As I have written before. Dartmouth and the rest of them had been using tests scores for almost a century prior to COVID, and at no time in this period did they ever use that data to increase the number of low income students. Nor was there a decrease in low income students who matriculated to these colleges after these colleges went TO. So claiming that they Need Test Scores To Help Poor Kids is being disingenuous, at best.
I mean, there are possibly ways to use test scores to help low income students. However, there is no evidence that “elite” colleges have ever used these methods in the past, and the ways in which they claim that they will use test scores to increase the number of low income students make little sense.
Here is a recent article by Fairtest, arguing against test requirements. For those few who are not familiar with Fairtest, they are the main and oldest organization who are advocating for test optional or test blind policies. They make good arguments, but they do have an agenda (which is not hidden in the least):
It’s entirely possible that they have found religion and are now actively recruiting FGLI applicants. Just bcos they haven’t in the past doesn’t mean that they can’t change policies/practices going fwd.
Now, given their history, one should be skeptical of a major policy change, but still, ‘there’s a chance…’
Minorities make up a much higher percentage of the US population now compared to 60 years ago. Back then, the US population was probably at least 85% White.
All the highly selective colleges have been actively recruiting disadvantaged applicants (URM, FGLI, rural, etc) for at least the last decade, which started when they all required tests.
I hope they get better at recruiting these students.
Of course the test required schools will not only be competing with each other for these students but also with test optional/test free schools…in an environment of a declining population of 18 year olds, and a declining share of males wanting to attend college.
Sixty years ago was the 1960s, during which the “Ivies+” were for men only, and were actively discriminating against minority students of all types. In the 1970s and 1980s they still relied on criteria which blatantly discriminated in favor scions of wealthy families, even more so than today.
There is a VAST difference between “no longer checking photos and surnames to determine whether an applicant is Jewish, Black, and rejecting them on that basis”, and “actively recruiting low income and minority students”.
Alslo, as others have said, the demographics of the country have changed drastically in the past 60 years.
I’m skeptical that they were actively recruiting FGLI students during this time. Sure, they were need blind and gave all applicants a fair read, but need-blind is much, much different from specifically targeting and soliciting applications from poor zip codes…or even holding an open house/Visit at an inner city locale.
So there’s skepticism about the stated reason for bringing back testing—looking for “diamonds in the rough “. If the skepticism is valid then why are these elite colleges bringing back testing?
So I think there is a lot of evidence that these colleges are in fact trying to edge up the percentages of their students who come from FGLI and similar backgrounds. Not radically, but incrementally. And they have been doing many things to that end, including through modifying financial aid policies, targeted marketing and outreach, and so on.
So admissions policies are at most only going to be part of that, and not necessarily the biggest part, and again all this is being done incrementally. But I don’t think it is implausible they would want admissions to be doing some things to help, understanding that what is only part of an overall incremental effort might have very modest effects itself.
OK, and then their specific story is that COVID forcing test optional on them became an opportunity for a lot of data gathering, and they have analyzed that data, and they have come to certain conclusions about the role that test policies can play in things like FGLI admissions policies. Which they did not necessarily know before because they never had that sort of data to analyze before.
Obviously people are free to be skeptical about any of that, but I don’t think the fact this is a recent development makes that inherently implausible. Because it is certainly true that until recently, they would not have had all this data to work with.
I don’t want to bicker, but your comment that I responded to referred to the last century. Yes, the size of minority populations has increased, but the size of minority populations graduating from high school is still a bit lower.
Rice mentioned in the email that they’d be adding an ED II option, with a January 4th deadline and a February response, and then said …
Testing Policy: Also effective starting with the Fall 2024-2025 admission cycle, we will recommend, but not require that students submit SAT or ACT test scores with their applications. Students wanting to show their college readiness and academic strengths may choose to submit SAT, ACT, AP or IB test scores. Test scores are one factor of many that are considered in the admission process, and students who are unable to submit test scores or prefer not to submit test scores will be given full consideration in the admission selection process.
Sure! Here’s the relevant section. It was titled Admission Updates and also included that there would be a new ED 2.
Testing Policy: Also effective starting with the Fall 2024-2025 admission cycle, we will recommend, but not require that students submit SAT or ACT test scores with their applications. Students wanting to show their college readiness and academic strengths may choose to submit SAT, ACT, AP or IB test scores. Test scores are one factor of many that are considered in the admission process, and students who are unable to submit test scores or prefer not to submit test scores will be given full consideration in the admission selection process.
I could try to look up some specific citations, but at this point I have encountered a lot of references to FGLI outreach and other related policies that began well before COVID. Some of it was in fact things like trying to expand where they sent live recruiters, or increasingly these days scheduling virtual sessions at more schools. Some of it was things like setting up and promoting support programs at their colleges specifically for FGLI students. Some of it was things like adopting loan-free aid policies (which lots of people like, of course, but can be particularly impactful for low income families). And so on.
I note the NYT did a famous (infamous?) “expose” type article back in 2014, which included a “College Access Index” ranking colleges by their economic diversity according to the NYT. As I understand it, this led to some bad press for a number of different prominent universities.
The NYT has updated all that twice, in 2017 and 2023, and I was part of the discussion here of the 2023 release. Among other things it looked at Pell share, and the change from the data in the 2014 version (entering class 2010-11) and the 2023 version (entering class 2020-21).
One of the interesting things about that is the overall Pell share average among the studied colleges went down from 23% to 21% (which is obviously not great news, but establishes a sort of baseline for comparison). However, various individual colleges went up, including most (although not all) of the most famous/wealthy private colleges, and also various prominent publics. Among colleges in the title of this thread (plus Rice), it was:
Texas 28% to 29%
Harvard 18% to 22%
Yale 13% to 21%
Stanford 16% to 20%
Dartmouth 13% to 17%
Rice 16% to 17%
Brown 17% to 14%
Caltech 14% to 14%
Now a lot of those numbers are still below the overall average. And Brown actually went down, and even more than the overall average (-3 instead of -2). But still, these colleges otherwise did better than the overall average, some much better, and some (I would suggest not coincidentally the wealthiest, HYS) have moved from quite a bit below average to now around average.
OK, this is just one measure, but still, this is the sort of evidence I think suggests it is actually true that at least many of these famous/wealthy colleges are in fact spending a little of that wealth on trying to do a little better in terms of economic diversity.
But not necessarily a lot better. A little better.
Thanks, everyone! I’m hunting for a press release that has the information and still can’t find it, but at least I know what it says. I appreciate the help.
To be clear, this includes students of Asian descent, correct? So all POC? Which doesn’t necessarily equate to disadvantaged.
They are all below the overall proportion of college students who receive Pell grants, which was 34% last year.
Yes, some schools have been actively recruiting disadvantaged students over the last decade. Many of the highly selective schools have dedicated AOs targeting rural and/or other disadvantaged HSs. @mitchris mentioned MIT has two dedicated staff, and also mentioned the Supreme Court decision and the unavailability of CollegeBoard’s mailing lists are making those efforts more difficult.
Defining URM as Black + Hispanic + American Indian, shows somewhat smaller increases, but still significant. URM enrollment has doubled from 2000 to 2023. Specific numbers from IPEDS are below.
1994 – 17% URM (first year available in IPEDS)
2000 – 14% URM
2010 – 16% URM
2015 – 21% URM (increase is solely among Hispanic students)
2019 – 23% URM (increase is primarily among Hispanic students)
2023 – 28% URM (Black students have an especially large increase)