I dont know if they would represent the majority, but relative to their population, a larger percentage of them wont apply if their scores fall below a range - kids from upper/upper middle income whose SATs score fall below the 50% whether it’s 4.0 and 1420 or 3.9 and 1250, 1350, 1380 etc.
Isnt that the reason these schools are reinstating that SAT - to find lower income kids who scored 1400 and give them a boost? If that’s the rationale, it would seem pretty obvious that the upper middle income kid who also scored 1400 (and below) would understand their chances are smaller given they dont have a hook, especially any kids who paid for either a college counselor or a SAT prep course.
I dont know the exact number of upper middle income kids who applied TO to Ivy league schools (Does anyone?) but I highly doubt it would only be a few thousand applications. Just from our HS alone, we had over 20 kids apply to Yale this year. There are about 23,000 public and 3600 private high schools?
We’re talking about minutae in a process that is overwhelmingly arbitrary. The list of factors that prove someone can handle the work at MIT / Harvard / Yale / Wesleyan is so long as to be meaningless. The SAT fits into that list. >3.8 UW GPA, >1400 SAT, 5’s on a couple AP’s, good letters of recommendation. All so-called “necessary but insufficient” factors for admission. AO’s will happily talk about what can get any applicant to the 40 yard line for admission, and then it all goes quiet for the Red Zone, forget about the goal line. That’s the frustration that really brings people to these forums.
My friend spoke to the admissions director at MIT yesterday, and it was more of the same. “Taking high SAT scores, high GPA, multiple AP’s into consideration, we feel that 18k of our 25k applicants would do just fine at MIT.” Really? Typical meaningless statement. Further discussion was about how EC’s outside of national or international recognition were irrelevant to admission. Being a varsity team captain - meaningless. Being a club president - meaningless.
Out of a class of 1100 (MIT) or 1750 (Harvard) etc, there will be about 15% who write their own ticket. National stature in an extracurricular, academic or other achivement. Yo Yo Ma as a teenager. Everyone else is in a scrum of scrum, story, context and luck.
To that point, it’s really irrelevant to argue whether 1400 or 1500 or 1550 or whatever is meaningful. For the vast majority of students, what is meaningful is the annual whim of the admissions world. Right now, after SFFA, that’s Story. Hardship. Finding opportunity in a rural environment. A deep dive to find diversity when one tool for finding “diversity” was legally removed. Then it’s down to hooks and luck.
Debating whether 1400 or 1500 is a better “predictor of success in X college” is just playing the game admissions offices want us to play - to endlessly debate the first 50 pages of a 200 page book.
It isn’t at all clear when you consider the statistics quoted by @Data10 earlier in the thread:
Looking at students in the 1400-1500 SAT range, we see that’s 5% or more in the 96%+ and 3% in the 90-95% range. Whereas at lower income levels it averages less than 1% of students.
So just a raw comparison would give >4% of top 10% income students (>0.4% of all students) and <1% of bottom 90% students (<0.9% of all students). That’s not “far far smaller”.
In fact taking into account the much higher propensity of wealthy students to apply, there are likely comparable numbers of students applying from the top 10% with 1400-1500 SATs and students from the bottom 90% with similar SAT scores. So there’s no good reason to think that those good but not great SAT scoring wealthy students account for a “small minority” of test optional applicants.
IF the SAT score is the first phase of a “weeding” out all the other application attributes are meaningless. And if a school is “shepherding” a kid through the SAT process it is pretty certain they are “shepherding” them through all the other processes.
This is the PR machine at work. Yes, we are doing this to find lower income students at the 1,400 level. These same schools went from test required to test optional to test required in less than 4 years. Over that time, there is not enough of sample size of students to actually evaluate what the impact was ESPECIALLY since a good part of this time was affected by distance versus in class learning. Yes, and some of these schools had us believe they were “need blind” too.
Interestingly, not at any (that I know of) private schools in the area. It’s kind of typical really, when you cant teach subjects remove how those subjects are measured. “Equity” gone wrong.
I’m with you on this one. I think schools should pursue whatever admissions criteria they think will result in the classes they want, but it really stretches credulity to think that re-instating test required will magically unearth a significant number of heretofore unidentified high scoring lower income kids. They just aren’t taking the test at a high enough frequency for that to be feasible.
