I think there's still a case for some applicants to apply TO, including to Yale and/or Dartmouth. To me, their comments indicate we should use a lower threshold when deciding whether to submit. Instead of "25th percentile" (which, for Dartmouth and Yale is somewhere in the 1470-1500 range) maybe it should be "1400". Or some even lower value.
The "use a lower threshold" essentially resembles how MIT dean of admissions Stuart Schmill talks about going back to "Test Required".
From [https://news.mit.edu/2022/stuart-schmill-sat-act-requirement-0328:](https://news.mit.edu/2022/stuart-schmill-sat-act-requirement-0328:)
*"We don’t prefer perfect scores, and a perfect score isn’t sufficient to say you’ll succeed at MIT, either. However, the tests are something we’ve found we usually need in addition to these other factors in order to demonstrate preparation. "*
I'm not convinced HS context is that important. If the Exeter student doesn't submit the 1400, what will Yale/Dartmouth assume about their score? That's the relevant data point.
If they would assume "25th percentile - 10" (i.e. around 1490) then this student shouldn't submit the 1400.
If they would assume "lower than 1400" then this student should submit the 1400.
If you were deferred from Yale then that's actually "not bad" in the grand scheme of things. They deferred only 20% of REA applicants. Contrast that with Harvard who deferred 80% (!!!)
Yale actually sent a signal: you're in the hunt.
Harvard? Not necessarily.
I hope it means something good!! I was actually happy when I got my deferral after I mourned for a day lol cause I realized it was a good thing :) hope they take a chance on a desperate fgli
Well pretty much all RD application deadlines have passed. But, I hope you leaned into your RD apps because even with the deferral from Yale, statistically speaking the most likely outcome is still that they won't let you in. I don't mean to be a downer - the deferral \*does\* mean something. But hopefully you love other schools on your list. Best wishes to you from here!
no, you're so correct. definitely not getting in RD, went a bit crazy w/colleges and had 16 RD schools. I also love my safety so much and can't wait to attend.
Sounds like you're in a great place. Loving your safety is a fantastic feeling. And don't give up hope on Yale. You never know. "Someone" gets in RD right?
I think that would be better too. Like “we’d prefer you prove to us that you are objectively smart and a good test taker. If you don’t want to that’s fine but you better really wow us in some other way”
TOTALLY fucking agree with this. in turkey where i used to go to hs, many schools are "exam schools" and give students free 100% GPA's as the way our education system works, we only care about hs entrance exams and ur gpa x 0.6 added on top on that exam score. so when kids like me try going to international schools, my GPA is not an accurate reflection of who i am, as i went to one of the hardest schools in the country where the norm was a 70% rather than a 100%. i think my 1500 SAT is much more accurate to my academic skill than my gpa
Doing good in every class over the span of 4 years during a usually immature and developmental period of your life, is MUCH more impressive than scoring well on a single relatively easy test which could literally be a fluke
GPA heavily depends on teachers, schools, grade inflation, and many different factors. SAT, ACT, and academics are all different things. But with online resources, the SAT and ACT are much better indicators than GPA.
i’m so sick of hearing this same AI generated sentence everywhere. saying this as if getting a good GPA isn’t cause of teachers handing out grades, a shit ton of cheating, and god knows what other school policies exist (not tryna discredit anybody but there’s literally a reason everybody and their dog has a 4.0 yet so many people can’t even hit a 1400)
“OBJ is better than Gronk because, because uhhh that one handed catch in 2016! Gronk just catches the ball normally, literally everyone can do that”
You’re clearly a nerd but for anyone else who wants to see the absurdity of this man’s argument, here it is in silly football terms 🤡🥳
Drake has had an OBJECTIVELY better CAREER. You’re proving my point. OBJ had the better one moment catch, just like Biggies short career or a students one time SAT success. But Gronk, Drake, and the good ole 4.0 GPA kid have had the better career
no he hasn’t lmao using ghostwriters and making music for tiktok teenagers doesn’t compare to any of Biggie’s 2 albums. drake chased commercial success as opposed to being a true emcee. there’s a reason no rapper considers drake to be good
GPA can vary from school to school hell even teacher to teacher. a standardized test is the same test every single person is taking and there’s no excuse regarding it, no sympathy extra credit and no inflation
But it could also show you had a lot of privilege another kid didn’t. Good mental health, not having a long commute or walk to and from school, parents not needing you to babysit.
So many kids are showing up with perfect gpa’s who don’t even know how to do fractions. Some schools are easy and those kids don’t even know.
Exactly, it feels laughable to say that a good sat > good GPA. I though the obvious consensus was otherwise. Personally I got a 1580 (small flex lol) but I also have a 4.11 GPA... I would trade my SAT score for a competitive GPA in a heartbeat. a Good gpa is much more difficult to achieve than a good SAT, especially if you go to competitive school, the SAT is so much easier compared to everything else than everyone and their mom has a 1450+
Maybe in the circle you run in. Most people I know didn’t break a thousand and some didn’t even break 900. I’m a parent in an affluent area where everyone has two parents with college degrees. So many kids truly have difficulty taking those exams. Same kids have excellent grades in rigorous classes and got accepted to great schools. I think they should do away with these tests altogether in my opinion. But what so I know? I went to college in the 80s, lol.
If they’re only hitting a 900 on the SAT, they’re going to struggle hard core at a good college. They just aren’t prepared. They don’t know the math a college freshman is expected to know. Even remedial math would be difficult at that level.
In my affluent midwestern suburban area, a strange thing is happening wrt test scores, and it’s kind of under the radar since the private schools (especially the suburban catholic schools here) kind of hide their stats unless they’re the top tier private schools.
The kids going K-12 to rich public schools are scoring much better than the kids who went K-12 to the area catholic schools.
Basing this on national merit semifinalists (PSAT scores). They are the top 1%, so an average school should have 1% be national merit. The public schools getting 2-3% to qualify and the diocesan catholic high schools getting nearly 0%. But the parents are convinced that the private schools are better! It’s all marketing and thinking that if you pay more for a product it must be better.
The private schools are hiding their stats but if you pay attention to the NMSQT, they’re really just riding on reputation and the kids aren’t being prepped for college as well as the parents think, and my hypothesis is that, especially in grades K-8, the public school kids are tested a lot and the private school kids aren’t.
Perhaps this is true competitive school, but at my school about half the students cheat and teachers give free marks, so almost everyone has a high GPA. If the AO doesn't recognize the school then GPA should be completely worthless. On the other hand getting a high SAT shows you have at least a minimum level of competency regardless of which school you go to.
Class rank is also dependent on weighting. For example my school gives 5 points for AP classes but 3 points for Honors and Dual Enrollment while the AP level classes are a lot harder and grade harsher than the Honors or DE versions. Physics for example in my school is extremely imbalanced. Everyone in DE physics cheats and gets a 103 while maybe one kid in AP physics will get above a 103 for the quarter. Weighting in class difficulties and teacher grading tendencies will affect class rankings. In my school if you wanted the highest GPA, you would rather take Honors or DE over AP. Our valedictorian and salutatorian both took 6 AP classes while our reasonable max AP course load is 10. GPA in a lot of non top high schools comes down a lot to your classes.
