anecdotally at least students would rather go to a CC and transfer than go to UCM.
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I know this is the reality but these kids are missing out on some really great opportunities at Merced. For instance, it can be much easier to get into a lab than it can be at some of the other UCs. For that matter, the same is true of certain classes.
Or declaring or changing major. Changing Major or Declaring Minor | Bobcat Advising Center lists major change or declaration criteria that basically say 2.0+ college GPA, some prerequisite courses, and ability to finish in 9 or 10 semesters, depending on major.
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Reopening to continue the discussion at OPâs request.
It seems there are a few top schools moving back to requiring tests for the class of 2026. Penn comes to mind.
Will the Penn average go back to a pre-test optional of 1490, or stay where it is at 1540? Please correct my guestimates if they are off.
My guess is somewhere in between. It wonât be 1490 since the tests seem easier or at least the scores seem to be creeping up. It used to be that ~1% of students would score 1500 or higher and now it seems that this has moved to something like 1530 (someone correct me if I am wrong)? though it depends year to year.
Right now students are unlikely to submit if they donât meet some threshold they deem acceptable but that acceptable threshold has moved higher due to students not being required to submit.
I agree. But will the group of kids 1490 (or even 1450) or less just choose not to apply? I sort of feel like that will be needed to maintain the averages.
Thatâs a good question. Seems likely this would occur but did we see a decline in application numbers for the schools like Dartmouth that started requiring tests last fall? This fall we may see some declines in application numbers due to test requirement though maybe also a decline from the declining birth rate that started in 2008.
There are ways that schools could try to mitigate the impact of lower application numbers due to test requirements, especially with regard to disadvantaged students. One would be messaging that scores are dependent on context to school counselors. I donât know how successful that will be but maybe thereâs already data from Dartmouth, Harvard etc regarding test score ranges for the 2025 cohort.
I also wonder if schools might decide to move away from reporting score ranges. What is the point of continuing to report score ranges when most schools are test optional with different percentages of students reporting scores at different schools? Theyâre hardly comparable so perhaps schools can just report the minimum SAT score from last yearâs cohort or perhaps a minimum threshold they would wish the student to meet for a school/program.