I have said the same exact thing about selective test optional schools — no matter how many times I hear them claim that they are test optional, I don’t believe them. Test optional is not test optional for everyone.
It is likely that both sets of selective schools (those requiring tests and those that remain test optional) like using the SATs to assist them in evaluating applicants. One group wants to pretend they don’t like using them; one group wants to pretend they are using them to find low income kids.
That will only be true if the colleges that reinstate the SAT requirement consider the SAT scores in context and make sure to clarify it to all applicants. In that case, applicants with SATs that are relatively low, compared to the rest of the others around them, will likely be the ones who decide that it is no longer worthwhile. I don’t know whether this will include kids with SAT scores of 1280 at high schools in that serve very low income communities, but I also don’t know how many of these were applying even when the Ivies went TO.
However, yes, in that case, kids attending high schools which serve very wealthy families who have a 4.0 GPA but an SAT of 1420 is much less likely to apply if TO is not available, while a kid attending a high school serving middle class, or even upper middle class families, in which SAT scores above 1500 are rare or non-existent, will still consider a 1420 to be high enough for them to apply to an Ivy.
I would also guess that kids attending high schools which accept through testing (private preps and public magnets) saw a rise in applications from kids with SAT scores that were in the low to mid 1400s, regardless of family income, and will see a drop in numbers for colleges that reinstate the SAT requirement.
At least looking at admissions data, it doesn’t seem that going TO actually helped low income kids or hurt upper income kids. From what I could find, the only reason that some colleges had a higher proportion of low income students in their incoming classes is because there was a higher proportion of these in the application pool. So admission rates seem to have remained the same (and may even have dropped).
Isn’t it possible that they’re announcing this decision so publicly to alert low income kids and their teachers and their schools that the SAT will be a ticket to opportunity? These Colleges can’t do everything, but for the smart and well motivated kids in low income schools and the teachers who believe in them, it’s “not a subtle sign they’re sending”.
I’m sure that’s the “magic” that these schools are hoping for. I hope they’re right.
How is an SAT score a ticket for opportunity when a student can’t afford it anyway? Yes, there is aid but, how many clear both barriers, SAT and the aid they need? More likely, these students will seek out more affordable good schools.
The elephant in the room is the “industry” the SAT’s created and the lobbying to save the cash cow.
In the hand wringing about how SAT optional versus mandatory helps or hurts unprivileged kids applying to elite schools, a fact that easily gets lost is for most of these students, attending even an average state school and majoring in something semi-valuable is already a HUGE step up from where their parents were. From parents who couldn’t understand electricity bills or who work long hours in construction/vineyards/meat processing plants, to children who hold STEM/business degrees from average state schools (yes, average) and who are about to get paid high-five/low-six-figures starting salaries, the improvement in SES in merely one generation is incredible. The worry about them not getting into elite schools due to SAT seems a bit misplaced. They are doing more than fine in life.
If financial aid/tuition cost is an issue, that will be an issue anywhere, whether it is the small number of schools where an SAT score matters or the vast majority of colleges & universities that accept just about everyone.
As for the SAT itself, it isn’t perfect, and in some cases, it can be a barrier to certain schools. However, compared to other elements of consideration in admissions (essays, recommendations, ECs, high school research & internship opportunities, etc.) the SAT is the smallest of all of these barriers.
If you want fair & equitable admissions, the last thing on your list of things to attack should be the SAT. In fact, going after the SAT, while not going after the other aspects of admissions (that are even more aligned with wealth) comes off as very racist.
You really have to explain that one to me. How does “questioning SAT’s” ever come across as racist? I am definitely “anti-elitist”. The SAT score becomes by FAR the largest barrier to entry if it becomes mandatory only surpassed by cost!
I agree on this point completely. There are so many incredible schools beyond the “brand names” . And schools which are not suffocated by their own history.
Do you have any evidence of the reader ratings for other portion of application being more aligned with wealth than SAT? That didn’t appear to be the case base in the Harvard lawsuit sample, or any other review I am aware of.