The Misguided War on the SAT

Parents Forum
995

I think you have a kid who was fine getting into a high ranked UC. I agree that makes the stress lower when the main question is will a top 1-2% kid get into Berkeley or settle for UCSB/UCD etc.

But our friend group has boys in the 10-25% range with UW GPAs in the range of 3.7-3.8. Now they are marginal for most UCs (until he got off the waitlist my S was only offered Merced which doesn’t have his major) and unless they settle for CSUs or CC, they have to pursue WUE and similar cheap OOS publics in parallel. Many require test scores if you want to get decent merit but don’t have close to 4.0 GPA. Sure, privileged parents may not deserve much sympathy, but it’s simply not true that test blind has lowered stress for the majority of privileged CA parents.

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996

Your opinion although probably accurate is a very nuanced view. It’s a hard sell to a lot of people who don’t appreciate or agree with the subtlety. Most of us were brought up with the idea that a properly constructed test is the best artificial construct to measure aptitude and mastery across a group of individuals. Many of us have to take a series of tests to advance to the next stage of the education or employment process. Standardized tests have fallen out of favor in other venues, too. Is that the wave of the future?

997

Do you have any reference for this? Few of the test blind kids would have graduated, and there is no preemptive decline in reported outcomes from available classes. Caltech also has reported that the kids with and without scores had similar performance in classes (mentioned in podcast).

Tech employers tend to have their own means of evaluating how well applicants have learned relevant college course material (not the same as checking SAT score) and how well they expect the student will perform on the job, rather than assume grads of a particular school name will be qualified/unqualified.

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998

That doesn’t align with experience.

My sibling has colleagues in the valley. Those families are not that stressed about entry into UCs even before T-blind. Those families are surprised over the outcry for entry into UCB or UCLA.

My friend helps out at his kids’ HS for college counseling (Bay Area). Those kids are bending over backwards with DE and other CC classes, UC extension classes, travel sports, volunteering, summer programs… to get into UCBerkeley. The Bay Area families hate it, and the confusing results from UCB. Unpredictable results from UCB alongside other T10 acceptances. It’s done nothing for reducing stress, and if it has it’s for areas that apparently didn’t experience stress.

Those that can afford it are choosing out of state and out of state privates… all the while we are talking about UC budget issues.

But this isn’t really a product of TO, is it?
…
Why not focus on breaking down the perception that a kid can earn entry because they got X test score, or did Y trip abroad? Why not emphasize that it is beyond the kids control. Because it is. They might as well pursue their passions, or get a job, or be true to themselves, because going to school X isn’t something they can check boxes and earn. It is out of their hands.

Of course not a product of TO/T-blind but TO/T-blind makes it worse as indicated above. They broke the perception that tests can get them in, and now they are going nuts doing other things like taking more classes. Focusing on getting rid of tests like you’re suggesting is missing the mark. The issue lies deeper than tests. It’s wanting to get into top schools as I mentioned way back on this thread. And as MITChris said: “everybody wants to determine how kids get into college” (paraphrase)… yes it’s about control… families feel so helpless that they want someone to throw them a bone.

“It is out of their hands”… sounds like a lottery :smile:

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999

Of course I agree we need better primary education.

But this is often used as an excuse/justification to keep kids out of higher education despite their potential, and I don’t agree with that. Colleges have always accepted students with a wide range of abilities. For some (not for you) it only seems to become an issue when they happen to come from disadvantaged backgrounds.

I also disagree with the suggestion that the kids who are being accepted to these institutions through TO programs are somehow unqualified to attend these institutions. I don’t think there is any evidence to support that, but I’d be glad to consider it it if there is.

_________________________-

College admissions is also nuanced.

Are these tests pass/fail? Or are you given a granular score then ranked against all the others who took the test, with only a thin percentage of the highest scorers advancing, whether or not those who didn’t make the cut had sufficiently mastered the material?

@RWatterson in my experience what you are describing existed exactly the same way prior to TO.

