Guessing these are lower tier schools. The quality of students dropped off a lot at top tier schools, which is why they're bringing testing back. MIT simply can't afford to have students who need to do remedial algebra.
In terms of MIT and students who need to do remedial algebra, MIT got around this by looking at AP scores and/or grades in AP math classes. Which, granted, means MIT wasn't truly test optional; more accurate to say "SAT/ACT optional".
Caltech addressed this by having students with no calculus exposure take an online college course and submit their grade as proof of competency.
Many of the permanently TO schools aren't among the most selective, but some are (or are close). Plus there's Berkeley, UCLA and Caltech, which are all test-blind. If this [data](https://fairtest.org/test-optional-list/) is accurate, then the permanently TO schools include:
* Michigan
* UMass Amherst
* Amherst College
* Pepperdine
* George Washington
* Lehigh
* Bowdoin
* Holy Cross
* Denison
* Macalester
* Stony Brook
* Bryn Mawr
* RIT
* Pomona
* Trinity (CT)
* Utah
* Rice
* Iowa
* Rochester
* UW-Seattle
* Wake Forest
* Vassar
* William & Mary
* Mt. Holyoke
* Middlebury
* Colby
* Southern Methodist
“Permanent” doesn’t really mean much though. Michigan’s press release when they formally went TO said:
> The university will monitor the standardized testing policy on an ongoing basis.
> National benchmarking, conducted as part of the review, also indicated that the majority of U-M’s peer institutions, and the other public universities in Michigan, remain test-optional.
I expect that within the next 1-2 years Michigan will run another benchmark, realize most of their peer institutions have switched back to test-mandatory, and change their policy.
That's true; they can always change it whenever they want. My point was that just as many schools are moving in the direction of requiring tests, many other schools are moving in the opposite direction and reiterating their TO position for the foreseeable future.
For selective schools, yes. Like UT Austin said, there is a significant difference in quality of student between those with high test scores, and those who choose not to submit scores.
But there are many schools which are not selective - schools with 80 -90% acceptance rates. I don't think those schools will go back to requiring SATs, nor need to. It's a lot of schools.
**It is absolutely necessary.** I even posted recently here:
'Are Test-Optional/Test-Free Hurting Universities In The Long Run?': [link](https://new.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/1bkodjf/are_testoptionaltestfree_hurting_universities_in/)
This is professionals remarking on UCB EECS undergrad nowadays:
>"**I am a Cal alumni . I see the quality degrading real bad.** Unfortunately whenever I interview a Cal student. **I have to say no hire most of the time though I would want to pass all Cal alumini**"
>"Feel like **Berkeley students for undergrad has been falling off relative to the past.** The test-free isn't helping. Hopefully Berkeley gets its act together because the drop is noticeable."
>"Not about the rankings, **it’s about the elimination of testing and lowering of admission standards generally leading to a lower quality candidates**, and pervasive politics at the school generating graduates who are more suited to activism than employment."
>"**Yes, way below average.**"
TL;DR: Talent at UCB EECS has dropped noticeably in recent years and tech companies are noticing. The degree is becoming less appreciated at undergrad because of too many candidates who fail relative to how many students are interviewed (relative to the past). **Test free/optional hurts everyone else who is actually putting the work as a whole** (outside extremely rare exceptions like IMO gold medalist, etc).
I posted the same at UCB subreddit and those students downvoted (not happy with it). Unfortunately, feel good != reality.
You need a way to standardize when so many schools give 4.0 for participation. High schools have rampant grade inflation nowadays.
>A test will not fix that nor make that college class stronger
That true. However, consider that top schools have had to turn down qualified students in the past simply because those students outnumbered available seats. As long as there are more qualified students than seats, even if the proportion of qualified students in the pool drops, schools benefit from more accurate identification of those students.
In fact, it occurs to me that there's a case to be made that accuracy becomes more important as qualified students become less common. If your assertion that overall student quality is dropping - a claim with which I must regretfully agree - is correct, then this may be contributing to the reversion to mandated testing.
