Need blind = that your family’s ability to pay for college is not factored into the admissions decision. Doesn’t mean you can’t consider socioeconomic context, especially when people are outperforming it.
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Yes, that’s how she is getting the mail.
This is what’s so…frustrating about the lawsuits and updated privacy laws. Since the 1950s, the College Board has provided, through the PSAT (previously/also known as the National Merit Qualifying Test), a way for colleges to recruit students from across the country. Before then, college education was basically regionalized, as the historian Charles Petersen (no relation) notes in his dissertation on Stanford admissions and the invention of the idea of meritocracy.
It’s always been an opt-in way to get recruited by schools that wanted you to apply and maybe would offer you a good education + scholarship. Now that system is phasing out through a complex and ongoing process of unintended consequences.
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Your scenario does not demonstrate how reinstating the SAT requirement, and thereby reducing the number of low income applicants, will increase the number of low income students enrolled.
Your scenario demonstrate how changing admission policies related to SAT scores, relative to pre-COVID times, will increase the number of low income students
When private colleges went TO, the number of low income students enrolled in these colleges increased. Therefore, if the SATs are reinstated and the admissions policies remain as they were before COVID, the number of low income students at these colleges will drop back to pre-COVID numbers.
For the number of low income students to increase, admission policies would have to be different from pre-COVID times. So what is actually increasing the number of low income students is a change in admissions policies for low income kids
Essentially, I asked “how can X increase the number of low income students?” and you responded “well, X and Y together will increase the number of low income students”, even though it is only Y that is increasing the number of low income students.
It’s as though I asked “how will adding weight to a car decrease fuel consumption?” and you responded with “it will, if we add weight to a car AND add an engine which is super fuel-efficient”. That does not demonstrate that adding weight to a car increases fuel efficiency.
First, as go HYP, so go the rest of the “elite” privates, and the differences between scores are much higher when they all require tests, and second, so long as colleges are TO, none of the Ivy-cheerleader magazines will use SAT scores to “prove” which college is “the smartest”.
This is not necessarily a good analogy because cars and fuel consumption have to follow physical laws, whereas admission processes are human-driven and are not physical.
A better analogy would be: I could buy 10 apples by (1) choosing from 100 apples that I don’t get to closely inspect, or (2) choosing from 50 of the 100 apples – likely the 50 better ones – after I carefully examine them. Chances are higher I’d end up with 10 better apples using option (2). Because I get to carefully examine them, I could decide to buy 20 if I find this batch of apples to be good (thus increasing low-income enrollment).
Another analogy is hiring. When filling a handful of positions, having a large number of applicants with uncertain caliber is not better than having fewer applicants who have gone through a round of self-selection and whose caliber can be more reliably determined. The hiring manager may also have the confidence/justification to increase the number of hires (thus, again, increasing low-income enrollment).
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I think you’re assuming that SAT/ACT scores are the governor on the number of low SES kids here, and I’m not sure that’s true (or ever has been).
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I agree. This is an example of misleading “after this therefore because of this “ reasoning. The push for more low SES students was the driving factor in the increase in their numbers not TO.
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I agree. The Covid-induced drive to T/O may have arisen coincident in time with the political pressure to admit more low SES kids after the 2017 Chetty data made so many schools look so embarrassing. However, the more recent Opportunity Insights paper suggests that for almost all schools, there were wealth selection effects (not necessarily directly, but by proxy) when test scores were held equal. That suggests something else is going on.
In my experience, almost all new AOs (and people we do occasional workshops with — alumni, faculty readers, MIT staff in other departments, etc) have to be trained out of being impressed by things that are more or less just reproductions of privilege rather than predictive markers of genuine right-tail talent. Meanwhile, you have to train them to see that students with “thin” applications — but high performance — from certain socioeconomic contexts may just not have the capital to “perform” the posture of an elite college applicant, since that is primarily aesthetic/stylistic. This shows up in the Stanford ed school data that showed essay content and style was more closely associated with income than SAT scores are, as well as the 2013 Hoxby research on high-achieving, low-income “outliers.” I’ve also seen the same effect when informally advising some major tech companies piloting hiring programs targeted at people from outside the traditional mainstream; they may have the skills to code but not the skills to write a cover letter in the way that a recruiter will advance.
The major leverage that T/O had, IMHO, was probably the USNWR effects. But it’s not clear to me that institutional benefit was more about low-scoring SES students than low-scoring legacies and athletes. But we’ll see. If MWolf is right, then the schools reinstating testing will see a drop in their low SES numbers as a result. I’m not sure that’s what is going to happen, but we’re all speculating until the data comes out.
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Wolf is also making the assumption that the sole/primary reason for the change in demographics was the TO situation. (And gives no credit to colleges who might have seen the (Harvard legal and USNews ratings) light and have become more aggressive recruiting FGLI and underreppensteds.)