The “perception that test can get you in” was a common misperception. People who falsely assumed that the tests were the key were wrong, and most of them they found that out after it was too late. Keeping the tests would perpetuate the fantasy, but it wouldn’t change how admissions works. Faking them out by feeding the testing frenzy works for the test industry, but not so much for the families who’re duped.

Call it what you want, but it is out of their hands. Are you suggesting that we perpetuate the illusion that they are in control when they are not? Seems inefficient and cruel.

1000

Both

1001

She only applied to one UC (UCB) - the rest were all CSUs (Cal State East Bay, SJSU, SFSU). She was happy with any of those, and all CSUs very accessible since she applied to a non-impacted major, so it has nothing to do with being “a top 1%-2% student.”

And for financial reasons she was always more likely to end up at a UC or a CSU. Therefore, that’s where she placed her focus and, since they are all test blind, that alleviated a great deal of stress. She knew the two privates were long shots for financial reasons, so she shot her shot and assumed a CSU was the most likely outcome, with hope for a UC.

She was fine with that outcome and didn’t consider it “settling.” They are all fine schools and an excellent value. And California state sweetens the pot by offering need-based Cal grants and the Middle Class Scholarship - while Cal grants can be applied to any California college, the size of the grant is larger if you go to a public college (UC or CSU). So all signs pointed to a CA public college, whether Cal or one of the CSUs she had applied to.

And that did indeed alleviate A LOT of stress, precisely because we are “typical donut hole families in CA who can’t afford the luxury of full pay private colleges.”

My daughter never considered this “settling.” This would have been a fine outcome. In fact, a CSU was always the most likely outcome. She ended up getting into UCB, however, and that’s where she ended up going. But otherwise likely would have gone to SFSU or SJSU.

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1002

I am not sure that I understand the argument that re-introducing tests will somehow make admissions at highly selective schools more transparent or predictable. So far as I can remember, prior to TO plenty of very high scoring kids with excellent applications were routinely denied at top schools. No test score has ever guaranteed any result (in fact I recall reading that 2/3 of 1600 scorers went on to be denied at Harvard). I’m not opposed to testing per se, and in some cases (like MIT), when a base level of math competency is required for success, they may make sense. What I push back against is the idea that TO applicants are not going to be successful in college. Most long-term data from colleges that have been TO for a significant period of time doesn’t support that.

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1003

Is it really asking so much that a state’s flagship guarantee to admit those residents with a threshold gpa and test score? The student would be academically qualified. They would know they have guaranteed admission, thus reducing stress. They might even remain in-state, which would help that state.

I am not a big fan of the Texas system, but students usually know all through public high school where (for public college) they will get in, guaranteed, and it is confirmed in June of junior year.

We have many immigrants in Texas, and this system is one of the things they like best. The black box of holistic admissions reminds them of the corrupt admissions in the third world countries some left.

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1004

Depends on the size of the flagship relative to the size of the well qualified applicants population.

California does have such a guarantee if you consider the UC system as the flagship (and size-wise relative to population, it is more similar to many other states flagships).

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1005

I don’t know about others but I was thinking the other way around: transparency would help reduce the obsession over testing (or gpa or ECs for that matter). Like some athletic recruits are given some test target to become eligible for recruiting… yeah it’s a different process, but I assure you the stress is less since you know whether you meet the target or not.

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1006

In California, yes. There would still be far more students than available spots. That’s why there are multiple campuses with there is the 9% guarantee that the top students will get into one of the campuses (in recent years, Merced, but there were also some Riverside acceptances, too). This is reasonable. It is a huge state with a large population. You can’t fit even the top X% into the flagship(s) and even if you could increase class size and hire more instructors, there wouldn’t be enough housing for them all. There is already a dire housing shortage at a few campuses. So it just wouldn’t be feasible.

The top 9% guarantee is the compromise to ensure that the top students can attend a UC, if they want to do that. It won’t be the flagship, but it still promises an excellent UC education at a great price.