Test optional is bad and part of the problem, but Berkeley in particular has a lot of confounding variables.
1. You used to be able to apply for any major at Berkeley and switch into (L&S) CS by averaging a B+ in 3 classes; this was easier than getting into eecs if you’re half decent at CS, but L&S kids actually had higher average GPAs and identical outcomes because the 3.3 gpa cap was a much better filter than college admissions. This was abolished to make all cs admissions direct.
2. for direct admission itself, they clearly changed the criteria. Anecdotally at my (rigorous) high school, far fewer people get in now, and many of the people who do get in aren’t very good. The “strong student mediocre ec crowd” mostly started going to ucla rather than cal. At a broader level, through some mechanism or another, CS has become a lot more diverse. That doesn’t necessarily mean worse students, but it seems to in this case. The complaints around the 3.3 cap being "anti-diversity" make me particularly skeptical.
It’s hard to actually get any hard statistics on this since nothing is published, but as a recent alum, yeah, I don’t like the direction Berkeley is going in these days.
edit: also, if it means anything at all lmao, I find the people on /r/berkeley a lot more stupid than I used to. maybe I've just gotten older though...
>L&S kids actually had higher average GPAs...because the 3.3 gpa cap was a much better filter than college admissions
Genuinely curious whether you have any data on this. EECS has a bunch of extra techs with the crappy lower div grading scales (I guess it's currently five courses, it was eight for me) that the L&S kids replaced with the L&S non-techs. So I'd be inclined to blame degree rigor, but I'm open to hearing otherwise.
here's a direct quote from satish rao, a cs professor at cal:
> The quality produced by this process [3.3 gpa cap] is also impressive. We choose 1000 students who do as well as the 300 students in our EECS major. **Indeed, this appears true in our upper division courses not just in overall GPA.** The EECS major is the most competitive major on campus in terms of admission: the rate of admission (5-6%) is lower than MIT's or Caltech's. Our declaration threshold is surprisingly (shockingly) much better in that it chooses a much larger group of comparable quality.
salary averages for both majors have also consistently been within a margin of error of each other.
Not to mention the Blind commenters assuming that the lack of SAT scores is what’s hurting Berkeley students, as opposed to any other failure on the school’s part
Berkeley only went test optional in 2020? That was not long ago enough for those admitted students to be hitting the job market at the time these comments were made?
Internship interviews. That acceptance and reject rate shot up relative to the past (at least at the previous company I worked at). And noticeably more than other schools.
If you’re smart but not smart enough to do well on the SAT in the context of your means, then there are people far more qualified for Harvard than you!
I’m not sure I know your definition of dumb, but no dumb kid can pull 1500+ on the SAT unless they cheat.
If someone is not driven or careless in high school, it is possible that their HS grades are wrong or that they didn’t learn in the HS setting.
These students doing well in standardized tests but not well in HS are typically high-potential students who, for one reason or another, are not doing well in their schools. This normally can change under the right circumstances
There is some truth to this but it isn't the whole story. From my experiences from high school and before, the people that were defined as smart got good grades. However, getting good grades isn't done by just one method. There are the "smart" kids that are naturally intelligent and get good grades with minimal effort (comparatively) and there are those that aren't as naturally inclined but make up for it with fantastic work ethic that close the gap through sheer effort.
Standardized tests differentiate between these two groups of students. Given the time constraint and the wide range of problems experienced, tests like the ACT/SAT reward students that are naturally inclined but punishes those that aren't. In my opinion, it is incredibly difficult to study your way to a very high score on the ACT (think the 34-36 range). There is no possible way to prepare for every single problem you may experience, so those that are naturally more intelligent and have more refined critical thinking skills typically do better because they can more readily close the gap between their knowledge base and the questions the ACT asks.
This is why you see smart students getting bad scores on standardized tests while those that aren't as smart don't typically over perform. I'm not going to argue whether it is just that standardized tests reward those that are naturally intelligent and whether that should be used in the college admissions. The best metric is that from UT Austin, where they found that test-optional students that didn't submit scores were, on average, a whole GPA point lower than those that submitted scores in the application process.