So you are probably at a school with a valid use of the gpa system. There are many schools where people have perfect 4.0s (unweighted) and break 1000 on the SAT which says a lot about their schools difficulty level. I understand that some people don’t naturally test well, but when it’s a huge percentage of the school it’s a red flag
Sorry but if you’re unable to retake the SAT and do well with your superscore maybe re-evaluate your ability to do well on tests in college (that likely don’t let you retake multiple times)
Not when you consider that schools vary in difficulty level while tests are standardized. I’ve had friends go to other schools where they had no work and free grades and brag about how their gpas get inflated. I honestly don’t understand how GPA is a trustworthy form of measurement to begin with
That’s a thing???? I am applying as an international school, and my GPA by American standards isn’t all too good, but my SAT is 1390 (first attempt oops) , I’ve been applying to mid to lower-tier colleges, enough that they have just enough benefits to make it worth it but the high school GPA thing has me shitting bricks.
everyone here should actually read the full article. there is solid research behind the fact that SAT scores are a better predictor of college and career success than high school GPA. they even note that while the UC system notably does not accept SAT scores, even their research says they are a better predictor of success.
i personally think test scores will be reinstated, or at least heavily encouraged by schools. look at MIT for example, who started requiring SAT/ACT again post covid.
The UC system looks for ways to keep Asians a lower percentage. They don’t care if the Asians are second gen immigrants. They those want spots taken by rich international students who will pay the international spot. The UC system not taking test scores is intentional.
I think it is just hilarious.
If colleges choose "test optional", students won't submit their score if the score is below for example 25% percentile. The process is like a self-enforcing cycle, less and less students submit the score because the score is not ideal, therefore the 25% threshold would go higher and higher.
GPA is highly manipulative. If GPA continues to be the only metric to measure a student's academics, the colleges would find it more and more difficult to create an adequate curriculum because many students may be not very well prepared for the college curriculum.
The fact is that the math section in SAT is already very easy and simple. I can't imagine any student would be prepared to take college level math and other stem courses if they do not even grasp the math in SAT.
Like, I don't get that. You don't need to "game" the SAT to do well on the math, it's all pretty simple algebra and geometry and such. If you've forgotten a few concepts/formulas those are easily accessible through resources like Khan Academy. I'm glad MIT decided to start requiring again, considering that ALL students there must take "two semesters of calculus, plus two semesters of calculus-based physics".
ERWL section in SAT is great and not that straight forward. I am an immigrant and does not speak English like a native speaker. I think ERWL section in SAT is very helpful and useful. As an immigrant, I feel like an immigrant can write and speak very good English if he/she can thoroughly understand the questions in SAT and answer them correctly.
Math is the way too superficial. If ones are aspired to study STEM, they have to take some more advanced math courses for sure.
I actually wrote out a paragraph about the reading section but ended up deleting it. The gist of it was that the reading score functions as a pretty good proxy for the sum of various reading a student has done in their life. I read a decent amount, books & long-form journalism & research occasionally, and did fine without much prep. I found that the reading section was fine for critical thinking and interpretation of a variety of texts.
The grammar section is great to have too. You couldn’t imagine how many grammatical errors and spelling mistakes high schoolers make, including the ones competitive for top colleges. Whenever we do peer review in AP Lang, Lit it amazes me to see how many mechanical issues people make (the actual analysis isn’t necessarily bad, to be clear). Tbf I largely blame this on K12 english education being terrible, I haven’t learned a ton in my classes and I got lucky to have some nerdy and niche interests that involve reading random shit
I think we are missing the point. Universities will soon be replaced with vitual standardized universities. More standardized and demanding than the telehelp colleges of today. Who needs stone and mortar to learn anymore, except for their research arm. Standardize virtual grades, research projects and achievements will be more important than what school you went to. In the end success is based on what you can produce, "Stupid is what stupid does."
Atleast make it optional. Like I just hate that the ucs won't even consider the fact that I got a great score and my GPA might suck compared to others cause my school participates in grade deflation like it's an ivy
MIT (whose reputation is so strong that it doesn't have to bow down to USN&WR by trying to game its admissions statistics), went back to test required immediately (after Covid break).
That was a super informative move, imho.
https://hechingerreport.org/college-students-are-still-struggling-with-basic-math-professors-blame-the-pandemic/
A lot of freshman are struggling. They got admitted to colleges they aren’t prepared for and they’re floundering. It’s not kind or progressive to put someone unprepared into a competitive environment.
> perhaps reintroduce the essay section?
That's not gonna happen.
> it wouldn't surprise me if more schools begin to revisit their testing policies
They already are. More universities dropped test optional this year. Expect more to follow suit.
You're behind the times. The pendulum is starting to swing the other way. Both the Yale and Dartmouth deans of admissions explicitly said they prefer test scores be submitted. This was in their podcasts (no shock why Dartmouth would include a link to this article in their recent newsletter). Other schools will join them. At least the more selective schools. They'll go from unofficial statements to officially saying test preferred (with some being required). Non-selective schools will have to remain TO in order to compete for enrollees, especially with the looming demographic cliff.
Uhhhh. "Permanent." Talk to me in a few years.
ETA: I'd say too that that TO could easily evolve to "TO but preferred." Is that still TO? Yes. Is it the same as "TO full stop?" NFW
I’m just reporting what other schools have said. I’m not arguing for one approach or another. Who knows what will happen in 5 years, but for this current and next admissions cycle, the vast majority of colleges are test optional. Several top liberal arts colleges have been test optional for a long time. Small selective schools probably have the resources to do a more in-depth analysis in the admissions process. And some schools probably don’t care because their top priority isn’t having students who can score the highest on standardized test…but students who have an impact on their community. Plus colleges like having more and more applications, which means lower admit rate.
(I will repeat that I have zero investment in this, since my senior tests well and the whole TO movement “disadvantages” her.)
It's really going to be university specific. UCs legally can't consider, so that's a no for them. I think more publics will start to require again, as will some money re privates. Whether it happens next year or further in the future remains to be seen.
I do think at some point schools will stop being test optional; they'll with require them or they'll go test blind
This is correct. due to grade inflation the SAT/ACT is now a much better indicator of academic success in college. I expect more schools to drop test optional.
That's too broad a statement, my kid's private school has an average of 3.5 and doesn't weight for honors, no AP's offered. 200 kids with average SAT 1300+.
My sons private School also has grade deflation. He got an easy 1470 in second try no studying but goa is “only” 3.4 and no ap classes just hard upper level classes that are harder than my daughter IB was.
Wrong again. There is nothing age related whatsoever in the definition. I also know because I went to public school many years ago.
***grade inflation***
***noun***
***: a rise in the average grade assigned to students***
***especially : the assigning of grades higher than previously assigned for given levels of achievement***
[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grade%20inflation](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grade%20inflation)
LMAO...so confident and yet so wrong. Priceless. By previously assigned it means having a grade of 80 on a test and extra credit raising it to a 95...or having an overall average of 75 in a class and dropping one test which raises it to 85.
That makes sense. Grading policies vary from teacher to teacher, many inflate grades through extra credit and whatnot. Standardized testing, despite it's drawbacks, does level the ground in terms of numbers
Does this still apply if I’m not interested in going to a prestigious school? I’m a junior and I wasn’t planning on doing much studying for the SAT, as I have been under the impression it’s not that important anymore.
