What happens if someone lists NMSF in awards? Are the UCs required to ignore that? Or is it a particularly valuable award, all of a sudden?
Yes, it was obvious from the report that they looked at demographics, but I had not seen this rebuttal, so thanks.
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Aside from all the pros and cons regarding test scores, I think this will help a lot in the test optional era. The current accepted wisdom in the test optional era is to only submit scores if theyāre above the 50th percentile. This, naturally, leads to ever increasing range of scores each year, which may dissuade at least some students from applying at all (even without scores).
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UC doesnāt care about the psat, and hasnāt for years. Sure, a student can add NMSF to their Honors/Awards section, but since testing is ignored, it will be too.
For every capable student who is discouraged by their low test score from sending an app, there may be an incapable student with low test score who is encouraged by test optional/blind to apply, gets admitted, and finds out they couldnāt do the work only years later, wasting both time and money and taking a seat away from a capable student. The latter happens quite a bit in engineering and other demanding majors.
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Heās one of the Opportunity Insights authors, so I assume the data is as current as anything else we are discussing.
I donāt know what to tell you, except that I am quoting one of the authors of the Opportunity Insights study that came out in late 2023, and on which much of this thread is based. Not sure why heād lie?
Low income kids who are from isolated areas donāt view these issues like kids from the East Bay. For example, from the Brookings Institute:
We show that the vast majority of low-income high achievers do not apply to any selective college. This is despite the fact that selective institutions typically cost them less, owing to generous financial aid, than the two-year and nonselective four-year institutions to which they actually apply.
Not everyone has the same info, and not everyone views college as do the parents on CC.
Alternatively, rather than hiding info from applicants, why not just accept that for many colleges the juice just isnāt worth the squeeze.
Lol, now, now that phrase is not needed is it? It still has some lingering effects around these parts 
Iām not in the camp that says SATs are the main hurdle here: If these LI high achieving students canāt hear the āweāll judge your scores in contextā statements from schools, do you think they can be convinced to apply to top schools after the news deluge of:
āoh the system is rigged against youā
ālegacies, athletes, and development, oh my!ā
ātheyāll judge you by your zip codeā
and perhaps most importantly:
ā4% admit rate! 96% denial rate! Rejected with 1600 sat!ā
Frankly, I donāt know why even the students with ~1500 apply without hordes of ECs most people canāt afford. I keep on thinking there are more dragons to slay before testing, although testing is definitely on the list of things to refine.
Re: 25-75% ranges: what if each HS counselor just uploads the median test score for their HS, and then naviance/scoir/etc can show an āacceptable rangeā for the studentās colleges given that median as a reference? The colleges can send in that information and shape it as they see fit.
Yes it is remarkable how this point gets dismissed and ignored, especially because it is one of the main motivations why TO and Test Blind exist in the first place! And it isnāt just about increasing social mobility. It is about casting a wider net to reach more kids who have the potential to be academically excellent.
There is so much baggage associated with these tests that it not only turns away potentially excellent kids who donāt believe they are good enough, it also misinforms kids who falsely believe that if they prep for years, take it repeatedly, and do well, that they have earned a spot at at Harvard or MIT.
In other words, everyone one reads it wrong. Across the scale. For what? So the AOs get a minuscule increase in predictive value over the other info they have? It is any wonder most colleges want to dump it?
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Thereās two parts to my objection.
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I do suspect the bit he claims is perhaps lacking context, at best - thereās a fair amount of room in āchildren from the bottom 20 percentā¦ only about a quarter of them take an SAT or ACT testā. What year? HS grads only or all such students? Some specific state? Whatās the specific %, etc? I tried to look through the very data heavy study, something like 140+ pages with lots of tables, and didnāt see anything about test taking % by income quintile - it might be in there, but I couldnāt find it easily.
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In any case, my claim is a bit narrower, but again, goes to context somewhat. Even if only 25% of bottom 20% income HS grads took the ACT/SAT in pre-COVID times (I remain skeptical), I would venture that the % of potential high-achieving (1300+ SAT) lowest quintile income kids who take the test is very much higher. Off-hand, Iād guess 80% or more. No, I donāt have data on that.
Itās not about caring about the PSAT, its seeing a value in it high scores even if they canāt ask about it.
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I think the answer is outreach, and sending reps to high school to explain how SAT scores are being used. As I noted upthread, I thought the most interesting point in the entire article was the impressive diversity of the MIT class after the school went back to requiring test scores.
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Do you know of any data supporting this statement? I assume you mean kids are dropping or failing out?
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Sending reps to HSs in person is on the decline, I donāt have data, but anecdotally this is what schools are reporting. Itās much easier, and less expensive, to have remote meetings.
I canāt speak to MITās recruiting strategies, but to increase proportion of students who fit institutional priorities, some colleges are:
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going/remaining test optional
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reaching out to urban, rural, and/or low income high schools, whether remotely, in person, or via college fairs
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increasing partnerships with college access organizationsā¦Questbridge and Posse of course, but also more local ones like Chicago Scholars. These partnerships can vary in structure, but include colleges that donāt meet full need actually meeting full need for students from the partnering organization. I expect colleges will continue to increase these partnerships because they have access to pre-selected students who fit the collegeās institutional priorities.
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holding fly-ins
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eliminating legacy preference
The reality is can be difficult to increase diversity. The proportion of African Americans at U Michigan is still not back to where it was prior to Michigan eliminating race based admissions in 2006.
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Still a bit hard to parse exactly what that chart is saying, and it also seems a bit outdated (seems mainly HS class of 2008, if Iām reading their data sources info correctly).
It looks like just before COVID, 20 of the 50 states REQUIRED students to take the ACT or SAT, and a few more didnāt require it, but offered it for free. Also, some school districts (such as our kidsā district) in other states had a ~mandatory, free ACT or SAT.
Even in the ~anti-test environment of 2023, there are 1.9M SAT takers, and 1.38M ACT takers (some overlap, of course) against ~3.2M HS grads (2020)
(had collegevine links for the info on states that require the ACT/SAT, but CC doesnāt like collegevine links - you can search for it yourself if need be.)
Seems you have your views despite the data. Nothing else I can say. 
I think I just posted a bunch of data in my last reply?
Nothing that contradicts the study.
Regarding LI testing, here is an interesting tidbit from a Hechinger Report article (Aug 2023, emphasis mine):
" Meanwhile, with admission tests voluntary, low-income students tend to opt out. In its 2022 SAT annual report, the College Board reported that students from families earning less than $67,083 annually made up only 27 percent of test takers who reported their family income. Six years earlier, while tests were still mandatory for most college applications, students from families earning less than $60,001 made up a far-larger share: 43 percent of test takers. While the percentage of low-income test takers has radically fallen off, the opposite is true for wealthy students: In 2022, 57 percent of test takers who reported their familiesā earnings were from households earning $83,766 or more. This is a jump from 46 percent of student test takers whose families earned $80,001 or more in 2016."
So in 2016 43% of test takers reported <60k income. In 2022, 27% of test takers reported <67K income.
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