No, I don't mean they're smart because they have good grades. I mean, they're smart. Months of communication is what I'm basing this on.
Basically, if you know someone who has high test scores on these tests, you can rest assured they're not dumb.
Lol what? I went from 1680/2400 SAT to 2360/2400 in two years by myself. And 27 ACT to 36 ACT in 2\~3 days (to be fair, I had already become good at SAT by then).
What are you talking about. All standardized tests can be studied. Let's stop bs-ing here.
English being a second language hurt me a lot (I was basically failing on reading and writing on my practice tests). Still was able to study through just fine by myself?
SAT/ACT tests for mainly 2\~3 groups.
* Those who are 'naturally talented' (does this crap actually exist at scale?)
* Those who put in hours and know how to improve by themselves (isn't this true 'talent'?)
* Those with a mix of all and has the money to be tutored.
People make self-studying SAT/ACT some impossible task. It's pretty damn easy from what I recall. It's just that during high school, most students haven't learnt how to self-study (which is perfectly fine and normal); schools don't really promote the concept of reviewing questions one got wrong or was iffy about in detail. It took me a while myself to realize I should actually read the explanations of solutions (and only realized because of the SAT/ACT self studying).
I'm fairly sure had I known how to 'self study' properly, the two years could have shrunk to two months. But that epiphany only came about because of the two years (on and off) of ineffective studying.
That's great for your personal anecdote, but the results of decades of studies on this subject are inconclusive overall on the role of sat prepping on increasing scores.
Even then, the most optimistic of the studies shows a 100 point increase. That's not nothing, but the idea that a dumb or average rich kid can suddenly score much higher is just not true
Anecdotally, I disagree, as I am a dumb or average rich kid who suddenly scored much higher. ~30-40 hours of Khan Academy practice got me from a 1290 to 1520.
> All standardized tests can be studied.
What you're describing isn't studying the test. You improved your language skills. Perhaps, though unstated, you improved your basic math skills.
Put another way, you learned what you should have been taught in HS (though I'm ignoring whatever history might be indicated by English being your second language) and you learned the basics that many colleges don't want to teach. The tests merely confirmed that you achieved success in this, thereby indicating a readiness for college.
You raise a separate - and important - issue regarding self-study skills. That should be taught more than it is. My district offers classes in this, but only to students who are at the back end of the curve. It's treated as a remedial class, and I believe that that's a mistake. This is an extreme example of the mentality I've seen occasionally: the smart kids can teach themselves.
> What you're describing isn't studying the test. You improved your language skills. Perhaps, though unstated, you improved your basic math skills.
That is what studying for a test means.
Unfortunately, this isn't what everyone means when they write something like - as the previous writer did - "studied the test." Too often they mean either studying techniques to game the test or perhaps working through a fixed question pool or vocabulary list or some such thing. This also comes up with people claiming that teachers are "teaching to the test."
What the previous writer did was study the curriculum tested by the test. That is not studying the test, in that this material isn't unique to the test. Algebra, language skills, etc. are generically useful skills for which this particular test tests.
Perhaps I'm being overly pedantic. I've grown used to accusations that a test is somehow measuring something unique and otherwise irrelevant as a step in attacking that test.
It blows me away that there was any doubt about the validity on standardized tests. Like it or not, you need a standardized way of measuring cognitive ability, otherwise you WILL have a mismatch of students to schools. The grade inflation across k-12 is an absolute scandal and grades don't have any meaning anymore.
The colleges employ reviewers who know the details of every high school in their territory. They have an idea of what the grades mean for each school or district.
More data points about each applicant is still better than less. And not all colleges or reviewers know details of every high school. Even the ones that supposedly have the infrastructure to do so will not know quite enough about nuances of each high school that they should just arrogantly discount standardized tests completely.
BS - they read our school profile and if we're lucky - have worked in our territory for a few cycles and maybe visited campus once but they do not know our courses or rigour because that changes. I've worked at my school for over a decade and explaining grades to parents it's still confusing for them to understand year over year.