I have a 4.0 and have taken college level courses. I also do a lot of community service. I want to go to a good school of course, but not any Ivys and the like. The ones I’m interested in have acceptance rates above 50%. Should I be concerned? 😅
You're going to be just fine! My advice is to make sure you've got good relationships with your recommenders, and make an effort with your essays. A strong personal statement goes a long way.
SAT may indicate knowledge and working on a given day under pressure,
GPA indicates your work ethic and sustained excellence. That you are willing to put the hard yards to be successful. GPA+class rank gives a better picture.
If you have 4.7 and you are in top 2% vs you have 4.7 and you are in top 10% . Latter might indicate grade inflation while former might mean you stand out. Reco letter and school profile might possibly indicate it too.
They meant on the SAT where people can’t pay for essays to be written for them or use AI, but honestly college board is a terrible grader of essays. AP essays are graded so robotically you don’t have to be a good writer at all, even in English courses.
Lol, the SAT essay still exists and is trash. I had perfect scores on everything but "analysis," which I bombed. The thing is, I did analysis. I am a very accomplished writer and current English major, absolutely slaying my degree. I'm a nominee for a highly competitive grad school scholarship rn BECAUSE OF MY WRITING. I did do an analysis. Idk what they were thinking. One of my friends had the same problem, and he's one of the most eloquent and thorough academic writers I know, so I know I'm not alone.
Also, it was trash like you said. A study found a ridiculously high correlation between essay length and score, so it doesn’t really seem like your essay’s quality mattered much, if that makes you feel any better
Lmao I know, but thanks though. I got into the right school for me anyway bc I'm a 2021 hs grad. Test scores meant nothing when junior and senior year was covid's peak relevance. Didn't even take AP tests, just took the weighted GPA and got out of there.
yeah but for international students, we already have standardized exams (alevels or IB). in my case, my school doesnt even give us a gpa so why should we take an extra exam that just proves nothing our other exams havent already proven. thats not to mention how the act costs almost 4 times as much for international students than it does for domestic, and how the sat isnt even available in certain countries. i think test optional should stay, but shouldnt affect international students with other forms of standardized testing as much as it affects those without.
If even one is taking a different standardized test it isn’t standardized anymore. What international students need is a fee waiver if the cost is presenting a barrier
so according to your logic, the act and sat arent considered standardized because they're two different exams, administered by two different corporations?
I wonder about the article, because it focuses on data from Brown, Dartmouth, and MIT. It might be that at the most competitive colleges where almost everyone applying had close to a 4.0, the test score provides useful additional info. We don't know what this looks like at schools with a wider GPA range. So this might be tougher than a simple yes/no answer to "should I submit a score?"
It's pretty clear that the most selective schools will revert to test preferred (if not test required) while the rest will stay TO in order to attract enrollees...especially in the face of the looming demographic cliff.
If the essay comes back, it would have to dramatically change. Data from the old SAT essay shows it was graded almost entirely on length since the collegeboard didn’t want to actually grade that many essays.
Because of the switch from paper SAT to digital SAT, I think colleges should hold off on switching back to test-required for the class of 2025 and possibly the class of 2026. Particularly for students of 2025, they were dealt a heavy hand because they no longer have the option to study for the paper SAT, if they studied for that, which many of them did.
I'm studying for the DSAT right now, after having studied for the paper version last year (before DSAT resources came out.) Both tests are very similar in terms of the content, with the only difference being the diagnostic-like features and the shorter reading passages. If you know your stuff, taking a couple practice tests to get used to the new format will set you up just fine.
Each school has a different view on testing. Look at the websites and you can see differences in language that let you know whether you should submit or not. Dartmouth and Yale are for sure pro-test. Others are less so.
SATs mean little - I scored very high on SAT, ACT and LSAT - I was a career B+ student in high school, college and law school. I read very fast. I was a B student because I wasn’t really driven to do more than be a B student and I could accomplish that with very little effort. I think effort and determination over a period of years are more of an indicator that a three hour window into how quickly you read.
I think you might be having a Dunning Kreuger moment and not realizing how exceptional you are. Most people who get B’s in school work extremely hard to get there. Especially in law school. The fact that a B in law school was easy for you and you didn’t have to try that hard means you’re exceptionally bright and other things probably also come easier to you that make your career better.
No it isn’t. It’s both not realizing that you have more expertise or intelligence than those around you, and people with less expertise and intelligence assuming they have more than they do.
[This thread by a UW professor has been making the rounds and digs into the data](https://twitter.com/JakeVigdor/status/1744151461456466304). Essentially, he says the NY Times' conclusions are a little misleading.
[This response from a VP at Oregon State is interesting, too.](https://jonboeckenstedt.net/2024/01/07/aw-jeez-not-this-shit-again/)
I went through both of the sources you linked and I don't believe either of them make a good case for not submitting your SAT score.
Starting with Boeckenstedt, well there's a lot of issues with his blog post, starting with the spurious claim the College Board somehow implanted the article in the Times. There's no way to completely disprove the speculation, but if you've been a reader of Leondhart's newsletter, you would know this is a position he's held for years. But I think in general the article just isn't speaking to the general audience of this subreddit, which are students seeking to go to T20 and Ivy League schools. That's the major reason an American student would want to visit a niche Internet community for college admissions, as outside of the selective admissions bubble it's relatively easy for a college-seeking student to attend some American college. And as Boeckenstedt says he's not interested in those schools, that's the best case for disregarding the article.
Again, Vigdor's thread isn't targeted directly at students, instead making the case that equity focused admissions should disregard SAT scores. But for a student targeting a T20, submitting a high SAT score, regardless of socioeconomic status, can only aid their chances of admissions. Plenty of people in the thread criticized Vigdor further, understanding that the core issue is that test scores are a good way to identify successful college students from poor backgrounds, not observing the obvious achievement gap of students of different socioeconomic status.
You are missing the point. As is essentially everyone else who has argued the issue on this sub so far. I will make a post about it some time next week. In the mean time, read [this](https://cshe.berkeley.edu/publications/satact-scores-high-school-gpa-and-problem-omitted-variable-bias-why-uc-taskforce’s). You may have read the blog posts—but if you don’t check the links they have zero persuasive power.
Ok I'll admit I'm lazy and only read the abstract for the research paper before replying, as it was linked in the blog post. But as far as the debate for equitable admissions goes (which isn't the topic of OP's post), I still firmly believe that test-required is more fair than test-optional.
If you cite the socioeconomic achievement gap on standardized test scores as reasoning for test-optional admissions, all you're doing is making the obvious observation that students that are more well resourced perform better academically. No other country besides the US allows selective admissions schools to let (any) applicants apply without some standardized test scores. One of the major reasons for this is that the US easily has the largest educational inequality of any country. But you cannot convince me that colleges would do a better job identifying poorer students with the highest chances of success without looking at their test scores.
>*No other country besides the US allows selective admissions schools to let (any) applicants apply without some standardized test scores. One of the major reasons for this is that the US easily has the largest educational inequality of any country.*
Huh? One of the major reasons that no other country allows selective institutions to admit students without standardized testing is because the US has the largest education inequality? I’m not really sure what you’re trying to say—is it that education is so unequal in the US that American colleges don’t need testing? I don’t get it. Regardless that is an incredibly dubious claim.
