It does make me wonder if public schools themselves should offer SAT prep.
That is what I’m getting at. During the TO period Dartmouth increased its percentage of Pell grant students from about 14% to about 19%. My opinion is that it will be hard to maintain that gain with a test required policy and that the greater likelihood is that their enrollment of Pell grant students will retreat back to where it was during the traditional test required period (which wasn’t too long ago). I certainly don’t see it increasing.
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This happened to me as well. The problem was, I didn’t take practicing for the SAT too seriously until it was too late.
I note that sort of thing is always a choice, regardless of test policy. Like, Dartmouth can simply admit more Pell Grant applicants, more FGLI applicants, and so on if it really wants to.
So it is always some sort of side constraint operating in the background. Perhaps understandably, most colleges prefer to talk about academic preparation. They talk about it less, but they all also have budgets. And so on.
In Dartmouth’s case, it has only been admitting a small percentage of disadvantaged applicants even when they do submit test scores in the 1400s. More than when they don’t submit test scores (or so Dartmouth thinks), but both numbers are small.
So, it could, if it wanted, admit even more disadvantaged applicants in the 1400s. And I am not insisting it should, but this will be an option for Dartmouth if it has in mind a certain net effect it wants to achieve.
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Right. But how many students is that? Given the paucity of low income students scoring in the 1400s (I think it is around 2% scoring a 1300+ so I imagine it is even less than that) among a cohort of students that already take the test at low rates I just don’t see where this supposed volume is coming from.
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Exactly. And there are many worthy and financially generous colleges competing with Dartmouth for every one of those students.
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So in this post:
I back-of-the-envelope estimated about 4.5% of their applicants fell into the disadvantaged/1400s box. Edit: By the way, I am sure this is higher than the base percentage in the overall national applicant pool, but that makes sense because of course the Dartmouth portion of that applicant pool is going to be skewed upwards.
4.5% of around 28000 applicants is around 1260 people. They admitted about 1800, so potentially around 70% of their admit class could be such applicants if they really wanted to do that. In fact, I would guess the yield would be quite high among such admits, so probably even a bit more than that.
Of course there is no way they will actually admit 100% of such applicants, and they are not suggesting otherwise.
My point is just that isn’t literally a lack of applicants like that in gross terms that is constraining their percentage of the Dartmouth admit class. It is a lack of applicants like that they actually want to accept.
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I have looked at this at several CDS and only 30% or so report ranking anyway. A very large number doesn’t report GPA either.
As mentioned upthread, Dartmouth grew its Pell enrollment by 36% during the test-optional interval. Its peers similarly reached all-time highs in enrolling low-income, first-gen, and other underrepresented students. This is backed up by IPEDS data. I guess nothing is impossible, but it is difficult to see how this could happen at the same time as a surge in acceptances for the wealthy test-optional.
Thanks in no small part to pundits who had really high SAT scores and who assume their kids will do the same, the idea that SAT scores are the least-unfair aspect of college admissions has become conventional wisdom when there’s actually little evidence to support the claim.
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The discussion about a good portion of CA students choosing to not take standardized test made me curious about other states. The following states have lowest and highest reported test participation rate for 2022 graduates. The lowest participation states are the Pacific coast states + Maine. The highest participation states are ones that require taking the test to graduate HS. Obviously particular groups of students may have different participation rates than these average. I’d expect students who are academically qualified for Dartmouth are much more likely to choose to take the test than average, and first gen students are much less likely to take the test than average.
Lowest Standardized Test Participation (5 states with <50% participation)
- California – 25% SAT, 4% ACT
- Oregon – 24% SAT, 7% ACT
- Maine – 38% SAT, 2% ACT
- Alaska – 30% SAT, 14% ACT
- Washington – 37% SAT, 7% ACT
Highest Standardized Test Participation (~half of states >= 90% partcipation)
- 100% SAT or ACT – Alabama, DC, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada Tennessee, Wyoming
- 95-99% SAT or ACT – Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, North Dakota, Rhode Island
- 90-94% SAT or ACT – Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Utah
California is definitely a weird state. On one hand, you have competitive sweats from places like the Bay Area, and on the other, you have abysmal standardized test scores and academic success throughout the rest of the state. I wonder whats causing this disparity.
I expect the low CA participation primarily relates to public colleges in the state being test blind, rather than “abysmal test scores”. Prior to COVID test blind/optional, CA HS students averaged higher SAT scores than the national average. Most CA students who attend colleges plan to attend CA public colleges that do not consider their score, so many decide it is not worthwhile to go through the time/effort/expense/stress of prepping for and taking SAT/ACT. Apparently, this perception extends to some other pacific coast states as well, such as Oregon.
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UW is also essentially test blind (they do accept test scores, but rarely use them in admissions; they don’t look at scores unless an applicant is really on the margin where a strong score might help to admit).
CA still has a high cutoff for National Merit, so it seems that students are still earning high PSAT scores.
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Most likely that is through programs like Questbridge. Take a look at the ED results from Dartmouth with a increase of 17.3% of admitted students from the program over the prior year. All 74 students were Pell eligible.
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Yes, Questbridge does not require participants in the program to take standardized tests, and 40% of Questbridge students in the 2022–2023 cycle were test-optional.
That’s a lot of ground for Dartmouth to make up!
Not really. Dartmouth can just choose Questbridge applicants from the many states with high test participation levels instead.
As tests are reinstated, I expect Questbridge will counsel more applicants to take them.
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Agreed. Partnering with college access organizations is how colleges can ensure they are receiving vetted FGLI applicants.
I expect the number of applicants flowing through these partnerships/college access orgs will grow even more with the Supreme Court race decision (although race can still be considered in context as addressed by John Roberts: “Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.”)
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Based on the 20 interviews I have conducted this year, I can assure you that everyone understands the importance of discussing this issue in their applications.
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There was a significant increase of QB applications and matches this year. Some schools increased acceptances as much as 30%.
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