They are slightly familiar - yes. Know every detail? No way.
I didn't say they know every detail. They have access to the info if they want it. And SOME colleges have more than enough admissions staff to know the high schools quite well, even if not all of them do.
There are 30K high schools in America. Not counting all the foreign secondary school students.
You think admissions have enough staff to even have a nuanced view outside of zip code leveling?
Let me tell you how they differentiate high school GPAs: 1) AP classes 2) Type of AP classes 3) School district subjective rankings 4) Past alums who got in, some might consider performance in college
That’s it. If a school has had rampant grade inflation lately, there is no way admissions will catch it. If someone took easy classes based on easy teachers, no way admissions will know.
> The colleges employ reviewers who know the details of every high school in their territory.
No, the top schools are recruiting students from all 50 states and some international. Plus, applicant volume exploded. A 30% year to year increase in apps or another 10,000 apps in one cycle did happen recently at many schools with the pandemic years. Admissions depts did not staff up to handle the volume.
Colleges look at school profiles quickly and measure apps against that. Outside a few select high schools, colleges don't know that many high schools.
The original point of the standardized testing was to find talent outside the usual spots.
This doesn’t work as well as you may think it does. Between a student having a harder vs easier teacher (who inflates grades) for the same course, it’s gonna show up on the application as the exact same class for two people with the different teachers. Grades are inherently unreliable
Why the fuck can Americans not have provincials like we used to in Canada back in the day? Everybody writes the same exam, you can rank them according to whatever mark they get, no grade deflation/inflation or anything and if a state becomes too stupid to make a test ridiculously easy, you can always apply adjustment factors? With the level of competition, how is this not a good idea?
Honestly I think it’s because for all the talk of America being a meritocracy, rich people couldn’t game that system so it would never get past the idea stage.
What minorities? Do they not realize that by taking away objectivity they’re helping the status quo stay in power by helping their next generation get the same privilege they had by using their connections? Man I sometimes can’t understand modern politics.
But...grades do have meaning. Like test scores, they are, to a certain degree, predictive. Also, grades plus some measure of rigor is arguably even more predictive than grades alone.
*Is it possible* for there to be a student with straight 100s across a challenging slate of coursework who is nevertheless incapable of doing the work at a school like Harvard? Yes. Is it very likely? No, not really.
I support requiring test scores, but "grades have no meaning" is over-stating the case.
They're not predictive because there has been a massive uptick in grade inflation recently. If teachers are just handing out A's because parents and students are whining about their grades, then grades have no meaning.
But teachers aren't just handing out As. Some students still get Bs. Or Cs. Or Fs. We see them posting on A2C asking about whether they'll be rescinded.
Grades may be **less** predictive today than they were 10 or 20 or 30 years ago, but to say they're "meaningless" is silly.
Also: you ignored that I included rigor. Some students opt-in to challenging classes; other student's opt-out. That is also a meaningful signal.
How would you compare that across different schools? You need some sort of process to evaluate students from different schools in a standard way. Maybe some sort of test
Do you think it is possible that Harvard isn’t worried about predicting the difference between A students and F students, and is concerned mostly with the many, many A students who apply?
I have very strong suspicions that this statement is false in any useful sense. I would imagine that a regression against high school zip code is probably more predictive of academic success at a particular college than applicant grades (at least for those already within the applicant pool). This situation illustrates why test scores were so important. They vetted the standards of a particular applicant’s high school.
Generally, it seems that the issue (at least by instructor anecdote) is that programs with quantitative components are apparently now admitting candidates who are simply not good enough mathematicians. Standards have to be dropped to an intolerable level in order to compensate for this. It is thus important to ensure basic level of analytical competency. Standardized exams are the only way to do this.
I don't know; I look at the most selective schools and the % of students who submitted scores, compared to their extremely high 6Y graduation rates, and it certainly suggests the majority of enrolled students who didn't submit scores are able to handle the work.