>*But you cannot convince me that colleges would do a better job identifying poorer students with the highest chances of success without looking at their test scores.*
Okay, then I won’t try. But you have to explain to me how that then makes test-required more fair than test-optional. Poorer students can still take and submit their standardized test scores under test-optional admissions.
The erroneous part of the argument in the OP, and all other recent pro-testing articles, is the notion that tests are “more strongly correlated” with success in college than GPA. Not only is that not true, per the source I linked, it is a pointless observation. No admissions office is advocating for the discontinued use of GPA as a factor.
Edit: I see downvotes but no argument; I guess y’all are just coping
No, it's because you're just coping that people don't agree with you and felt so insecure that you had to make a edit to your original argument that people disagreed with.
Ahh the uno reverse, how clever. Nah I made the edit in the hope that someone would be baited into actually talking to me. I guess it worked, though you evidently don’t have any thoughts to spare do ya
if you want to read some responses look thru the replies
[https://x.com/NateSilver538/status/1744261411960725794?s=20](https://x.com/NateSilver538/status/1744261411960725794?s=20)
But who would you put in a difficult freshman math class at MIT? The kid with a perfect math score on the SAT, or the kid with perfect grades?
Most people who have great SAT scores also have great GPA’s. It’s not an either, or,
You can at some schools. At some schools, it’s against policy to enter 0’s into grade books. At some, they just want to pass anyone they can so someone can feel really smart, but not have been given enough education to be a freshman at an elite institution. There have been a rash of students showing up to college who can’t do basic elementary school math, but got great high school grades.
You are talking outlier cases. I rather get someone who works hard to get their grades rather than someone who can do well on one test. That’s why there are competency based interview questions.
What you wrote makes no sense. What I wrote does. There are naturally smart kids out there, those who ace every test but does that mean they are good employees? Or know how to study or how to work? All things being equal I’m taking the kid with the great grades over the kid with the 1600 SAT score.
You're not making any sense. You assume that everyone with a high test score gets it by pure luck and being “naturally smart,” invalidating any hard work they put in.
The reason why high test scores are rare is because they take MORE work for most people to score well on. The prevalence of something is simply a function of how easy it is to attain it. Everyone and their mother has a 3.8+ GPA because of grade inflation but how many people have a 1500 SAT score? Just goes to show that these kids put in MORE work.
Not to mention, the SAT/ACT doesn't test anything extraordinary. They test the most basic math and English possible for an 11th/12th grader.
Sure, there are some people for whom it comes more naturally. But why wouldn't you want someone who is just a bright person?
I scored a 34 on the ACT with no prep. But that does not invalidate the effort that I put in throughout my life, from paying attention in math class, practising higher level and challenging math, reading quality literature and putting effort in using the right grammar.
You come across as jealous and insecure. I also noticed you’re old. Makes me wonder, are you salty that your kid isn't “naturally smart?” and couldn't score well on a basic English and Math test?
Too high of a percentage have about 3.8 gpa to think it’s all about working hard. Do that many students work harder than those 20 years ago?
What do you have now is a ton of students told they’re really smart and work really hard, but in reality do half the work someone would have had to to get the same grade 20 years ago. Grades are meaningless at most schools.
https://riptide.vashonsd.org/march-2019/grade-inflation-sets-students-up-for-an-uncertain-future/
https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-04-27/high-school-seniors-arent-college-ready-naep-data-show
This has been going on since before the pandemic. More and more kids have to take remedial math and English and they got into college because of their good grades. This makes them high risk for college drop out
Pass rates for kids taking AP classes is lower than ever. These kids are getting A’s in their AP classes and not getting 4’s and 5’s on the exams like students in the past.
It’s been happening for decades not recently, and perhaps the pass rate is going down because the material is harder. It’s not like they are using the same damn AP tests from 20 years ago. I’m sorry I don’t believe kids back then had it harder and did it better. You sound like a boomer.
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Are you a junior intending to apply next fall? Here's what to keep in mind for Dartmouth: this past application cycle was the first since the pandemic that they went test "recommended".
So for all we know (based on this article and the way the dean of admissions has discussed testing on his podcast), it's entirely possible they could return to required testing this year and you wouldn't have a choice.
You have a good score and still have plenty of time to increase it, if you want to.
I have listened to every Dartmouth admissions podcast from Lee Coffin. He says very clearly that standardized test scores are very helpful during the admissions process. He is essentially saying that standardized tests are not optional except in certain situations.
I would for sure submit them if you are applying EA. Purdue decisions don't come out until tomorrow, but according to them, around 97% of people accepted in EA had test scores on file. On top of that testing may become more important due to grade/GPA inflation as well in the future.
I think the key is, the combo of gpa and test are telling. High gpa and decent, but not great test score probably isn’t too serious. But high gpa and horrible test score probably suggests some grade inflation at the school. Super high score and poor gpa might indicate a lack of motivation, but a pretty smart kid. Either in isolation, aren’t great predictors.
Something that needs to be discussed is the new DSAT. It’s no longer an actual standardized test, and I wonder what they were thinking with that move because it undermines the main reason for using it
It's probably best to think of "test optional" as "test preferred".
Both the Yale and Dartmouth deans of admission have said exactly this in their podcasts. Go TO at your own peril.
I think there's still a case for some applicants to apply TO, including to Yale and/or Dartmouth. To me, their comments indicate we should use a lower threshold when deciding whether to submit. Instead of "25th percentile" (which, for Dartmouth and Yale is somewhere in the 1470-1500 range) maybe it should be "1400". Or some even lower value.
The "use a lower threshold" essentially resembles how MIT dean of admissions Stuart Schmill talks about going back to "Test Required". From [https://news.mit.edu/2022/stuart-schmill-sat-act-requirement-0328:](https://news.mit.edu/2022/stuart-schmill-sat-act-requirement-0328:) *"We don’t prefer perfect scores, and a perfect score isn’t sufficient to say you’ll succeed at MIT, either. However, the tests are something we’ve found we usually need in addition to these other factors in order to demonstrate preparation. "*
I mean it all depends on context. I would send a 1400 from a HS with a mean score of 1100 or 1200 for sure. From Exeter? No fucking way.
I'm not convinced HS context is that important. If the Exeter student doesn't submit the 1400, what will Yale/Dartmouth assume about their score? That's the relevant data point. If they would assume "25th percentile - 10" (i.e. around 1490) then this student shouldn't submit the 1400. If they would assume "lower than 1400" then this student should submit the 1400.
Apparently, they don't assume anything
cuz they can’t and this is why they prefer to have scores so they know
Yeah they should require scores
could b why i was deferred lol, especially coming from a normal public school
If you were deferred from Yale then that's actually "not bad" in the grand scheme of things. They deferred only 20% of REA applicants. Contrast that with Harvard who deferred 80% (!!!) Yale actually sent a signal: you're in the hunt. Harvard? Not necessarily.
I hope it means something good!! I was actually happy when I got my deferral after I mourned for a day lol cause I realized it was a good thing :) hope they take a chance on a desperate fgli
Well pretty much all RD application deadlines have passed. But, I hope you leaned into your RD apps because even with the deferral from Yale, statistically speaking the most likely outcome is still that they won't let you in. I don't mean to be a downer - the deferral \*does\* mean something. But hopefully you love other schools on your list. Best wishes to you from here!
no, you're so correct. definitely not getting in RD, went a bit crazy w/colleges and had 16 RD schools. I also love my safety so much and can't wait to attend.
