I’ll expect others to follow
https://admissions.yale.edu/test-flexible
Edit. Added Yale’s announcement
3/5 edit. Added Brown’s announcement
3/11 edit. Added UT-Austin’s announcement
4/11 edit. Added Harvard’s and CalTech’s announcement
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Just posted the NYTimes article in another thread. Gift link: A Top College Reinstates the SAT - The New York Times
So far both Vandy and Stanford have announced an extension of their test optional policies for HS class of 2025.
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IMHO the key part is this:
“94 percent of the accepted students who shared testing scored at or above the 75th percentile of test-takers at their respective high school. More significantly, this figure was a full 100 percent for the 79 students who attend a high school that matriculates 50 percent or fewer of its graduates to a four-year college. Accordingly, we will develop a new testing profile that seeks, in part, to disrupt the long-standing focus on the class mean and mid-50 percent range, with hopes of empowering students to understand how a localized score aligns with the admissions parameters at Dartmouth. We welcome thoughts on how we might accomplish this goal and how a reimagined approach might enhance your counseling work with students and families.”
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I would start by not reporting test score ranges. I think it will be difficult in get students with 1400s to even apply (data show they won’t) when they are far below the 25%ile, even if in the context of their school they are above average. I also think it will be a hard sell for some counselors at these HSs to recommend students apply with a 1400.
Dartmouth should certainly be visiting these schools, whether in person or virtually to spread the word. Can’t wait to hear the HS counselor chatter on FB today, especially from those at underresourced and/or under achieving schools.
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The article confirmed what I’ve been recommending - if the SAT/ACT is higher than what the adcomm would have expected for the applicant’s background, then submit it. Problem is, applicants don’t know that.
Good for Dartmouth. So what if it means that they won’t get 20 applications for every spot. They’ll still get far, far more than they need to assemble a great class.
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I don’t think we’re talking about a 1400, but a 1200 or 1300 that is several hundred points above a school’s average of 750-950.
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The profs’ working group referenced a 1400, quoted in the NYTimes article.
As the four professors — Elizabeth Cascio, Bruce Sacerdote, Doug Staiger and Michele Tine — wrote in a memo, referring to the SAT’s 1,600-point scale, “There are hundreds of less-advantaged applicants with scores in the 1,400 range who should be submitting scores to identify themselves to admissions, but do not under test-optional policies.” Some of these applicants were rejected because the admissions office could not be confident about their academic qualifications. The students would have probably been accepted had they submitted their test scores, Lee Coffin, Dartmouth’s dean of admissions, told me.
This paragraph does reference below a 1400:
“We’re looking for the kids who are excelling in their environment. We know society is unequal,” Beilock said. “Kids that are excelling in their environment, we think, are a good bet to excel at Dartmouth and out in the world.” The admissions office will judge an applicant’s environment partly by comparing his or her test score with the score distribution at the applicant’s high schools, Coffin said. In some cases, even an SAT score well below 1,400 can help an application.
But again, the first step is to get these students to put in a now test required application.
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Yes, I understand- hopefully kids with 1400 scores from less advantaged backgrounds will understand they’d have been shoe in admits because it’s exceptional for their context (and it’s sad for the 2020-2023 group they didn’t have a gc who could explain contextualized app reading) - but I really hope kids from urban/rural/TitleI schools whose guidance counselors don’t know much about elite admissions will now have a concrete element encouraging them to apply- for that one kid who scored an amazing 1320 when most score 780 even if it’s nowhere near what you’d expect for Dartmouth.
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Right. And what about the potential pushback from interest groups that might see a “contextualized” view of SAT/ACT scores as “unfair”. I remember the brouhaha when the college board tried something like this (can’t recall the details) and got a lot of pushback so it was abandoned.
But is this really true - meaning that there are all these disadvantaged students with a 1400 SAT? If I recall correctly, data from the college board didn’t actually show that (although I, again, might be wrong).
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Full text from the Dartmouth study / report
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I am working with one such student now. Family of six surviving on $40k, but the student got a 1420 SAT. Also completed Calc BC in junior year and got a 5 on the AP test.
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That was not abandoned. It’s called Landscape and puts students in the context of their HS and neighborhood, using census tract data. It’s powerful data, I expect Dartmouth uses it, but I’m not sure.
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I have known plenty of students like this, but don’t know how large the pool is. And of course all the highly rejectives want those students.
I know that I have said this before but I have sent two students with ACTs in the neighborhood of 20 to highly rejective schools and they have done well…meaning more As than Bs. Not in difficult STEM majors. Neither needed anything remedial, nor do they have extra time on tests or other scaffolding.
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This is unknowable by Dartmouth. Maybe the high school knows every student’s SAT/ACT, that’s a big maybe, but even if they do it’s doubtful they have the authority to report the ranges to colleges.
What majors?
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That info is knowable. It comes from both the school profile and CollegeBoard’s Landscape data.
Per the working group’s report that skieurope linked, it does sound like Dartmouth uses Landscape:
Admissions uses numerous detailed measures of outcomes at the high school and neighborhood levels to account for these known disadvantages. As one example, Admissions computes a measure of how each applicantgl performs on standardized tests relative to the aggregate score of all test-takers in their high school, using data available from the College Board.
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High schools absolutely know the range and median scores for their students, and provide it on the school profile when they have one, alongside % on free/reduced lunch, % attending a 4-year college, number of AP/IB offered, grading scale&weighting system, etc. Some districts require testing and test results, sometimes entire states do.
If they don’t have a school profile it’s requested as part of CommonApp.
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I will leave that at non-STEM.
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While that is fantastic (and I think it is wonderful that you are helping kids in this way), I’m trying to determine how many diamonds in the rough there actually are. The data I’ve seen shows that only around 2.5% of students at the lowest income levels score a 1300 or better on the SAT - I’ll assume that % is even lower if you are looking at kids who scored a 1400 or better. Compounding that issue is the fact that only 25% of kids in the lowest 20% of income even take a standardized test, so the pool is very small to begin with (and this data is pre-TO so the numbers are undoubtedly smaller now). So the challenge for Dartmouth (and other schools like them) is to identify where they might find these kids and (more importantly for Dartmouth) get them to apply.
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