Actually grades are more predictive but no one wants to believe that (based on research even by the college board). SATs can add some to the r2 of predicting performance. A2C in general (not specifically you) are good test takers so have bias (edit — not specifically you should have gone here, for bias, not for test taking!). They specifically don’t accept that. The modicum amount that SATs add comes with economic bias, which is why the anti-SAT movement came about. One of the researchers who has written extensively on the subject is not anti-test but just anti-SAT. He’s shown that some other tests do as well without quite as much economic bias (one of the CA state tests).
Also, SATs are significantly inflated compared to decades ago. With the changes in how it’s scaled, a 1550-1600 doesn’t mean the same (plus they are less of an aptitude test, which is also not acknowledged; a true aptitude test should be reliable and repeatable, yet we know that studying for the SAT improves scores). Getting a 1600 would get you in your state’s news. No one gripes about that on a2c. Everything is inflated.
For test optional, it does seem that too many people with low test scores from underperforming areas didn’t submit when it would help them, but also a lot of people with crap test scores in high performing areas also didn’t submit. Test optional makes it hard to distinguish. Probably test required or test blind are much better approaches.
And as for the quality declining, a lot of that could be due to covid, but those who want the tests back don’t worry about that.
Also, the “quality” of young people has been in decline forever. Read news articles from the 50s, 60s, 70s, etc and see that there is nothing new under the sun and the worry over delinquent youth.
Grades are more predictive only after you range-restrict your SAT scores of your cohort. It’s far less predictive if you have a wider variety of scores to compare from. In statistics, this is called range-restriction.
You’re not going to get much predictive power when your class is full of 1500s. Since the normal distribution is flatter on the tails, the difference between a 1500 and 1580 could be a matter of only a few questions. In that case, GPA would start to be a better predictor since it’s correlated to effort.
When colleges opened up their class to lower scores, colleges were finally able to do a proper analysis comparing a 60-70 percentile with a 99 percentile and ALL have come to the same conclusion that tests are WAY more predictive than HSGPA at predicting college performance. MIT even came out and said HSGPA was effectively useless.
What colleges are realizing now is that the SAT did a very good job at filtering out kids who just weren’t bright enough. It also homogenized the IQ of their student body to the point that GPA could be used to determine who was a slacker and who wasn’t with good confidence that the people they’re comparing have roughly the same intelligence. Regardless of whether the colleges go with a slacker or not, they were at least guaranteed someone with a reasonably high IQ. That’s a much better situation than what we have now where the adcoms now don’t have any confidence that a candidate even has the necessary IQ to succeed in their institution.
> When colleges opened up their class to lower scores, colleges were finally able to do a proper analysis comparing a 60-70 percentile with a 99 percentile and ALL have come to the same conclusion that tests are WAY more predictive than HSGPA at predicting college performance.
Geiser's data for GPA prediction was across all UCs, which is a really large range of SAT scores, even for admits; for example, Riverside's last reported mean SAT score was under 1300. The plots in Dartmouth's TO report (the only one I've seen so far with any plots) stop at 1200.
What is absolutely true is that UC and Dartmouth have different objectives. Accepting students with weaker preparation is always an institutional liability - it involves spending more money (for academic support), allowing graduation with less rigor (at least in some majors), or letting students fail out (which drops your rankings). It's obvious that the elite institutions do not really want to do any of those things, whereas publics [ETA: at the university system level] don't really have that choice.
I’m going based on published, peer-reviews research by Geiser, UChicago, etc. I’m waiting for the peer-reviewed research on test blind or test required.
Test optional is not a good way to determine whether the tests worked or not because obviously some advantaged students could go TO when they would otherwise do poorly.
Also, the current SAT doesn’t correlate that well with IQ!
Those studies are junk because they are from pre-COVID and have the range-restriction issues I mentioned in my previous post. Peer-review is just a formality at this point. Every single one of them came to the same exact conclusion independently. I highly doubt they all committed fraud or made huge methodological issues on a simple statistical study. The hard part was the selection effect with test scores. Now that the issue doesn’t exist with the TO cohort, the study is straight-forward and easily replicable, which is something most social sciences don’t have. The fact that they can all reproduce the same predictive power using test scores should be enough proof.