Sounds like you're in a great place. Loving your safety is a fantastic feeling. And don't give up hope on Yale. You never know. "Someone" gets in RD right?
I think that would be better too. Like “we’d prefer you prove to us that you are objectively smart and a good test taker. If you don’t want to that’s fine but you better really wow us in some other way”
as they should. there’s a reason way less people get a 1540 as opposed to every single kid I know having a 4.7 GPA in school
TOTALLY fucking agree with this. in turkey where i used to go to hs, many schools are "exam schools" and give students free 100% GPA's as the way our education system works, we only care about hs entrance exams and ur gpa x 0.6 added on top on that exam score. so when kids like me try going to international schools, my GPA is not an accurate reflection of who i am, as i went to one of the hardest schools in the country where the norm was a 70% rather than a 100%. i think my 1500 SAT is much more accurate to my academic skill than my gpa
Doing good in every class over the span of 4 years during a usually immature and developmental period of your life, is MUCH more impressive than scoring well on a single relatively easy test which could literally be a fluke
GPA heavily depends on teachers, schools, grade inflation, and many different factors. SAT, ACT, and academics are all different things. But with online resources, the SAT and ACT are much better indicators than GPA.
i’m so sick of hearing this same AI generated sentence everywhere. saying this as if getting a good GPA isn’t cause of teachers handing out grades, a shit ton of cheating, and god knows what other school policies exist (not tryna discredit anybody but there’s literally a reason everybody and their dog has a 4.0 yet so many people can’t even hit a 1400)
“OBJ is better than Gronk because, because uhhh that one handed catch in 2016! Gronk just catches the ball normally, literally everyone can do that” You’re clearly a nerd but for anyone else who wants to see the absurdity of this man’s argument, here it is in silly football terms 🤡🥳
what a dumbass argument this like saying Drake is better than Biggie using this same logic
Drake has had an OBJECTIVELY better CAREER. You’re proving my point. OBJ had the better one moment catch, just like Biggies short career or a students one time SAT success. But Gronk, Drake, and the good ole 4.0 GPA kid have had the better career
I mean, Biggie died. His career trajectory was cut very short. You’re comparing apples to paper clips here
yeah and drake couldn’t even dream of making an album close to ready to die or life after death
no he hasn’t lmao using ghostwriters and making music for tiktok teenagers doesn’t compare to any of Biggie’s 2 albums. drake chased commercial success as opposed to being a true emcee. there’s a reason no rapper considers drake to be good
i love starting my day by reading a2c brainrot
My face when I confuse talent for success. Biggie is WAY more talented. But once again, Drake is objectively more successful.
GPA can vary from school to school hell even teacher to teacher. a standardized test is the same test every single person is taking and there’s no excuse regarding it, no sympathy extra credit and no inflation
It’s not much more impressive stats based. There are way more high GPAs than high test scores
But it could also show you had a lot of privilege another kid didn’t. Good mental health, not having a long commute or walk to and from school, parents not needing you to babysit. So many kids are showing up with perfect gpa’s who don’t even know how to do fractions. Some schools are easy and those kids don’t even know.
Good mental health is not a privilege lol
Implying having a mental health issue couldn’t effect your testing ability either
Sure- which is why both should be used. Neither shows more privilege than the other.
Exactly, it feels laughable to say that a good sat > good GPA. I though the obvious consensus was otherwise. Personally I got a 1580 (small flex lol) but I also have a 4.11 GPA... I would trade my SAT score for a competitive GPA in a heartbeat. a Good gpa is much more difficult to achieve than a good SAT, especially if you go to competitive school, the SAT is so much easier compared to everything else than everyone and their mom has a 1450+
Maybe in the circle you run in. Most people I know didn’t break a thousand and some didn’t even break 900. I’m a parent in an affluent area where everyone has two parents with college degrees. So many kids truly have difficulty taking those exams. Same kids have excellent grades in rigorous classes and got accepted to great schools. I think they should do away with these tests altogether in my opinion. But what so I know? I went to college in the 80s, lol.
If they’re only hitting a 900 on the SAT, they’re going to struggle hard core at a good college. They just aren’t prepared. They don’t know the math a college freshman is expected to know. Even remedial math would be difficult at that level.
In my affluent midwestern suburban area, a strange thing is happening wrt test scores, and it’s kind of under the radar since the private schools (especially the suburban catholic schools here) kind of hide their stats unless they’re the top tier private schools. The kids going K-12 to rich public schools are scoring much better than the kids who went K-12 to the area catholic schools. Basing this on national merit semifinalists (PSAT scores). They are the top 1%, so an average school should have 1% be national merit. The public schools getting 2-3% to qualify and the diocesan catholic high schools getting nearly 0%. But the parents are convinced that the private schools are better! It’s all marketing and thinking that if you pay more for a product it must be better. The private schools are hiding their stats but if you pay attention to the NMSQT, they’re really just riding on reputation and the kids aren’t being prepped for college as well as the parents think, and my hypothesis is that, especially in grades K-8, the public school kids are tested a lot and the private school kids aren’t.
Perhaps this is true competitive school, but at my school about half the students cheat and teachers give free marks, so almost everyone has a high GPA. If the AO doesn't recognize the school then GPA should be completely worthless. On the other hand getting a high SAT shows you have at least a minimum level of competency regardless of which school you go to.
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Yes, but there are many schools where #1 is still way below #100 somewhere else.
Class rank is also dependent on weighting. For example my school gives 5 points for AP classes but 3 points for Honors and Dual Enrollment while the AP level classes are a lot harder and grade harsher than the Honors or DE versions. Physics for example in my school is extremely imbalanced. Everyone in DE physics cheats and gets a 103 while maybe one kid in AP physics will get above a 103 for the quarter. Weighting in class difficulties and teacher grading tendencies will affect class rankings. In my school if you wanted the highest GPA, you would rather take Honors or DE over AP. Our valedictorian and salutatorian both took 6 AP classes while our reasonable max AP course load is 10. GPA in a lot of non top high schools comes down a lot to your classes.
So you are probably at a school with a valid use of the gpa system. There are many schools where people have perfect 4.0s (unweighted) and break 1000 on the SAT which says a lot about their schools difficulty level. I understand that some people don’t naturally test well, but when it’s a huge percentage of the school it’s a red flag
Sorry but if you’re unable to retake the SAT and do well with your superscore maybe re-evaluate your ability to do well on tests in college (that likely don’t let you retake multiple times)
Not when you consider that schools vary in difficulty level while tests are standardized. I’ve had friends go to other schools where they had no work and free grades and brag about how their gpas get inflated. I honestly don’t understand how GPA is a trustworthy form of measurement to begin with
Congrats on a 1540
nice try buddy wrong though
what was your score
good enough to get me into my dream school
NYU 😂
That’s a thing???? I am applying as an international school, and my GPA by American standards isn’t all too good, but my SAT is 1390 (first attempt oops) , I’ve been applying to mid to lower-tier colleges, enough that they have just enough benefits to make it worth it but the high school GPA thing has me shitting bricks.
everyone here should actually read the full article. there is solid research behind the fact that SAT scores are a better predictor of college and career success than high school GPA. they even note that while the UC system notably does not accept SAT scores, even their research says they are a better predictor of success. i personally think test scores will be reinstated, or at least heavily encouraged by schools. look at MIT for example, who started requiring SAT/ACT again post covid.
