My son is a junior and took the ACT (35) and SAT Subject Tests (Math 2 790 and Biology 760) at the end of his sophomore year. I see that these tests are no longer required for the University of California. Will it still look good for him to send his test scores in? Will it impact his application more or less now that others won’t have to take them? He plans to major in engineering and his first choice school is UCSD. Thank you for any information.
OMG – the Smarter Balanced Assessments? Talk about going from bad to worse. I’m no big fan of CB, but whoever made those tests was … definitely worse. Those tests are awful.
Not only that, but Cali kids who want to apply elsewhere will still have to take an ACT or SAT.
Many schools still aren’t TO, and for the ones that are it is still an advantage to have a good test score. Test scores are still sometimes required for merit aid. Test optional is not test blind.
Lastly, as I said above, many TO schools limit the number of TO applicants they will accept because of the potential negative impact on USNWR rankings.
There has been talk about using the CAASPP which California students are required to take in 11th grade. Several California school districts have lobbied unsuccessfully to drop the 11th grade CAASPP and use the SAT/ACT instead.
The CSU system is already using CAASPP scores for placement.
Yeah, as I said in another thread, I’m not seeing how this does much of anything but benefit the UC system as a whole because it will likely preserve the universities’ rankings during a time when lots of other schools are going test optional too. On the other hand, I’m not sure they have much choice if applicants can’t take the tests.
How will that work if they are “test blind” in 2023 and 2024, which presumably means not even collecting test score data? Wouldn’t the lack of any test data mean they couldn’t be ranked at all based on the current USNWR formula?
If I were USNWR I would be moving fast to change my ranking methodology (at least the standardized testing part), lest they end up in a similar place to CB and ACT.
I have no idea. My view is they are projecting what they may do, not what actually comes to pass. But, full disclosure: I’m very cynical about the way things are run in the UC system generally, so that very likely colors my view. Also, it seems USNWR may well have no choice but to change their methodology if SAT/ACT exams are not accessible by anyone over the next year or two or three.
As if the public school system isn’t already failing kids enough, let’s just take away the only reliable tool a college can determine if the student has actually learned over the last 4 years. The result is going to be MORE discrimination. Since the standard is taken away, these selective UC schools are going to have to rank high schools, because you can’t trust a GPA from public schools. That’s why the SAT exists! Minority schools are going to the bottom of the ranking heap!
When California changed its testing a few years ago, many 11th grade students opted out of taking the CAASPP. https://edsource.org/2015/11th-graders-opt-out-of-common-core-tests-to-study-for-others/79975 which led to USNWR rankings dropping at those schools.
If the UCs use CAASPP in their evaluation, districts like Palo Alto, Calabassas and Palos Verdes would have less students opting out.
If USNWR already considers CAASPP scores in their HS rankings, I would imagine they would use them for CSU/UC rankings as well.
Does anyone know how the UC plans to deal with athletes? Won’t athletes for UC Division I sports teams still need to submit scores?
So, in less than five months, the UCs have gone from requiring the submission of all SAT test scores for tests taken by the applicant, to no longer having any kind of “all scores” rule," to waiving the SAT/ACT requirement and making the tests optional for next fall’s applicants due to Covid-19, to now making them optional for the next two years, and unusable thereafter. That future creation of its own test was probably something thrown in to assure getting the number of votes needed to eliminate use of the SAT/ACT tests entirely.
Not mentioned is anything about SAT subject tests, which are recommended by some of the UCs for some of the majors. Thus, I assume those recommendations remain, at least until further notice.
A California question now becomes what are the Cal States going to do with their SAT/ACT test requirement. The loss of the UCs will be a significant financial blow to College Board (also to the ACT, but less so because the SAT is the more prevalent test in California). If this spreads to the Cal States and also to a lot of other universities, the potential exists not just for many colleges not requiring the tests, but for the two testing agencies to be in financial distress and possibly gone or reorganized to shells of their current existence.
As of right now that is correct, but remember test optional is not test blind. Many students are still going to submit scores, especially those with strong ones.
DI/II athletes will have to submit test scores unless the NCAA gives this class a pass, as they did with class of 2020. Recruited athletes from class of 2021 can take tests through May of 2021 to fulfill that requirement.
I expect it will come down to whether or not there is accessibility to tests, whether paper based, online in schools, or online at home this Fall/Winter.
@Mwfan1921 Do you think this moves the goal posts on what counts as a “strong score” for non-athletes?
I don’t really know. This was being discussed on another thread with support that test scores might go down, or they might go up (at TO schools).
I tend to think they will go up because submitters usually have good scores (but not always), and better students tend to take the tests earlier so many of the relatively stronger students from the class of 2021 may already have good scores in hand.
But nothing would surprise me anymore, lol!
I doubt the CSUs could possibly remain test optional for long. Their application is based on two things: standardized test scores and capped, weighted GPA. (Well, SLO has its own secret sauce, but for the most part those are the main components of the application). Assuming the exams can be administered at some point in the near future on a regular basis, I don’t see how the SAT or the ACT are going away. There needs to be some objective measure for college applicants across the country – something by which to compare in-state and out of state applicants. If these tests go away entirely, I see the admissions process at all schools getting less objective and giving more weight to factors related to wealth and privilege, such as fancy, expensive summer programs, and things that more privileged students have access to, such as better extracurricular opportunities and guidance counseling. Are the tests imperfect and could they be improved? Sure. Will they go away entirely? I hope not.
CSUs are already test blind for this fall.
Agree with above comments that this will make admissions even less transparent. Actual applied rigor and grading standards are already all over the board, and this could be true even within the same high school if multiple teachers teach the same course. Colleges that practice “holistic” admissions already factor in wealth and privilege, the common complaint about an unequal playing field created by standardized test scores. Seems like the baby is being thrown out with the bathwater based on politics.
This is all about increasing favored minority representation. Think of it as the de facto repeal of Prop 209 as regards the UC system. There will be even less room for qualified Asians and whites in the UC system going forward.
Long term, this is good news for up and coming state flagships in red states.
Lots in common here with the move to pass/no pass. The argument is made based on not discriminating against poor students, but those are the people for whom objective measures are their only way to stand out, because they don’t have the social connections to find jobs and other opportunities regardless of their GPA. Thus the benefits flow to wealthy and hooked students who no longer end up looking bad against their peers on objective measures. As I pointed out earlier, it’s the Varsity Blues parents who benefit from this because they no longer need to fake their kids’ SAT scores.
I would be interested to see a map of which CA school districts moved to mandated pass/no pass this semester (apparently only 20% of them did). I bet it’s highly correlated with the richest school districts (like ours) not the poorest, in the same way as mandated pass/no pass in colleges is only happening at the tippy top colleges filled with wealthy students.