My brilliant, but overconfident D26 sent her ACT scores to a number of schools through ACT. You can apparently elect to send scores to up to 5 schools for free before you take the exam.
This was a tactical mistake. While submitting her scores was fine at 3 of her 5 schools, her ACT score is at the 25th percentile for 2 of her favorite schools.
We are not from a demographic/situation where 25th percentile scores will be looked at favorably.
ACT says that they cannot reverse this.
My question is…through the Common Application, can she still apply as Test Optional or will the scores submitted to the schools automatically appear in her Common App file?
I know that the clearest answer will come from directly contacting the schools, but we really hate bothering them. I am hoping to hear that there is a clear “Common App” answer.
Test optional schools should have a question in the app asking if you want your scores to be considered. If you say no, they should not see them during application review.
Have you looked at the percentage of accepted students who submitted test scores at each school? If you figure that anyone who did not submit had lower scores than what was reported, that might make her scores look better than you thought at first.
As one example, if a score is at the reported 25th percentile, but only half (or less) of all accepted students submitted scores, there is a good chance that the score is still above average for all students who were accepted (because the half who didn’t submit probably in most cases had lower scores).
I am pretty sure that admissions staff understand this.
There is a common app general question that asks if the applicant would like to self-report test scores, see screenshot. If and when she applies with a test score, answer here as appropriate. If and when she applies test optional to a given school, make sure to clear this section out if she at any point did self-report a score here.
Each test optional college a student adds to their “My Colleges” list will have a question about testing, here’s Lehigh’s…so even if she sent an official score to Lehigh and wants to apply without a test score, she would check no.
I don’t really know whether or not a given school really gets scores out of the admission file in the case where they have an official score and the applicant applies without a score. This is out of your D’s control, so tell her not to stress about it. And to any AO who says 'I can’t unsee a score"…get over yourself.
Yes. The schools in question have about 60% of accepted kids submitting an ACT/SAT/or both. So we don’t want to share a 25th percentile score with our demographic situation.
Having said that, if 95% of kids accepted submitted scores…then there is no shame in being at the 25th percentile (or even below) because almost everyone at that school submits scores and D26 would be in range. We would submit in that case.
This would be a great thread. Lots of admissions “gurus” on YouTube dispense simplistic and awful advice on when to submit scores.
Interestingly (and slightly off topic), I have seen online virtual tours where students are asked all sorts of information including their name, email, GPA and test scores.
It makes me wonder if all of that info gets put into an admissions file… Who knows?
Let’s be optimistic (from your perspective, not from the school’s perspective). Let’s assume that the 40% who did not submit all had lower scores (which we will assume is why they did not submit their scores). If your daughter’s score is right on the posted 25th percentile, then of the 60% who did submit, 25% of them, or 15% of all accepted students, had the same score or lower. Adding this to the 40% who did not submit who we assume had lower scores would suggest that 55% of admitted students had the same or lower scores. 45% had higher scores. Of course the accepted students might tend to mostly be selected from the stronger applicants, so of all applicants your daughter’s score would be an even higher percentile.
Which suggests that being on the 25th percentile of reported scores is not all that bad. It might not help, but quite likely might not hurt either.
Personally I would be inclined to not worry about this all that much, but to expect that both schools are probably reaches.
Yes.it would be much more informative to potential applicants if schools posted their admitted pool test range as well as the enrolled one, but very few do.
I have a relative who applied to a school with test scores, and then received a call saying “We’d love to take you but your test scores are too low. Can you switch to test optional?” and she got in.
I found the whole thing kind of baffling at the time, this was well before covid when my own kids were tiny and I was not informed at all about college admissions. But it does seem to indicate that, at least for that school, they could know about a score and not take it into account.
Kind of similar…I have a friend whose child got a call saying “You applied RD. You will be rejected RD. But if you switch over to ED, we will take you.”
Yield management and “school stat protection” (your example) are really things. Schools vary wildly in terms of how obsessive they are about it. I would guess that most schools don’t do the types of things that you and I mentioned.
I hear you. Your logic is impeccable and is what should be used in an ideal world. But the schools have their own logic which is, arguably, different. They might prefer to have an ACT 25th/75th range of 33-35 rather than 32-34. A bunch of 25th percentile admissions will give you the latter.
We also have access to school data on Maia Learning. Lots of rejections at the 25th percentile and then admissions for similar GPAs TO. The schools seems to want 50th percentile scores or TO…from our high school, at least.
I haven’t looked at a lot of schools on our Maia but the couple of ones I have, have a similar trend to this. Of course, what’s not in sight is what majors have been applied for.
