But let’s be honest, how many TO applicants to the Ivy League are sporting a 450 Math SAT? The minimum score is a 400. I’m going to make a wild guess that someone who got a 450 isn’t applying to Harvard. My sense is that most TO applicants are scoring in the 1300-1400 range - low by Ivy League standards, but still very solid.
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Add to the list, selective public flagships that attract a lot of strong STEM applicants (Georgia Tech and Purdue).
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You and @Data10 are correct that students with SAT math scores of 450 aren’t applying TO to MIT/Caltech/Ivies. If they did, other parts of their apps would have given that away. I’m not talking about these schools. I’m talking about your non-selective, average to below-average state universities that are responsible for producing over 90% of STEM graduates in the country each year. Someone with a 450 who went TO may very well sneak in only to bomb out later, wasting years getting stuck in remedial classes or repeating calculus I/II and wasting tens of thousands of dollars. If AOs have knowledge of their 450, they could have easily prevented this “tragedy.” A lot of such students are attracted to engineering by its job/money prospect. It’s all good, until you see them trying to solve some simple math problems.
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Licensed professions like nursing and civil engineering have licensing exams for this purpose. However, these are much more subject specific. The closest analogs outside of licensed professions are the mostly discontinued GRE subject tests and (at the high school level) discontinued SAT subject tests (or AP tests for more advanced material).
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As I mentioned earlier, these are now begining to be undermined as a downstream effect of the anti-test movement.
"The NBME and the FSMB, co-sponsors of the exam, said the switch to pass-fail aimed to “address concerns about Step 1 scores impacting student well-being,” “reduce the overemphasis” on exam results and promote a more holistic residency selection process.
However, many students and medical school faculty now say that removing scores has simply shifted stress to the second exam and put additional pressure on students to differentiate themselves through research and extracurricular opportunities, which will take time away from their studies and amplify pre-existing inequalities in medical education."
Sounds familiar?
In fall 2022, the average admit rate for 4-year public colleges was 80%. If you restrict to “non-selective, average to below-average”, then it would be higher, perhaps 90+%. When you are admitting 90+% of students, it limits how well you can flag students who might be less prepared, regardless of test optional or test required. I think the more relevant question is how the outcomes would compare for the 90% who were accepted under a test required system vs a test optional system.
There are limited number of studies that have looked at test optional at less selective publics. One such analysis is at https://www.luminafoundation.org/files/resources/definingpromise.pdf . The less selective publics that are included tend to be ones that have auto admit for students with a 3.0 type GPA, so anyone with a 3.0 GPA doesn’t need to submit score, but kids with <3.0 GPA need to rely on score to be admitted. This tends to result in a wide GPA disparity between submitters and non-submitters. For example, the least selective public in the study had the following distribution.
Test Submitters – 2.15 HS GPA, 1000 SAT – Grad Rate = 9%, Cumm college GPA = 2.0
Test Optional – 3.2 HS GPA ,870 SAT – Grad Rate = 27%, Cumm college GPA = 2.7
I expect this result is not a big surprise. Kids with a 2.15 HS GPA don’t tend to do well in college. However, this raises the question about who are the few kids that are going be rejected in a college that only rejects 10% of students. Are you going to reject the 2.15 HS GPA kids? The 450 math SAT kids who have a decent transcript? Or someone else? You don’t have the option to reject everyone who does not have an ideal HS record at a 90% admit rate college.
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Rick Clark, former enrollment leader at Ga Tech (he recently took another job at Gtech) has been pretty transparent about the relative importance of test scores in their admissions process (note GA tech admissions had no say in the decision to require test scores which was determined by the state). His blog is always a good read, hope he continues that with the new gig.
It’s important to note that while a test score is required to matriculate at GaTech, a score is NOT required to submit an app, have the app reviewed, or be admitted.
Why would a 450 SAT student have to “sneak” into a non-selective college?
Don’t you think many of these students stop pursuing engineering in college relatively quickly? The question is are they changing majors, graduating, entering gainful employment?
If they languish for years in engineering with poor grades at this college, isn’t that at least partially on the school’s admin and advisors?
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A test score IS required. An official score report is not.
This is the same pretty much every where, including MIT. I only know of Princeton (TO) and Georgetown (test required) requiring an official score report as part of the application.
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Mwfan said to “matriculate” not just to apply. At some point, they will want a official report before you start school.
"All first-year applicants must submit results of the SAT and/or the ACT in order to be considered for admission, per University System of Georgia requirements.
In order to complete your application more quickly, we highly recommend that you self-report your SAT and/or ACT scores via one of two avenues…"
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That’s exactly right.
Most schools these days don’t need an official report from College Board into you matriculate. But schools like GaTech and Purdue require scores.