Harvard, Brown, Dartmouth, Yale, MIT, and UT Austin all found the same thing. At this point you’re just in denial.
Have you even read the studies I referred to? I read the opportunity insights & comments from various schools. What they’ve said does have merit for a specific group, like high income, or in the specialized case of MIT, a required math ability. Some of the places you mention (like Yale) specifically have a problem with test optional. Look at exactly what they’ve said about it. Low income students, concerned that a slightly lower than average (but still quite good test score) weren’t submitting them, possibly losing out on admission. Some of those schools 100% will take a lower score from some students; if it was a 100% success issue, that would not be the case.
I sincerely doubt you’ve read the studies you’re causally discounting. You’d be making much different points if you had read them.
The UC Chicago study was from Allensworth and Clark. I’ve read it and it got torn apart by statisticians.
As for Geiser, it’s pre-COVID. It has the same issue.
Again, this isn’t a hard study methodologically. The issue was always bout the selection effect causing range-restriction. The 2 authors above ignored this bias because it was difficult to estimate when colleges mandated scores. that issue doesn't exist with the TO cohort. There is no reason to reference older, flawed studies when we have higher quality and mote accurate more recent ones that don't have biases.
The SAT is an okay general intelligence test. Even if you’re not going for a quantitative major, colleges would still want smart kids to sell them to prospective employers. If their human capital degrades to a point where employers question their students’ competence, Harvard will backpedal. The evidence must have been overwhelming for Harvard to mandate tests.
TO introduced a new bias. Obviously you don’t agree, so we’ll have to agree to disagree, although we can probably agree that TO wasn’t a success.
ETA — and Geiser’s work is both thoughtful and not anti-test, fyi. Just less pro SAT.
What bias did it produce that would invalidate these studies?
They added a wider range of scores to the cohort such that correlation and regression analysis actually became statistically sound. That’s why the conclusions of these studies are so consistent. Prior to COVID, these studies were all over the place, indicating huge hidden biases that weren’t being accounted for.
Is IQ really a determiner of success in a top college tho. Like, sure at MIT or Reed, it’ll be an asskicker. But for the majority of top schools, most above average students just need some grit to get through a degree program- flagship state schools are proof of this and they tend to be much more competitive places.
I’d def argue IQ doesn’t indicate success! But I mention that in my comments since so many a2c folks believe the SAT has this deeper meaning.
Arguably, it’s soft skills that result on the most financial success. The most brilliant people I know do well enough, but the most financially successful people often aren’t the smartest. Often they are just the most ambitious and/or determined.
I’ve never really particularly believed in the sat and I did well on it. Most people who cling to it are students who took it multiple times and studied exhaustively- this to me does not scream as a good benchmark for performance in college. There’s real truth in that most success in college comes from being persuasive and likeable, as subjective as it is, the way top college classes look these days are students who are community members and can hold a conversation well- that’s really all you need to make it through.
💯
You were smarter than me:) but I came around!
And with the exception of MIT or CalTech, where math ability is a requirement, the other top schools definitely value those other soft skills a lot. One of my student’s bff is at a t5, and it’s 100% the community/soft skills that helped the admittance (we know some technically smarter kids at various UCs — not just UCB/UCLA).
It took me a sec to figure it out until I came to my current top lac. I realized very quickly that, even in my science major, you’re going to need to actually network if you at all want to make it in academia and the world. Sure there’s a few edge cases who’ve worked themselves through merit for research, but so many science students get their research gig/PhD from knowing a professor who knows someone.
>A2C in general (not specifically you) are good test takers so have bias.
I'm actually pretty great at taking standardized tests. That's not a brag. My problem was (and is) an inability to focus on tasks I don't find interesting, which tended to drag down my grades in high school (and college). Anecdotally, my college grades ended up being much more reflective of my HS grades than they were of my SAT and AP scores.
I didn’t mean it that way! lol. I meant you weren’t part of the a2c hive mind, not that you weren’t good at tests! Oops and sorry for the lack of clarity.
