The school is trying to identify those students who manage a 1350, from a school where mean is 1000. The grades are usually normalized for the school (its not like someone will have a 4.0 when everyone else has a 3.0) so becomes harder to identify those stand out individuals on GPA alone.
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I just checked a fairly well known private in the bay area and their school profile lists 18% of the class as having an unweighted 4.00.
I understand that. But every applicant file contains the applicant transcript, the school profile (listing the class demographics including GPA distribution, class standardized test score distribution, advanced class offerings and AP test results), letters of recommendations from multiple school faculty, extracurricular activities, and personal statements. Why does Dartmouth feel they need the additional confirmation of a test score to determine whether a specific individual stands out in his/her class? If they do, it seems to me that they are looking for some sort of benchmark (school or district specific) to confirm that impression.
No one gets in on SAT alone. In holistic admissions it is used to confirm the story the rest of the application already tells. Presumably this is why you see less of a variation in TO acceptances at well know/more affluent schools in the Dartmouth data.
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Talented students who attend poor schools may not stand out if their school has grade inflation/compression, teachers inexperienced in writing reference letters, no money/time for extracurriculars, and an unsophisticated understanding of the admissions process. Good scores can help identify them.
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I can only speculate but if one believes that GPA alone has become an increasingly unreliable measure of accomplishment with grade inflation and the pressure to keep kids moving during COVID you need confirmatory data beyond GPA. The easing up on grades may have been done with the best of intentions to keep kids moving during the pandemic but like social programs these things become impossible to dial back so we now have a new norm.
However, if you have a test score as well as the metrics for a school, zip code, region, etc. you have something that can help provide confirmation. The score itself may not be impressive but if that score is 3 SD above the mean for the school, zip code, etc. you can be reasonably sure that the test taker is excelling within their environment.
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Yes, this is a real danger in the present landscape. More and more states are moving to replace their standard 10th/11th exams with a free-to-the-student SAT test day, though, which will hopefully counteract it. SAT School Day - SAT Suite | College Board
Even California was on this train though I donât know if itâs derailed.
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yeah, CA âsignaledâ that they were gonna jump on board, but that was never gonna happen. The politics against accepting a standardized test (not written by California educators) are just too large.
btw; thank you so much for contributing to cc, MITChris. Your posts are helpful. (Hope that you are receiving hazard pay. hahahaha)
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There are also 13 states that administer the ACT statewide.
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They didnât say 1350 on NPR, they said 1450/1500. To me, that says their default score is 1550/1600. They basically donât want the kids from affluent communities and schools who score less than that. Because âanyoneâ can get that highâŠif you canât, then you arenât wanted. Perception is that a high SAT is what translates to being âsmartâ.
So, luckily for the rest of us, there are still big state schools where even our learning disabled and âlowâ test takers can attend and succeed. I shouldnât speak too soon, though. Iâm sure some of those schools would love to require the SAT again as it might minimize the number of applications.
Plenty of state schools publish that they require, or offer auto admission to, students with very average SAT scores.
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Who is âtheyâ?
Someone from Dartmouth. I came into interview late, and obviously this topic frustrates me so I didnât listen for too long.
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Yes. My kids are at state schools and got into the same ones, three years apart. Theyâre doing great. One didnât submit scores to where heâs attending; counselor said theyâd hurt him. (Our oldest was waitlisted at that same school in 2020, and chose not to attend when accepted.)
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Darthmouth is already and outlier in and of itself. You are already catering to an outlier demographic. There are a lot of variables in the study that affect GPA that are not taken in and of itself, namely ECâs etc⊠It is normal to assume that someone who preps and nails a 1500 GPA is going to work hard to get a 4.0 GPA. But, why is âsuccessâ measured solely based on GPA? it seems like it is a stacked deck as to what conclusion you will reach.
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My D23 attended a Title 1 school, and its school profile included very little useful info and certainly no GPA distribution or class standardized test score distribution. I think a really helpful, easy-to-read school profile is much less likely at an underresourced high school than at a well-resourced one. They are not standardized.
Can confirm helpful, not standardized, skewed toward less likely to be present in less-resourced highschools where they would be especially useful.
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This is interesting I always assumed they were standardized, like a university Common Data Set. This needs to change.
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One thing I am not clear on the study. If a student didnât submit a test score, how do they fit into the sample size. Is it just kids who submitted test scores? I remain concerned that there is still this notion that college success is governed by your GPA score. It is logical that SAT and GPA would correlate because they are based on the same underlying assumption.
Sometimes. Some schools request test scores upon matriculation.