I hear this quite a bit from very successful people. The only problem is that it was most likely all that hard work they did in college that got them to a position of success where they can now “look back” and wish they could have experienced more. Hindsight is,…ya know.
I’ve actually had this discussion with my S who worked very hard in college. He did a few things outside academics, but for the most part was all study all the time. His reply was that 4 years of hard work in college has delivered him to the point where he can basically do whatever he wants, and he would not trade that for more football games or parties. Now that he is working he has maintained that hard work ethic. I actually had a sit down with him to say he should spend a little more on himself and experiences rather than just build up his stock portfolio. He went out that day and bough (another) Armani sports coat. I hope I don’t get my dad-card pulled.
Isn’t it nearly universally reported on CC that our kids are applying to more schools than they did 5 years ago? That surely is an “increase from existing feeders” given the privilege of most families on CC. There doesn’t have to be an increase in the number of kids applying to selective schools, merely an increase in the number of applications from each of these students (because of both increased uncertainty and willingness to apply to schools that they would have previously felt were unattainable). Are you saying that isn’t true for your kids’ school?
Well, we can easily look at the UC and isolate that, at least for in state schools. I can take my daughter’s high school as an example, but you can try it with any high school, using any admissions year (so you can pull quite a bit of data - below is just a fairly random sample of one high school and two admissions years, one before and one after the change in testing policy):
Number of UC (all campuses) applications in 2022 (test blind):
Acceptance rates haven’t been part of the USNews formula for a while.
The most recent tweak (Pell Grant and other new factors) caused UChicago to tumble from like 5th to 10-12 or so. (without looking… they fell several spots regardless)
That was one of the real head-scratchers from the latest USNews ranking, for me at least. I’m pretty sure the academic quality at UChicago did not mirror the drop in ranking…
I agree - I see very few kids in our high achieving school district who prep so much for the SAT/ACT that it takes away from other experiences and activities.
All three of mine did well on the SAT with minimal prep (a few hours of doing a handful of example questions). Middle kid, NMF, played two varsity sports, played a travel sport year-round, on the board of a local educational non-profit and had a part-time job - don’t think test prep impacted her life at all. I see plenty of other kids at our HS like her. In fact, looking at the list of the NMSF and Commended kids, I know that most are involved in plenty of extracurriculars.
Back to the original topic - I don’t understand how public universities, ones that get tens of thousands of applications, can truly have holistic admissions. If they required test scores, they could quickly eliminate the applications that would clearly be denials. Maybe that is only 10% of the applications, though at least that would help reduce the number they need to review.
Personally, I would propose keeping TO, though if the student ever takes the SAT/ACT (except state mandated in-school SAT/ACT sittings), they must submit the score. There are plenty of practice tests available, so students have a good idea of their (likely) score going into the test. If they don’t like how they are scoring on the practice tests, don’t take the real thing so you don’t need to submit the score.
While I would have to track down the document, about a year ago someone posted a document on CC from Pitt that was meant for college counselors. There was lots of information not relevant to this discussion, though it included that Pitt saw a significant difference in freshman GPA between TO and submitters. It did not detail what that difference was, but commented that while Pitt was staying TO for now, they were keeping an eye on this.
Note that there’s a difference between the first “all UC applications” table and the second “UCB applications”. The first is more related to measuring how many extra kids are applying to selective schools (which all UCs are) and the second is more influenced by the same people applying to additional lottery schools (I assume most of the UCB applicants would still have applied to lower ranked UCs in 2018 but not decided to take a punt on UCB if they felt they weren’t qualified and would very likely be rejected).
The number of UCB applicants is up by more (33%) than the number of UC applicants in total (20%). It would be interesting to see the sum total of applications to UCs (add up the figures for each individual campus) to identify the average number of UCs applied to per applicant. I’d expect that to have increased due to the added uncertainty created by test blind applications.
Probably both to some degree as success in life can lead to future donations. Unsuccessful students and graduates do not become major donors.
Around here, test prep courses had very much been the norm pre-COVID. They are still popular among students who are applying to private schools (UCs are very popular here, so students focused on those likely aren’t bothering with it). There are several companies offering test prep in my (small) city, and many more in neighboring towns. Students often put in months of test prep. Not all, of course, but it is common enough. This is from one of the most popular local companies:
Yes, this is likely true as the UCs are all on the same application, so no additional work is necessary to apply to as many campuses are you want - just pay the application fee and, if you are low income, that too is waived, so applying is just checking a box.