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Ask any GA HS counselor who has a bunch of students applying to Tech (Rick Clark’s tweet doesn’t support my point though, oops, and I didn’t know tech’s website has the quote vulcan showed…but that doesn’t change the fact students can submit without any test scores and be reviewed).
I remember that the GRE general back then had the logic section as well as two SAT-like sections. No surprise that math and philosophy majors tended to do the best on the logic section.
Most of the non-US standardized testing is not like the SAT (or ACT). A closer analog in the US would be the discontinued SAT subject tests for regular level material plus AP tests for more advanced level material, and more difficult questions in some countries’ tests in order to raise the ceilings.
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You are correct less-selective schools don’t have much leeway to reject too many applicants even if their SAT math scores are 450. Other than outright rejection, many of these schools have the option to still admit them but to their second-choice, non-STEM majors or as “general” or “exploratory” studies majors. That way the schools could reduce the number of slow train wrecks that may take a year or two to come to a head. For these borderline applicants, SAT math scores provide an additional, key data point on their likelihood to succeed as STEM majors and allow detection of possible red flags early on to their benefit.
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This is an important point. For those interested, I read a book called “The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale and Princeton” by Jerome Karabel. It’s over 550 pages (not including Notes) of deep research on the history of admissions at these schools (which had repercussions for other universities outside of HYP). While no one is denying the tortured history of the SAT (and it is a tortured history) this book does a deep dive into its use in elite college admissions.
Initially, HYP used the test to advance their goal of finding “diamonds in the rough” outside of the core (mostly East Coast) metropolitan areas and to identify rural students throughout the country who could benefit from and enhance HYPs as institutions of higher learning. When Jewish students blew away the competition on the tests, admissions criteria evolved to emphasize other factors that enabled AOs to “build the class” they want (or didn’t want, as was the case with Jewish students).
In other words, HYP moved toward more subjective measures as a way of keeping Jews out. The SAT wasn’t used to keep them out–their scores were superior–HOLISTIC criteria was used to keep them out. As @pilate pointed out, standardized tests aren’t the only criteria with a tortured past.
And that was my primary takeaway from this book, which while not exactly groundbreaking, is worth repeating. Colleges use admissions criteria as levers–emphasizing what they want, de-emphasizing what they don’t want–to build the class they want.
By claiming categorically that standardized tests “aren’t worth the squeeze” we are basically saying that objective criteria of achievement, mastery and even critical thinking skills aren’t measurable and shouldn’t matter anyway…because we’re not getting the results we want. Many (most?) developed countries around the world have some version of high-stakes testing and those scores are used in college admissions (or to track students prior to college).
While large data doesn’t tell us anything about an individual person, in aggregate, there may be important information about where our educational system is unequal, what support and resources are needed, and who could most benefit. This has implications beyond SES or race. Many studies show that men and boys are falling behind and data is important to show what is happening and point to possible reasons for the decline. Looking at data isn’t racist or sexist or discriminatory. How we use the data is what matters. Data empowers us to provide people–including the most disadvantaged–with the support they need to succeed in an increasingly competitive and technologically advanced world.
I fear that this discussion, like so many others in our society, has become binary. You’re either for testing or against it. I hope we can all be capable of nuanced positions that aren’t all or nothing and I don’t want to find myself defending a position I don’t hold just because I don’t like the other end of the spectrum.
Standardized testing can have its place (in college and other areas) without people and their unique talents and qualities being boiled down to “just a score”. Colleges can consider qualifications that aren’t measured in a standardized test (grit, work ethic, creativity, intrinsic motivation, just to name a few) and still look at how students compare academically relative to other applicants. Society at large needs writers, artists, musicians, creatives, philosophers, scientists and mathematicians and not everyone will perform equally well–nor do they need to–on all measures of achievement.
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Yes. Finance has tons of licensing tests, Computer Engineers as well (many certifications), as do the trades. Some, like in Finance are required to practice, others in software are generally for getting hired IME
Sure, you can pay your $80 bucks and submit, but the application won’t be considered complete until scores are submitted.
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Certifications seem to be more of an IT thing than a computer or software engineering thing. However, it is common in computer and software engineering to give technical questions in interviews, but that is not the same as licensing or a licensing exam whose results could be made visible to any possible employer.
I had something long written out but your post covers it. Let’s not make things binary and toss out various assumptions/stereotypes about “the other side”. We all should be comfortable given the entirety of this discussion to let individual colleges decide, as many have already done.
I’m still voting for more transparency in the process. I still think applicants are just wandering the desert hoping academic mana falls their way.
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Or, unfortunately, running themselves ragged with sports, clubs, activities and charities in an effort to prove themselves holistically worthy
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