Some CSUs also offer guaranteed admission for students in their service area with a certain GPA (students at my daughter’s school have guaranteed admission to Cal State East Bay, if they maintain a certain GPA - I forget exactly what it was, though.)

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1007

It doesn’t seem to be enough to satisfy most Cali parents. Perhaps if there were efforts made to actually equalize the student body at those disparate campuses, it would work.
Telling top students they can get in somewhere is not useful if that somewhere is highly undesirable. They already knew some open enrollment place would take them. They will leave the state instead if they can.

Similarly, telling students that college attendance is utterly outside their control seems to deprive them of agency. If it is all a lottery anyway, there is little reason to try.

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1008

I’m curious now :slight_smile: I’m very happy for your daughter getting into UCB. I think I’d agree that with regards to testing alone the stress is less with test blind (of course). Curious about any DE or CC courses or such for her? Or was is restricted to APs/IBs offered at her school? I don’t mean to pry, but I’m more into discovering/learning things here and your daughter’s case is interesting.

Was this college of L&S or Eng? If you’re not comfortable, please feel free to ignore.

Yes, but not exactly as it’s worse now than before now that we have t-blind. So t-blind = more stress for my chunk of the Bay Area.

Call it what you want, but it is out of their hands. Are you suggesting that we perpetuate the illusion that they are in control when they are not? Seems inefficient and cruel.

There is no illusion. They know tests don’t matter so they will work on other things in the application, some/many to the point that they are stressed.

So many kids are doing travel sports now that it is practically impossible to get on a college team (outside of football) without some financial means. One can complain about country club sports, but we’re also talking basketball and baseball. There is no end to achievement chasing… with or without testing… TO/T-blind is not a solution… a tradeoff but it’s not relieving stress in many suburbs and I’d wager that other ramifications will be felt in due time

1009

Yes, she took several DE classes, mostly for fun. She took them in subjects she was curious about but not offered at her school (philosophy, anthropology, sociology - she liked the philosophy classes so much, she is considering double majoring in it). She only took 4 AP classes (out of approx 15 offered) and her school doesn’t offer any IB classes so obviously did not take any of those.

Neither! CNR.

Of course not everyone is satisfied. How can anything satisfy nearly 40 million people? Personally, I think we are very fortunate to have a great system of UCs and a great system of CSUs, with enough variety in terms of location and accessibility/selectivity that just about every student can find a home at one of the campuses. And then to have Cal grants and the Middle Class Scholarship to help pay for them is really great (although we’ll see what the new FAFSA does to that). And, on top of all of that, we have free community colleges and the TAG program which guarantees transfer to a UC (if that is your goal) if you meet the minimum requirements. To me, that is fantastic. I’m honestly not sure what more California could reasonably do to make higher education more accessible to a broader population of students. Of course it’s not perfect. But it offers a whole lot, in my opinion.

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1010

Transparency would be great, but it is never going to happen (whether or not testing comes back) at top schools. They have such an overabundance of well qualified applicants they don’t need to be transparent. Also, they don’t have a uniform “target” from what I can tell. The “required” gpa/test score/course rigor fluctuates depending on whether or not you are hooked and how much they want you. They don’t want to make that clear because, to be frank, it opens them up to further lawsuits. It’s one reason I don’t think tests are coming back - the lack of them allows those schools maximum flexibility to choose the class they want without worrying about a lawsuit by a group of disgruntled students with higher test scores that weren’t admitted.

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1011

A combination of high GPA and test score does not mean a student must be academically qualified, regardless of scores. Most studies also find the combination only explains a small minority of academic success in college. For example, the STTF task force study found the combination of HS GPA + SAT explained 2% of variance in first year retention, 7% of variance in graduation rate, 4% of variance in freshman writing grade, and 8% of variance in organic chemistry grade. All are statistically significant, but explaining 2-8% of variance is far from a strong predictor of these types of measures of academic success.