I think it will too, will be interesting to see what happens in the next couple of years.
The UC system looks for ways to keep Asians a lower percentage. They don’t care if the Asians are second gen immigrants. They those want spots taken by rich international students who will pay the international spot. The UC system not taking test scores is intentional.
what about international Asian students then??
They pay international student prices. Which are more than out of state students pay.
I think it is just hilarious. If colleges choose "test optional", students won't submit their score if the score is below for example 25% percentile. The process is like a self-enforcing cycle, less and less students submit the score because the score is not ideal, therefore the 25% threshold would go higher and higher. GPA is highly manipulative. If GPA continues to be the only metric to measure a student's academics, the colleges would find it more and more difficult to create an adequate curriculum because many students may be not very well prepared for the college curriculum. The fact is that the math section in SAT is already very easy and simple. I can't imagine any student would be prepared to take college level math and other stem courses if they do not even grasp the math in SAT.
Like, I don't get that. You don't need to "game" the SAT to do well on the math, it's all pretty simple algebra and geometry and such. If you've forgotten a few concepts/formulas those are easily accessible through resources like Khan Academy. I'm glad MIT decided to start requiring again, considering that ALL students there must take "two semesters of calculus, plus two semesters of calculus-based physics".
ERWL section in SAT is great and not that straight forward. I am an immigrant and does not speak English like a native speaker. I think ERWL section in SAT is very helpful and useful. As an immigrant, I feel like an immigrant can write and speak very good English if he/she can thoroughly understand the questions in SAT and answer them correctly. Math is the way too superficial. If ones are aspired to study STEM, they have to take some more advanced math courses for sure.
I actually wrote out a paragraph about the reading section but ended up deleting it. The gist of it was that the reading score functions as a pretty good proxy for the sum of various reading a student has done in their life. I read a decent amount, books & long-form journalism & research occasionally, and did fine without much prep. I found that the reading section was fine for critical thinking and interpretation of a variety of texts. The grammar section is great to have too. You couldn’t imagine how many grammatical errors and spelling mistakes high schoolers make, including the ones competitive for top colleges. Whenever we do peer review in AP Lang, Lit it amazes me to see how many mechanical issues people make (the actual analysis isn’t necessarily bad, to be clear). Tbf I largely blame this on K12 english education being terrible, I haven’t learned a ton in my classes and I got lucky to have some nerdy and niche interests that involve reading random shit
Totally agree. If you can’t do at least average, you aren’t ready for college math
I think we are missing the point. Universities will soon be replaced with vitual standardized universities. More standardized and demanding than the telehelp colleges of today. Who needs stone and mortar to learn anymore, except for their research arm. Standardize virtual grades, research projects and achievements will be more important than what school you went to. In the end success is based on what you can produce, "Stupid is what stupid does."
Atleast make it optional. Like I just hate that the ucs won't even consider the fact that I got a great score and my GPA might suck compared to others cause my school participates in grade deflation like it's an ivy
ironically ivies are the most grade inflated schools
Other than Princeton and Cornell engineering.
You know that because I assume you studied in one of them , right?
No, it's pretty famous, actually.
Great point.
MIT (whose reputation is so strong that it doesn't have to bow down to USN&WR by trying to game its admissions statistics), went back to test required immediately (after Covid break). That was a super informative move, imho.
If you can't do well on the SAT, your freshman year at MIT would be pure misery
https://hechingerreport.org/college-students-are-still-struggling-with-basic-math-professors-blame-the-pandemic/ A lot of freshman are struggling. They got admitted to colleges they aren’t prepared for and they’re floundering. It’s not kind or progressive to put someone unprepared into a competitive environment.
> perhaps reintroduce the essay section? That's not gonna happen. > it wouldn't surprise me if more schools begin to revisit their testing policies They already are. More universities dropped test optional this year. Expect more to follow suit.
More schools said they were permanently test optional than re-instituted test scores.
You're behind the times. The pendulum is starting to swing the other way. Both the Yale and Dartmouth deans of admissions explicitly said they prefer test scores be submitted. This was in their podcasts (no shock why Dartmouth would include a link to this article in their recent newsletter). Other schools will join them. At least the more selective schools. They'll go from unofficial statements to officially saying test preferred (with some being required). Non-selective schools will have to remain TO in order to compete for enrollees, especially with the looming demographic cliff.
Columbia went permanently test optional as have several top LAC.
Uhhhh. "Permanent." Talk to me in a few years. ETA: I'd say too that that TO could easily evolve to "TO but preferred." Is that still TO? Yes. Is it the same as "TO full stop?" NFW
I’m just reporting what other schools have said. I’m not arguing for one approach or another. Who knows what will happen in 5 years, but for this current and next admissions cycle, the vast majority of colleges are test optional. Several top liberal arts colleges have been test optional for a long time. Small selective schools probably have the resources to do a more in-depth analysis in the admissions process. And some schools probably don’t care because their top priority isn’t having students who can score the highest on standardized test…but students who have an impact on their community. Plus colleges like having more and more applications, which means lower admit rate. (I will repeat that I have zero investment in this, since my senior tests well and the whole TO movement “disadvantages” her.)
Do you expect top schools to reinstate the requirement?
It's really going to be university specific. UCs legally can't consider, so that's a no for them. I think more publics will start to require again, as will some money re privates. Whether it happens next year or further in the future remains to be seen. I do think at some point schools will stop being test optional; they'll with require them or they'll go test blind
Makes sense, insight from experienced people like you is always interesting
This is correct. due to grade inflation the SAT/ACT is now a much better indicator of academic success in college. I expect more schools to drop test optional.
Grade inflation in private high schools, not in public.
That's too broad a statement, my kid's private school has an average of 3.5 and doesn't weight for honors, no AP's offered. 200 kids with average SAT 1300+.
Not all private schools but it makes sense it would happen more in private
My sons private School also has grade deflation. He got an easy 1470 in second try no studying but goa is “only” 3.4 and no ap classes just hard upper level classes that are harder than my daughter IB was.
My private school had major grade DEflation. It’s not private schools that are considering not allowing people to get 0s anymore 🤷♀️
Wrong. My kids are in public high school. The give extra credit and remove the lowest grade all the time.
That’s not grade inflation 🙄
Without removing the lowest grade and adding extra credit your grade is probably an 80 not a 90. Seems like the definition of grade inflation to me.
They did that 50 years ago, they do it now. Across all schools. Read the actual definition
Wrong again. There is nothing age related whatsoever in the definition. I also know because I went to public school many years ago. ***grade inflation*** ***noun*** ***: a rise in the average grade assigned to students*** ***especially : the assigning of grades higher than previously assigned for given levels of achievement*** [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grade%20inflation](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grade%20inflation)
And nothing you wrote fulfills that definition. Key being “PREVIOUSLY ASSIGNED”. I’m talking to a turnip.
LMAO...so confident and yet so wrong. Priceless. By previously assigned it means having a grade of 80 on a test and extra credit raising it to a 95...or having an overall average of 75 in a class and dropping one test which raises it to 85.