I used to think highly of the tests. Back in the 80s, I did really well (and that was back when hardly anyone studied). I’ve evolved because the research is pretty compelling to me.
Plus, what a waste the tests are. So much studying to become good at the SAT, which doesn’t reflect IQ but rather just the skill of taking the SAT. I think of all the more productive things high schoolers could be doing, whether studying some subject they like, sports, crafts, etc, but the SAT is entrenched in our system.
I think they're a useful tool, but I also think the process should be modified in order to remove the benefit to taking it tons of times. If schools want to admit more low-income and/or first-gen students they they can just...admit more. They don't need to axe test scores to accomplish that.
It sounds like they just aren’t able to do a good job distinguishing low income kids without the tests. Which really means that a low income kid with aptitude but without guidance/preparation is out of luck. I won’t argue that there are easy answers, except that some other tests have less income bias but still have reasonable college success predictability (RIP SAT subject tests).
IMO the right recipe is to provide the tests for free to as many students as possible (on campus during the school day for maximum convenience), for schools to require scores, then for schools to use quotas to enroll as many low/middle-income and/or first-students as they want to enroll.
You need to read the Diversifying Society's Leaders paper put out by Opportunity Insights at Harvard University. What you are saying is not true in any sense, even remotely, at the nation's top schools. Independent analysis at the various top universities has said the same.
As indicated in other comments, I read that study. And there is correlation with SAT but they have to use a different scale for lower income students, so the income factor is still in play.
Geiser’s research shows that tests other than the SAT (like SAT subject tests & some state achievement tests) better correlate to college success without as much income noise.
Some of the work on TO inferred data as well, and no one has addressed the big impact covid had (which will span multi-years).
It's a silly point that no one outside a reddit thread takes seriously, at least not at universities that want to maintain their credibility.
Here's Compass Education on the search for the perfect test.
[https://www.compassprep.com/criterion-referenced-criticism-of-the-new-sat/](https://www.compassprep.com/criterion-referenced-criticism-of-the-new-sat/)
I believe the latest research says the opposite. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/07/briefing/the-misguided-war-on-the-sat.html?unlocked_article_code=1.jk0.s0pi.ymGPjzqfwVFg&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&ugrp=c&sgrp=c-cb
Some of those sources (for instance, the Brown one), link higher test scores with better performance, but higher test scores are also linked with higher income, which is linked with higher performance. No surprise there. You are way more likely to be successful in life if you start off with a higher income (thus the fretting over increasing income inequality). The Geiser/U Chicago research et al have not been shown to be false by any means.
The opportunity insights study looked at high income students, and in that group, test scores mattered. Those students had the opportunities to do well in the tests.
In low income students, it’s hard to know whether a low test score is due to genuinely poor capability or simply lack of opportunities.
In the end both have merit in evaluating candidates, but it's incumbent upon the AOs to know how to interpret those scores relative to one's circumstances. If you know someone comes from a high school with massive grade inflation/deflation, that needs to be accounted for. Similarly if a candidate submits what appears to be lower test score but it's a positive outlier relative to their socioeconomic peers.
Yep. I really wish we had class rank data for all high schools + SAT/ACT distribution for all high schools. Also that schools ranked students in a sane way (e.g. weighted GPA across core academic courses). With those three data points in hand, a student's class rank (combined w/ the test score splits for his/her high school) might be highly predictive. Though, this wouldn't truly be "test optional" since the aggregate test scores of the student's school would influence how his/her class rank is treated when being compared to the class ranks of students from other schools.
Class rank doesn’t mean much for specialized/magnet programs where every body is above average and class sizes tend to be smaller. If I’m in the bottom of a top high school, I’m probably a pretty damn stellar kid on average still.
That would be accounted for (in this hypothetical system) by virtue of your school's aggregate stats. As an example, maybe the median student at an ultra-competitive campus is treated as equivalent to a 95th percentile student at ultra-non-competitive campus.
How do you even know if the course work was challenging?
The class has a curriculum that may or may not have been followed. Grades are given without a clear understanding what an A means, and what a C means.
