Do they know their best score or the score from the test given at the school (if the school gives to all juniors)? Guessing they know best score based on kids having to input high school codes on testing.
Yes, absolutely, both College Board and ACT provide the schools with all kinds of data about their school’s performance and students’ scores. Even the PSAT data provides AP predictor data and reports.
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It would be nice if one of these colleges announcing that they are bringing testing requirements back for poor students’ own good could also address the accommodations elephant in the room.
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Our high school profile explicitly states the scores reported are from the school-day test (not the student’s highest score.)
OMG, I forgot about that, and it is SO true! Ever since accommodations went no-asterisk, accommodations have exploded, mostly for rich kids, with parents in-the-know, and meanwhile, the SAT/ACT have NOT removed severe time pressure as a factor!
You gonna give some kids time and a half, and not note it on the test results? Then you have to make the test not have time pressure, so that it makes no difference to get extra time! But the testing boards won’t do that, because the material is limited by having to be no more than high school level, so the way to string out the test takers along a curve is to put the test under severe time pressure, and hence test not only knowledge, but also processing speed, which is really not relevant in college. No matter how well most students know the material, many of them simply do not have the rapid processing speed to get a very high test score.
I take back everything I ever said about using the SAT/ACT for anything. As long as we’re going to allow this enormous injustice, that 1/3 of the kids in Greenwich CT are suddenly diagnosed with ADD in 10th grade and get accommodations (1.5 time), while virtually none of the kids in low socioeconomic schools do, this test is absolutely rigged.
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The abuse of accommodations is not unique to SAT/ACT. Students who fake disabilities to gain accommodations also enjoy extended time in their high school exams, homework assignments, and AP exams, unfairly raising their GPAs and AP scores over those who don’t know or don’t want to exploit the loophole. For some, the abuse continues in their college classes, all the way to graduation. SAT/ACT should not be the only one to catch the flak.
I think processing speed matters in certain college exams, especially those designed by professors who think everyone is a genius. We all remember somebody like that, don’t we? 
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I’ve given a lot of leeway, but once we get into abuse of accommodations, it’s time to get back on track.
Accommodations, school profiles, graduation rates, etc are all fascinating topics, but are better in their own thread.
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These applicants aren’t passed over because of the “personal vision” of an AO. They’re passed over because without the standardized test scores, the AOs cannot be sufficiently confident of what the rest of the application says about these students’ ability to be successful at Dartmouth. That’s exactly why they’re reinstating required test scores.
This is definitely true, though I also can’t help but wonder whether Dartmouth and the like don’t wonder, for a kid with a nice GPA and rigor out of a HS like that, whether somehow that kid not submitting a score is a red flag. It probably shouldn’t be, but essentially there’s no reason for a kid like that - who almost assuredly took the tests - not to submit. Unless the score was surprisingly low. Which would then raise questions, regardless of the HS, transcript, etc.
In fact Dartmouth itself has recently started a sort of summer boot camp for accepted kids who fall into this bucket. It’s like “practice college” where the goal is to teach all the sorts of skills that kids from better-resourced HS have on day 1.
It’s interesting to me that you would put it that way. IMO they’ve been telling us this sort of stuff all along about holistic admissions. All they’ve really done here is provide some additional, specific data (for a very specific reason). If I had a dime for every time I heard an AO say that an applicant was evaluated in context, I’d have enough to be full pay to USC.
Anecdote alert, but to me it’s not at all any sort of problem that this is the focus, even if this is the only “benefit” because IMO this benefit is actually meaningful in practice.
Some kids get to college and hit the wall, and hard. Others hit the ground running. Even if/as the wall-hitters “catch up” as far as 4 year GPA or graduation rate, the reality on the ground as I experienced it and witnessed it, and continue to witness it, is that the wall-hitters miss out, in the aggregate, at least relatively, on things like mentorship relationships with profs, and other softer measures of the college experience, because they had to spend the first year focused on learning basic blocking and tackling rather than truly maximizing the experience.
I get that not everyone cares about those things however.
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As a parent, this is an area that needs light. I’ve seen it happen, I’m not sure why as it’s too personal to ask, and we want to see that it doesn’t happen to our/other kids.
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Yup, and this is exactly why my wife and I, both wall-hitters (hard, at Ivies, despite easy A’s from awful HSs) went way out of our way to make sure that our kids would hit the ground running in college, regardless of where they end up.
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Same here. And same motivation/direction with our kids.
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In my experience, the wall hitting (which is totally a phenomenon and thank you for calling it out) isn’t about “intellect”, despite those who want colleges to admit based on some sort of ranking of scores, grades, etc. and to heck with the tuba playing. Smart kids hit a wall because they have poor study habits, aren’t comfortable asking for help, get distracted by the 24/7 food and booze fest which is life in some dorms, take the wrong classes so they are either underworked (Hey, I can skip lecture this week, it’s just a regurgitation of what I did in my AP class) or overworked (what’s the point in going to office hours, I’m so behind already, I’ll just take the incomplete).