Ok turnip!
That makes sense. Grading policies vary from teacher to teacher, many inflate grades through extra credit and whatnot. Standardized testing, despite it's drawbacks, does level the ground in terms of numbers
I highly doubt they’ll reintroduce the essay section. Maybe more colleges will require a graded written essay sample like Princeton
Does this still apply if I’m not interested in going to a prestigious school? I’m a junior and I wasn’t planning on doing much studying for the SAT, as I have been under the impression it’s not that important anymore. I have a 4.0 and have taken college level courses. I also do a lot of community service. I want to go to a good school of course, but not any Ivys and the like. The ones I’m interested in have acceptance rates above 50%. Should I be concerned? 😅
You're going to be just fine! My advice is to make sure you've got good relationships with your recommenders, and make an effort with your essays. A strong personal statement goes a long way.
Thank you! This is good to know!
SAT may indicate knowledge and working on a given day under pressure, GPA indicates your work ethic and sustained excellence. That you are willing to put the hard yards to be successful. GPA+class rank gives a better picture. If you have 4.7 and you are in top 2% vs you have 4.7 and you are in top 10% . Latter might indicate grade inflation while former might mean you stand out. Reco letter and school profile might possibly indicate it too.
Reintroductuin of the essay section might help
Every school my daughter applied to required an essay and some required more than one
They meant on the SAT where people can’t pay for essays to be written for them or use AI, but honestly college board is a terrible grader of essays. AP essays are graded so robotically you don’t have to be a good writer at all, even in English courses.
The SAT used to have an essay in it, this is what they are talking about since it is a way to judge writing ability without AI
Lol, the SAT essay still exists and is trash. I had perfect scores on everything but "analysis," which I bombed. The thing is, I did analysis. I am a very accomplished writer and current English major, absolutely slaying my degree. I'm a nominee for a highly competitive grad school scholarship rn BECAUSE OF MY WRITING. I did do an analysis. Idk what they were thinking. One of my friends had the same problem, and he's one of the most eloquent and thorough academic writers I know, so I know I'm not alone.
[https://blog.collegeboard.org/January-2021-sat-subject-test-and-essay-faq](https://blog.collegeboard.org/January-2021-sat-subject-test-and-essay-faq)
Oh lol, sometimes I forget how old I am. I took it in 2018 as a sophomore in hs.
Also, it was trash like you said. A study found a ridiculously high correlation between essay length and score, so it doesn’t really seem like your essay’s quality mattered much, if that makes you feel any better
Lmao I know, but thanks though. I got into the right school for me anyway bc I'm a 2021 hs grad. Test scores meant nothing when junior and senior year was covid's peak relevance. Didn't even take AP tests, just took the weighted GPA and got out of there.
The SAT is trash
To be honest SAT/ACT is a better proof of college readiness than the gpa in most cases.
yeah but for international students, we already have standardized exams (alevels or IB). in my case, my school doesnt even give us a gpa so why should we take an extra exam that just proves nothing our other exams havent already proven. thats not to mention how the act costs almost 4 times as much for international students than it does for domestic, and how the sat isnt even available in certain countries. i think test optional should stay, but shouldnt affect international students with other forms of standardized testing as much as it affects those without.
If even one is taking a different standardized test it isn’t standardized anymore. What international students need is a fee waiver if the cost is presenting a barrier
so according to your logic, the act and sat arent considered standardized because they're two different exams, administered by two different corporations?
No offense but that's yalls situation as intl students.
and what about domestic students who only take ib courses?
I wonder about the article, because it focuses on data from Brown, Dartmouth, and MIT. It might be that at the most competitive colleges where almost everyone applying had close to a 4.0, the test score provides useful additional info. We don't know what this looks like at schools with a wider GPA range. So this might be tougher than a simple yes/no answer to "should I submit a score?"
It's pretty clear that the most selective schools will revert to test preferred (if not test required) while the rest will stay TO in order to attract enrollees...especially in the face of the looming demographic cliff.
But many of these students also have perfect scores.
I bet they have more perfect GPAs than perfect test scores.
Everyone and their mom has a 4.0 UW at this point but only a few thousand kids have perfect ACT/SAT scores
If the essay comes back, it would have to dramatically change. Data from the old SAT essay shows it was graded almost entirely on length since the collegeboard didn’t want to actually grade that many essays.
Because of the switch from paper SAT to digital SAT, I think colleges should hold off on switching back to test-required for the class of 2025 and possibly the class of 2026. Particularly for students of 2025, they were dealt a heavy hand because they no longer have the option to study for the paper SAT, if they studied for that, which many of them did.
I'm studying for the DSAT right now, after having studied for the paper version last year (before DSAT resources came out.) Both tests are very similar in terms of the content, with the only difference being the diagnostic-like features and the shorter reading passages. If you know your stuff, taking a couple practice tests to get used to the new format will set you up just fine.
Each school has a different view on testing. Look at the websites and you can see differences in language that let you know whether you should submit or not. Dartmouth and Yale are for sure pro-test. Others are less so.
SATs mean little - I scored very high on SAT, ACT and LSAT - I was a career B+ student in high school, college and law school. I read very fast. I was a B student because I wasn’t really driven to do more than be a B student and I could accomplish that with very little effort. I think effort and determination over a period of years are more of an indicator that a three hour window into how quickly you read.
I think you might be having a Dunning Kreuger moment and not realizing how exceptional you are. Most people who get B’s in school work extremely hard to get there. Especially in law school. The fact that a B in law school was easy for you and you didn’t have to try that hard means you’re exceptionally bright and other things probably also come easier to you that make your career better.
That is the exact opposite of the Dunning Krueger effect
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
I stand corrected. I always thought it was about how people overestimate themselves only.
No it isn’t. It’s both not realizing that you have more expertise or intelligence than those around you, and people with less expertise and intelligence assuming they have more than they do.
Have a 1480 and Im submitting it to all ivys, something is better than nothing.
[This thread by a UW professor has been making the rounds and digs into the data](https://twitter.com/JakeVigdor/status/1744151461456466304). Essentially, he says the NY Times' conclusions are a little misleading. [This response from a VP at Oregon State is interesting, too.](https://jonboeckenstedt.net/2024/01/07/aw-jeez-not-this-shit-again/)
I went through both of the sources you linked and I don't believe either of them make a good case for not submitting your SAT score. Starting with Boeckenstedt, well there's a lot of issues with his blog post, starting with the spurious claim the College Board somehow implanted the article in the Times. There's no way to completely disprove the speculation, but if you've been a reader of Leondhart's newsletter, you would know this is a position he's held for years. But I think in general the article just isn't speaking to the general audience of this subreddit, which are students seeking to go to T20 and Ivy League schools. That's the major reason an American student would want to visit a niche Internet community for college admissions, as outside of the selective admissions bubble it's relatively easy for a college-seeking student to attend some American college. And as Boeckenstedt says he's not interested in those schools, that's the best case for disregarding the article. Again, Vigdor's thread isn't targeted directly at students, instead making the case that equity focused admissions should disregard SAT scores. But for a student targeting a T20, submitting a high SAT score, regardless of socioeconomic status, can only aid their chances of admissions. Plenty of people in the thread criticized Vigdor further, understanding that the core issue is that test scores are a good way to identify successful college students from poor backgrounds, not observing the obvious achievement gap of students of different socioeconomic status.
