Few schools, even T30, actually have many winners of the IMO or ISEF applying. For the more typical “average excellent” applicants, I think it is hard to distinguish academic differences due to score compression and grade inflation. Given the prevalence of 1550 scores/4.0 gpa kids, there are few indicia of differences except for the few taking outside tests like AIME.
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Well, many admissions people, including myself, say they don’t need tests to identify applicants who will succeed at their school. I agree there is grade inflation, but when looking at transcripts and the rest of the application there are differences between 4.0/high GPA students. Again, it’s holistic admissions (at the schools everyone is always hyper focused on). It’s just not that hard to make choices between applicants whether there are test scores or not.
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I don’t know where you work, but selective schools say they could fill their classes many times over with applicants who could succeed at their schools. Princeton says it gets applications from 18,000 kids that it could interchangeably admit without any diminishment in quality of the class. But it can only make offers to 2,000 of those kids. Are you saying it’s not that hard for Princeton to decide which of those kids to admit? I think many folks on CC would find that very interesting.
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As others have said, re-centering plus a lot of compression at the top is what has happened to the SAT. Top colleges have 75% of the kids with 98th-99th%ile scores, so if you somehow get in and attend in a tough major and have a score that is excellent by normal standards but is "only " 93%ile(1410), it may end up correlating to being well below the average in most curve-based classes. Not everyone agrees with the premise, but that is why those comments pop up. When we attended top schools back in the day, only about 1/4-1/3 of the students had 98-99th%ile SATs (Duke showed parents this data in fall of 2021 to make it clear how much smarter and more competitive the student population is now compared to the early 90s; they had ivy graphs too–all similar trends).
After going through this twice, and using real world data as well, it is not a lottery and unhooked kids DO get in. There are kids who get into several T25unis/Top LACs, and a subset of them get in to multiple ivy/ivy-plus/Top10 ranked universities, as unhooked candidates. There are other students that on paper seem to be similar as far as SAT 1500+/4.0uw yet are shut out of all T30s. That is because we do not see the full app here: the SAT score is just one factor, and it is not as important as your student’s transcript: they need to take the most rigorous courseload the HS school offers, and get almost all As. Rigor is more important than GPA (or SAT). Then they have to be able to write compelling essays, have good LORs , and have at least 1-2 meaningful ECs (sport vs art vs volunteering does not seem to matter). Read Jeff Selingo’s book (I did not read it until D21 was already halfway through HS–luckily she had already made decisions to take the hardest courses).
Read the MIT “Applying Sideways” blog: it applies to every T25/topLAC school we toured. There is a lot more to it than SAT.
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@ucbalumnus thanks for this. I guess I’m not as smart as I used to be because I can’t figure out how to use the second conversion.
In the 1980s I scored 590 verbal and 760 math Total 1350
Using the first conversion that converts to 1460. How do I use the second one?
FWIW in the 1980s with that 1350 I got in to Stanford, Penn and Brown. Rejected from Harvard. Would never happen today!!
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The curves change from test to test too. My dad missed a single math question, a careless mistake on the easiest type question, and still got an 800. Our son did the exact same thing, made a careless mistake on an easiest question, missed only that one, but was marked down to 760.
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I agre with you that it is pretty easy to identify which applicants will be able to graduate at your college( most will). That doesn’t mean you are able to differentiate academic ability, except in the most broad terms. That may be sufficient for you.
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" It’s just not that hard to make choices between applicants whether there are test scores or not."
That admissions people would say this doesn’t surprise me for 3 reasons:
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Many applicants will succeed at most schools (places like MIT and Caltech excepted.) I have seen this up close with barely above average recruited athletes succeeding just fine at Ivys, Stanford etc.
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Admissions people have a short term (the next 4 years) definition of aptitude. Of the 3 graduates of my high school who have had outstanding success as adults, only 1 showed “aptitude” apparent to AOs at the time.
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Motivated thinking. It’s human nature. As a doctor, I like to think that what I do is both vital and based on best practices. Deep in my heart, though, I have to admit a good 90% of what I do is probably worthless, and I have seen enough reversals of “best practices” over the years to realize that a lot of the time I don’t know what I don’t know (because nobody does yet.) I have to guess it’s the same for any profession including AOs
ETA: if you strictly are talking about standardized tests, I agree there are methods to admit without these, that work (well enough for the college’s purposes.)
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That’s not what I said.
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You said you don’t need tests to determine applicants who will succeed at your school. That is true. In all likelihood, most applicants will, particularly if you consider graduating in any major as succeeding at your school.
However, properly calibrated tests could help you identify truly exceptional academic talent, if that is of interest to your school. It may not be.
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Preparation
Hard work
Time commitment
availability of better study aids.
IMO: SAT is not easier now than before. Just people spent more time and effort using what is available now.
It’s like watching sports. Once someone does a move and everyone else got to see it on film, then everyone else starts doing them.
Rubix Cube is another example: any kid watching a 15 min YT video can solve it in less than 19 seconds now. Unthinkable in 1982.
Testing strategy and expensive tutoring do not teach you the material; instead they teach testing technique to “pick” out answers. Kids now happily spent months preparing. My nephew spent 4 months. He has a friend who spent 3 years for that 1600.
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Two other factors.
Post the recession, people focused on STEM majors which tend to have higher scoring students.
With test-optional, the people who report are a high-scoring subset which masks reality.
Now multiply those two factors…
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Plus people apply to sooo many schools. There are not more actual kids. They just submit 10x more applications than 40 years ago.
Back in 1989, I applied to three schools. Most of my class mates do 1-5. Now many students apply to 10-20. Some will do 30+. My own kid applied to 20. The same kid will get into more than 10 while another will get rejected/WL by their 10+ schools. It’s insane.
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Some do, sure. Plenty of kids get 99th%ile scores with no/minimum prep, have consistently scored the same on tests over many years, and knock out the middle of the 1500s on the first try. I do agree with you, though, part of the reason so many score so high is the people who do insane amounts of prep to get their 27 ACT to a 34, or their 1500 is a superscore after 6 tries and 2 years of prep. I think there are other parts of the app that help distinguish the intensive-preppers from the not.
That’s why when my nephew didn’t get into his top 5 choices and his 1600 friend didn’t get in to his top three, I told my kid to not bother spending that time.
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I do question this, though. I have a few friends who tell me their kids got 1550+ with zero studying. I think of this as boys “locker room” talk.
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Plenty as in the portion of that 1% who do it this way.
I suppose plenty in the world of large #s is possible…but relative to the total pile it’s not plenty.
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Was having a very similar conversation about SAT scores with my cousin. We both went to T20 schools with what we thought were good, but not necessarily great SAT scores back in the day. Both of our schools are now MUCH more selective, with much higher SAT scores. Even after running the conversions (both conversations because we’re old), our SAT scores would be at the low end of accepted students whereas we were both decidedly mid-pack at the time.
The times, they are a’changin!
I think a really high SAT score only helps if you are in a target demographic that the school wants.
If you are an average excellent student from an upper income suburban household, it adds almost nothing.
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Yeah, but how much did you study?
I bet if you had a $200/hr (at least three of my co-workers are spending this) tutor and spent an entire summer you would have gotten 1500+.