And more- substances, gaming, online poker…
But not intellect. I know the folks who scream about holistic admissions don’t believe that collaboration (the very essence of playing in a symphony or a chamber group), taking feedback (what one does as an actor, dancer, gymnast) figuring out how to balance a heavy workload with other commitments (any HS kid with active and demanding EC’s plus a heavy courseload plus family commitments) or learning to say no (what athletes have to do all the time- can’t go to the afterparty because they need to wake up early for training; can’t binge after a movie because they have weigh in tomorrow)… but all these things (i.e. the holistic piece) are very much important in figuring out which kid might crash and burn and which kid can figure it out.
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Can’t emphasize this enough.
In our cases, we had no study habits because we didn’t need them. We got straight As without trying even a little.
And in my HS and that of my wife, the last thing you ever wanted to do, ever, was speak to a teacher outside of class. Those conversations only ever occurred because “you’re in trouble” and thus were to be avoided at all costs!
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Wow. Probably one of the best articulated posts that I have read on this board(there have been tons of great posts providing great insight). I could not agree with you more. It is why so many sales organizations, management training programs, wall street and consultants hire college athletes. They know how to manage a schedule, take coaching and have discipline, which are all transferrable skills.
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I was in HS during the “Don’t trust anyone over 30” era… believe me, you did NOT want to engage in a conversation with an adult- teacher, counselor, administrator…
I got to college and the kids who had gone to prep schools were showing up during office hours to ask the professor to review their outline before writing a paper; to ask questions about what they didn’t understand; setting up meetings with the food service and housing staffs to politely ask that something broken get fixed or improved… I was gob-smacked. One day Boston lettuce showed up (and I had grown up in Boston and didn’t know what it was) because a kid from my dorm had politely asked for a greater variety in the salads; and a burnt out light in the hall in front of the bathroom (the RA said the fixture had been broken for two years) was replaced with a new, shiny, bright fixture. Gobsmacked. You ask grown ups for help and they help you???
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If you are talking about Dartmouth Bound, it was founded more than 30 years ago, and is not limited to just Dartmouth accepted students. However, many HYPS… type colleges do offer such programs and offered them long before test-optional. For example, prior to test optional, Stanford used to offer the following options for math starting points, for new students. They also offer ~6 other options not listed below.
- Online Summer Bridge (SOAR math) – Extra pre-calc preparation prior to taking Math 19-20
- Math 19-21 – 3 quarter version of single variable calculus
- Math 41-42 – 2 quarter version of single variable calculus
- Math 51-53 – differential and integral calculus in several variables, linear algebra, and ordinary differential equations
- Math 61-63M – covers the material of the Math 50 series at a much more advanced level with an emphasis on rigorous proofs and conceptual arguments
- Math 61-63DM – covers the same linear algebra material as the Math 60CM series and otherwise focuses on topics in discrete mathematics, algebra, and probability theory at an advanced level with an emphasis on rigorous proofs
The idea of having so many possible levels and starting points is to accommodate students from widely varying HS backgrounds. They want to give students the best chance to succeed in math/science, rather than immediately throwing everyone in the deep end, and seeing who sinks (switches majors) and who swims (sticks with major). This is the norm at HYPS… type highly selective colleges. They typically have freshmen take a placement exam, and based on placement exam results, prospective major, long term goals, discussion with placement officer… decide what course to choose in freshman year.
When I was a student at Stanford, I had a different personal policy. I always chose the highest, most rigorous level offered, regardless of whether I was adequately prepared for it. For example, I took advanced freshmen physics, which is intended for students who had mastered AP physics in HS, even though my HS didn’t offer AP physics. It turned out okay for me and I learned a lot, but I think the experience turned me off to physics more than would have occurred had I followed the recommended plan, and choose a more appropriate physics starting point for my background. With my negative association with physics, I just did the minimum required for my major (EE), then never took a physics course again.
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I think the FGLI office recently started a program more specifically tailored to Dartmouth admits but I could be mistaken (it may be that the FGLI office, which is a more recent thing, may have subsumed DB and I misconstrued what this meant).
As for the rest, yes am very familiar with all that! Our kids are at a BS with exactly that type of pre-sorting, several different entry points across a variety of disciplines, etc. and for sure most selective colleges do the same. In fact we’re counting on it 
Interestingly though I’ve found that most schools nonetheless require all new students to take an “English 1” type class to make sure everyone can actually write a paper, though schools usually offer an honors/advanced version of the course for the more-prepared students. But point is you can’t just test out of it entirely from what I’ve seen.
ETA: I had a mildly parallel experience with CS as you did with physics. I’d gotten a 4 on the AP CS test, which nominally placed me into CS10 as opposed to CS5 or whatever the nomenclature was. I was not ready, and it was the last CS course I took.
Thank you for putting a name to this idea of wall-hitting - I was absolutely that kid 30 years ago. Valedictorian of a tiny rural school that was years behind curriculum-wise and unprepared for managing a college-level workload at a T100 school. I was done no favors by my freshman advisor, who saw my high test scores and loaded my schedule with honors courses in disciplines I had never seen before, such as this foreign concept called “calculus.” I did finally figure it out and graduate with honors, but my freshman year was a miserable slog that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
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