It is common at my daughter’s high school and neighboring high schools where I have friends with children. It may ALSO be popular on CC, but that is not what I was referring to. I was referring to people and communities that I interact with when not on CC
This I can not comment on. I can only talk about the communities in which I have experience. My community may or may not be representative. It is just one data point. And this data point includes test prep as a very common activity among local high school students applying to private universities. So it is very much a thing here. Not sure about other places which may be quite different.
done in a few months up to perhaps a year with 20-50 hours total prep plus self study
done in a few months (since it is senior year only) with as much study as you want
I don’t see that as “months of test prep” except at the high end of packages 3 and 4. And are packages 1 or 2 going to teach you to do significantly better than Khan Academy can provide for free with a similar amount of effort? What proportion of students opted for more than packages 1 or 2?
4.0+ GPAs may seem common here due to the common use of weighted GPAs, often with very exaggerated weighting.
“My student with 4.7 GPA did not get into any highly selective college…” – but the 4.7 weighted GPA came from a 3.5 unweighted GPA…
High schools that only provide weighted GPA, particularly with exaggerated weighting, are doing students and parents a disservice by making them overconfident. Really, high schools should provide the following GPAs:
Unweighted GPA, overall and academic / college prep courses only.
If the state has a standardized recalculation for state universities, provide that GPA.
Any other GPA used for the high school’s own purposes, like class ranking, if they use any other GPA for that.
I remember spending less than 15 minutes on SAT prep (doing the practice questions in the booklet that had the sign-up form). But when I asked this question of how much prep in another thread, it did seem that my amount of SAT prep was an extreme outlier on the low end compared to students on these forums. Of course, back then, intensive SAT prep was less common than it is now.
USNWR rankings are not purely about academic quality, just as highly selective college admissions in the US are not purely about academic strength/merit/achievement.
Yes, the country is quite different than the small subset we see on CC. About half of high schools qualify as title 1, with an abundance of poor students qualifying for free food.
The testing process is truly an upper middle class concern.
A 4.0 unweighted gpa is below the median at our local public school, which we think of as Lake Wobegon. Apparently weighted classes are worth 5.0 or 6.0 in some cases.
If you take UCs as an example, their holistic reading process is designed to be more scalable. Each application gets read by two or three readers, resulting in a single score (unlike Harvard, where initial readings produce scores in several aspects like academic, extracurricular, athletic, and personal). There was no auto-rejection on stats even when SAT or ACT was required.
Unlike at other schools where a committee then subjectively selects admits from the scored applications, the “committee” for UCs is just a rank ordering of scored applications (within divisions or majors), with specified tie-breaking procedures for the score that crosses the threshold of number of applicants to admit. This means that the “committee” is not a bottleneck that it could be if it were a small group of people making subjective choices among the scored applications.
Note also that UCs do not have most of the usual hooks (no LDC or URM hooks).
I’m sure many of you already saw this, but as another addition to the discussion, the NYT podcast The Daily, had an episode about this topic today based on the article that sparked this entire thread.
The ending articulated the broader issue of the mission of higher education that I’ve referenced in several of my posts. To quote the episode, “What is higher ed for: To make classes more diverse and decrease inequality? Or to create merit-based places where students can reach their potential?” The reporter concludes that both can be possible “…but there is a tension. A system with standardized tests runs the risk of reducing diversity; a system without standardized tests runs the risk of reducing excellence.”
As for the ubiquity of 4.0s, I agree that CC is a bubble in which many people are posting weighted GPAs. But whether we’re talking about a 3.8 or a 4.0 UW, I stand by the statement that straight As (or very near straight As) is much more commonplace due to grade inflation.
Consider the following as but one example: SDSU’s average admitted GPA is a 3.9 (from it’s own website: First-Year Students | SDSU). The middle 50% SAT is 1140-1340 (ACT 23-29), with an average score of 1215. I think high GPAs (with lower than would be expected scores given said GPAs) are fairly common.
This, like much of Leonhardt’s reporting, presents a false choice. Casting a wider net can increase excellence and reward merit because more qualified students get access to elite education. The SAT is not the only way to measure academic potential.
But this is typical of the article and the interview. He completely distorts how college admissions decisions are made in order to shill for the tests. For example, over and over again he premises his comments on the false assumption, “colleges just use grades.” They don’t. It is ridiculous to suggest they do. He knows this, or should know it. But an honest comparison - one that compares how admissions actually works with and without the tests - doesn’t support his narrative, so he ignores it, as do most other posters here. And posters in this thread rely on the same false pretense. See for example the first post where @hebegebe puts forth this same meaningless comparison, standardized tests vs. “grades alone.” Yet elsewhere @hebegebe admits that as other factors are considered beyond raw grades, the predictive value declines until the point that the added value is very often very, very low. In other words, if we look at how admissions decisions are actually made, the bombastic claim that the SAT is an “excellent predictor” falls apart.
This isn’t to say MIT is wrong. Given the constraints MIT has placed on the process (no TO will ever be considered, virtually all students must take the same high level math (or higher) from the beginning) it is easy to see why MIT might find value in the test. But again this comparison has little value, because other schools are not MIT and they don’t place the same constraints on their requirements.