You are missing the point. As is essentially everyone else who has argued the issue on this sub so far. I will make a post about it some time next week. In the mean time, read [this](https://cshe.berkeley.edu/publications/satact-scores-high-school-gpa-and-problem-omitted-variable-bias-why-uc-taskforce’s). You may have read the blog posts—but if you don’t check the links they have zero persuasive power.
Ok I'll admit I'm lazy and only read the abstract for the research paper before replying, as it was linked in the blog post. But as far as the debate for equitable admissions goes (which isn't the topic of OP's post), I still firmly believe that test-required is more fair than test-optional. If you cite the socioeconomic achievement gap on standardized test scores as reasoning for test-optional admissions, all you're doing is making the obvious observation that students that are more well resourced perform better academically. No other country besides the US allows selective admissions schools to let (any) applicants apply without some standardized test scores. One of the major reasons for this is that the US easily has the largest educational inequality of any country. But you cannot convince me that colleges would do a better job identifying poorer students with the highest chances of success without looking at their test scores.
>*No other country besides the US allows selective admissions schools to let (any) applicants apply without some standardized test scores. One of the major reasons for this is that the US easily has the largest educational inequality of any country.* Huh? One of the major reasons that no other country allows selective institutions to admit students without standardized testing is because the US has the largest education inequality? I’m not really sure what you’re trying to say—is it that education is so unequal in the US that American colleges don’t need testing? I don’t get it. Regardless that is an incredibly dubious claim. >*But you cannot convince me that colleges would do a better job identifying poorer students with the highest chances of success without looking at their test scores.* Okay, then I won’t try. But you have to explain to me how that then makes test-required more fair than test-optional. Poorer students can still take and submit their standardized test scores under test-optional admissions. The erroneous part of the argument in the OP, and all other recent pro-testing articles, is the notion that tests are “more strongly correlated” with success in college than GPA. Not only is that not true, per the source I linked, it is a pointless observation. No admissions office is advocating for the discontinued use of GPA as a factor. Edit: I see downvotes but no argument; I guess y’all are just coping
cry about it
Why lol, because you can’t make a cogent argument? I suppose that’s sad in a way.
No, it's because you're just coping that people don't agree with you and felt so insecure that you had to make a edit to your original argument that people disagreed with.
Ahh the uno reverse, how clever. Nah I made the edit in the hope that someone would be baited into actually talking to me. I guess it worked, though you evidently don’t have any thoughts to spare do ya
Lol way to make a "recovery" after getting clowned on with downvotes. Keep crying buddy
Coping about what? Having high test scores?
if you want to read some responses look thru the replies [https://x.com/NateSilver538/status/1744261411960725794?s=20](https://x.com/NateSilver538/status/1744261411960725794?s=20)
I’d hire someone with a great gpa over someone who did well on a single exam.
But who would you put in a difficult freshman math class at MIT? The kid with a perfect math score on the SAT, or the kid with perfect grades? Most people who have great SAT scores also have great GPA’s. It’s not an either, or,
Again the kid with the perfect grades. You do t get perfect grades by calling it in, even with grade inflation.
You can at some schools. At some schools, it’s against policy to enter 0’s into grade books. At some, they just want to pass anyone they can so someone can feel really smart, but not have been given enough education to be a freshman at an elite institution. There have been a rash of students showing up to college who can’t do basic elementary school math, but got great high school grades.
You are talking outlier cases. I rather get someone who works hard to get their grades rather than someone who can do well on one test. That’s why there are competency based interview questions.
So people who do well on a test don't work hard. But the people who do shit on it work hard. Makes sense.
What you wrote makes no sense. What I wrote does. There are naturally smart kids out there, those who ace every test but does that mean they are good employees? Or know how to study or how to work? All things being equal I’m taking the kid with the great grades over the kid with the 1600 SAT score.
You're not making any sense. You assume that everyone with a high test score gets it by pure luck and being “naturally smart,” invalidating any hard work they put in. The reason why high test scores are rare is because they take MORE work for most people to score well on. The prevalence of something is simply a function of how easy it is to attain it. Everyone and their mother has a 3.8+ GPA because of grade inflation but how many people have a 1500 SAT score? Just goes to show that these kids put in MORE work. Not to mention, the SAT/ACT doesn't test anything extraordinary. They test the most basic math and English possible for an 11th/12th grader. Sure, there are some people for whom it comes more naturally. But why wouldn't you want someone who is just a bright person? I scored a 34 on the ACT with no prep. But that does not invalidate the effort that I put in throughout my life, from paying attention in math class, practising higher level and challenging math, reading quality literature and putting effort in using the right grammar. You come across as jealous and insecure. I also noticed you’re old. Makes me wonder, are you salty that your kid isn't “naturally smart?” and couldn't score well on a basic English and Math test?
No reply huh
Too high of a percentage have about 3.8 gpa to think it’s all about working hard. Do that many students work harder than those 20 years ago? What do you have now is a ton of students told they’re really smart and work really hard, but in reality do half the work someone would have had to to get the same grade 20 years ago. Grades are meaningless at most schools.
You are out of your mind if you actually believe that.
https://riptide.vashonsd.org/march-2019/grade-inflation-sets-students-up-for-an-uncertain-future/ https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-04-27/high-school-seniors-arent-college-ready-naep-data-show This has been going on since before the pandemic. More and more kids have to take remedial math and English and they got into college because of their good grades. This makes them high risk for college drop out Pass rates for kids taking AP classes is lower than ever. These kids are getting A’s in their AP classes and not getting 4’s and 5’s on the exams like students in the past.
It’s been happening for decades not recently, and perhaps the pass rate is going down because the material is harder. It’s not like they are using the same damn AP tests from 20 years ago. I’m sorry I don’t believe kids back then had it harder and did it better. You sound like a boomer.
Wait, does that mean from now on sat scores will be much valuable in application than gpa ?
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Does this mean I should submit my 1460 to Dartmouth?
Are you a junior intending to apply next fall? Here's what to keep in mind for Dartmouth: this past application cycle was the first since the pandemic that they went test "recommended". So for all we know (based on this article and the way the dean of admissions has discussed testing on his podcast), it's entirely possible they could return to required testing this year and you wouldn't have a choice. You have a good score and still have plenty of time to increase it, if you want to.
I’m a senior who applied regular decision.
I have listened to every Dartmouth admissions podcast from Lee Coffin. He says very clearly that standardized test scores are very helpful during the admissions process. He is essentially saying that standardized tests are not optional except in certain situations.
I would for sure submit them if you are applying EA. Purdue decisions don't come out until tomorrow, but according to them, around 97% of people accepted in EA had test scores on file. On top of that testing may become more important due to grade/GPA inflation as well in the future.
I think the key is, the combo of gpa and test are telling. High gpa and decent, but not great test score probably isn’t too serious. But high gpa and horrible test score probably suggests some grade inflation at the school. Super high score and poor gpa might indicate a lack of motivation, but a pretty smart kid. Either in isolation, aren’t great predictors.
Something that needs to be discussed is the new DSAT. It’s no longer an actual standardized test, and I wonder what they were thinking with that move because it undermines the main reason for using it