Correlation is not causation. (AP Stats)
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I am not sure we can attribute TO to these changes. Diversity has been a big push for Yale for many years (decades even) and you can see these changes as part of a trend prior to TO. I believe Yale is targeting an even larger number of students requiring FA going forward (and I think SES will be a tool to maintain racial diversity). Schools that have the luxury of choosing from 2X and higher of academically qualifying students from pre TO levels of applicants, really don’t need the extra applicants to shape their desired class. They may want to increase yield of certain segments through communications and generous FA.
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Yes. I’ve mentioned this before but low SES students we know at these schools say what was holding them back was their incorrect belief that they could not afford such a school, not testing policy, as most are incredibly accomplished in their own right. In most cases the misconception was dispelled by mentorship and community outreach efforts.
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Right, and the research that I’m aware of supports this:
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Yes, if a college is selective enough, they can essentially create the class they desire by giving an admissions boost to specific groups they desire. For example, I’ve mentioned that test optional on average favors women. However, this does not mean a highly selective college will always see a larger portion of the class being women upon going test optional. If the college wants to maintain a 50/50 gender balance, they can do so under both a test required and test optional admission system by admitting what ever number of males/females are required to achieve the desired 50/50 balance. There are enough adequately qualified applicants in both genders to achieve this goal. A similar statement could be made for international, first gen, Pell %, URM % (prior to recent legal challenges), legacy %, etc. It’s quite possible for none of the variables above to change in total class %, even if test optional favors or penalizes these groups on average.
However, this does mean it’s impossible to know what groups are more likely to benefit from test optional admissions. We can gather clues by comparing the test optional and test submitter groups at a particular college. How do the relative totals differ among test optional and test submitter applicants, admits, and matriculants? Some test optional colleges have published these stats. Some example numbers from Ithaca’s study are below. Lower SES and URMs are overreprsented both among test optional applicants and test optional admits.
Applicants
Test Submitter Applicants – Mean family contribution = $37k, 10% Pell, 26% URM*
Test Optional Applicants – Mean family contribution = $31k, 17% Pell, 40% URM*Admits
Test Submitter Admits-- Mean family contribution = $37k, 15% Pell, 22% URM*
Test Optional Admits – Mean family contribution = $30k, 29% Pell, 35% URM*Enrolled
Test Submitter Enrolls-- Mean family contribution = $34k, 18% Pell, 19% URM*
Test Optional Enrolls – Mean family contribution = $29k, 30% Pell, 31% URM**Ithaca includes Asian students as part of their URM category. Only ~4% of Ithaca kids are Asian.
Several other studies that do this level of comparison have found similar results. The general pattern from such studies is the following groups are overrepresented among test optional admits compared to test submitter admits:
- Women
- Lower SES
- First Gen
- URMs
- More Rural States (midwest, Maine, W Virginia, …)
- Public HS
This seems to be another one of those false choices that are so prevalent in this discussion. The obstacles aren’t either/or, they are intertwined.
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And don’t forget, GPA also favors women. Cal-Berkely has been 55% women for many years. (Even when they accepted standardized testing, UC didn’t place as much weight on it as selective privates.)
That has a lot to do with why test optional on average favors women. Women average higher GPAs than men at all levels of education from elementary school to college, but do not average higher (combined) scores; so scores are more likely to be a relative weak point in application.
Women make up about 58% of college students nationally and about 56% in California, so 55% is not an over representation.
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They are literally giving that.
This is not a valid analogy at all. In your analogy, SATs are the very most important factor, and nothing else tells us almost anything about the student. So ALL the other academic factors, like GPA and academic awards only provide a cursory glance at a student’s knowledge and skills, while the STA alone provides a deep and careful assessment of an applicants.
GPA + LoRs + Academic awards + essay = “not closely inspected”
GPA + LoRs + Academic awards + essay + SAT score = “Very carefully examined”
I am sorry, but even the College Board doesn’t make that level of claims about their tests.
Seriously, based on your analogy, without the SAT score we will now almost nothing about an applicant, but with an SAT score, we’ll not only know everything about their abilities in reading, text analysis, and all levels of mathematics, but even whether they work hard, ask good questions in class, are intellectually honest, can write a beautiful poem, floss regularly, and are nice to their mother.
The analogy is intended to point out that, all else being equal, having SAT data for a smaller pool of applicants is better than not having such data for a larger pool, from the point of view of Harvard (the buyer of apples). Of course GPAs, course rigor, ECs, etc. matter, but incorporating all of them into an analogy dilutes the intended message. These important factors have been cited in hebegebe’s original post, allowing the analogy to focus only on what’s different, namely, availability of SAT data and size of applicant pool.
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In your analogy you pick 50 apples based on SAT and assume you will find the best 10. But, what if the best 10 are in the 50 you didn’t pick??? You are depending on one metric. So if you only have time to closely examine 50 why don’t you invest in resources to examine all 100 if you really want the 10 best.
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