Part of the problem relates to using a simple stat threshold as you describe, rather than reviewing with more context. For example, rather than just look at average HS GPA in isolation, you consider the GPA in the context of the grade distribution at that particular HS, whether courses are rigorous and relevant to desired major, how the student performed in specific classes that are most relevant to major, whether the grades crashed in the most recent year or most recent year was straight A’s, … The rest of the application also adds to the predictive power, some sections more than others.

Using a stat threshold is more of a shortcut rather than a reliable indicator of college performance. That shortcut can be a good option for typical publics that admit the overwhelming of applicants. If a college admits 80% of applicants, it’s straightforward to offer a simple guaranteed admission stat threshold for students that are unlikely to be in the bottom 20% that would be rejected under a more complex admission system.

However, in many states, flagships are more selective. For example, UCLA had a 9% admit rate last year. With only a 9% admit rate, if you admit based on purely on stats out of context, then you are likely to only admit students with the pinnacle of highest stats, rather than most deserving or most likely to be successful. The California public system does have an option for guaranteed admission based on stats for most colleges, just not colleges as selective as UCLA.

1012

Some of you know that after I retired, I became a full-time volunteer college coach with a particular goal of helping students from low-income families.

One of the families I am working with lives in California. The dad reached out to me because their daughter had a disastrous time with her college admissions, and he wanted help to make sure his son didn’t suffer the same fate.

The family lives in a relatively wealthy south bay suburb, but the family is low-income (complicated to explain). I never saw the daughter’s transcript, but I was told that she “stumbled a bit” freshman year and then did fine afterwards. But she also became National Merit Finalist, so obviously her grades were pretty good. She also clearly brilliant as evidenced by some of her extracurriculars.

As the dad admits, “mistakes were made” with respect to college admissions, and that the public high school counselors didn’t offer much guidance. All the private colleges she applied to were high reaches. But she also applied to a number of UCs, including (from memory) UCB, UCLA, UCI, UCSD, and UCSC.

She ended up with 14 rejections, no admittances, and a few waitlists. Her test scores were no longer considered that year for California colleges, so that didn’t help her at all. Fortunately the University of Oregon decided to reach out and offer her admission, even though she had not applied, perhaps because of National Merit. And she eventually got off the waitlist at UCSC, which she is attending.

This is the type of of “collateral damage” that is a natural part of an obscure college decision process, particularly for state universities. While those who spend a lot of time on CC could have pointed out the mistake of applying to only high reaches outside of CA, they didn’t expect an initial shutout from all the UCs they applied to.

For state universities at least, we need a better way.

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1013

First, obsession over testing didn’t begin with TO. It long predated the recent changes. (As for your speculation about how things are different now, that isn’t my experience, and we’ll just have to agree to disagree.)

Second, what is the information which provided “transparency” before TO is lacking now? Take Harvard for example, even if kids met the 25% or 75% threshold their odds of acceptance were very long without something more. And now the odds are still very long without something more. Applicants may have falsely believed that they had a good shot based on meeting one of these thresholds, but without more they did not. They still do not.

So where is the “transparency” before that has now ceased to exist?

I love the disses of the California schools. Six of the UCs are rated in the top 35 in the USNWR ratings, and all are in the top 75. (For comparison, Texas is at 33.)

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1014

But what exactly would transparency look like? If you have X GPA and X SAT score, then you are guaranteed to get in? You would still likely have far more qualified students than spots (especially when wealthy, ambitious parents can pay for tutors and such to give their kids the best chance of reaching the designated thresholds). What then? This is a sincere question. How would a college truly go about transparency, taking into account that there are more students then spots, and there would need to be various “tie breakers” among equally qualified applicants? And is there any role for diversity and equity among FGLI students or would all metrics be purely objectively evaluated? I am honestly not sure how one would go about that in a way that would satisfy people concerned about lack of transparency.

OK, but what would that be, in your opinion?

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