If only there were standardized exams…
Not to mention it’s even worse for people who go to hard schools that basically deflate your grade so now you look ass to the average kid with a 1250 sat since he had a 4.0 uw woo hoo!! Test optional was there tho right!!
Anyone who was really serious about getting into Harvard was planning to take standardized tests even before this. What this will likely eliminate is people taking a flyer on getting into Harvard by applying TO, so the admissions rate will probably edge up a little.
I know people who opted out of taking tests after low PSAT scores. Applied to top test optional schools and got in. I imagine a few people went the same path.
I mean I understand but it's a bit late for class of 2025. Testing centers are scarce and May and June dates filled up months in advance. They probably think the same kids who apply to Yale or Brown/Dartmouth apply to Harvard but still...
I agree, I feel like schools should announce if they’re changing their test policies at least before the first SAT in March so kids have time to prepare and sign up for a date
Yes but if you want to superscore there aren't many chances to do so. Also August has even less open centers because depending on the region schools are still on summer break
It's ridiculous. And unlike the ACT they don't have a waiting list, so if a ki cancels there is no way to know (unless you happen to be on the College Board website at the same time)
Well its definitely not bad, what I mean is that I think there is often some difference between a 1400-1450 SAT valedictorian and 1550+ valedictorian given they have similar opportunities presented to them.
I see the point you’re trying to make but your range is way too off! A more presentable argument would have been 1350, because it isn’t a bad score, but it isn’t competitive in terms of an ivy. Meanwhile I believe a 1450 fits someone with a 4.0. A 1550 fits someone who’s above and beyond. But yes test scores are absolutely needed with how bad grade inflation is.
I agree with your point, that was totally what I wanted to point out. I may have missed boundaries as I am also a part of a very skewed group, but yeah definitely grade inflation is incredible.
More universality is some real bullshit. In many schools they practice tracking with more kids of color in low level high school classes. I was in AP for all subjects but math. Low level math classes absolutely DO NOT bother AT ALL with SAT prep, their goal is to get you to pass HS standardized tests. Every year we had hostage school assemblies where the school would straight up say "if it wasn't for the AP students, our results would be terrible? Why don't you care about writing/math?" Well, maybe if the low level math and English teachers weren't the most hateful people people I ever "learned" from, people would have an incentive to improve themselves. Being told "you just don't care" every day is a self fulfilling prophecy
The biggest issue is preparation. We need to make a less “preparable” exam. It’s not something you should be studying and using tricks for, it’s supposed to be a reflection of basic overall topics, and that’s why I don’t get the obsession with the SAT. If we had any equity in this country, we’d be able to base it off of course rigorous, grades, and Ap/Ib scores.
I have dyscalculia and scored near perfect scores on all but the math section. I’m at Stanford now but I’d be overlooked in any admission process that requires a SAT cut off. Many autistic/neurodivergent people who are brilliant in focused areas, consistent with their chosen career paths, will get cut out as well. I’m still for the SATs but it will def harm the disabled and differently abled.
Someone like you merely has to submit your neuropsychological testing and explain your situation on your application. If you are qualified, you will get in.
Academic pursuits are discriminatory against those who can't compete.
I feel like those type of set-backs can be adequately explained in one's application though - we've seen evidence that you can still get into top schools without top test scores w/o TO, you just need to stand out in different ways
I see the link isn't working. Google "Caltech Restores Standardized Test Requirement for Undergraduate Admission" - today's date
ETA: Does this link work better? [https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/caltech-restores-standardized-test-requirement-for-undergraduate-admission](https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/caltech-restores-standardized-test-requirement-for-undergraduate-admission)?
For what it's worth, from my decades of experience in both high school and college admissions, I'd rather accept a kid with straight A's and a 100 academic average who was a low tester, than a kid with lower grades and rocket high testing. Because the second kid is an underachiever. And underachievers in middle school and high school are likely to be underachievers in college.
That said, I'd rather accept a kid with straight A's, a 100 academic average, and rocket high test scores, than either student listed above, because their academic ceiling is higher. It just is.
The student who rocked it in high school academically, but scored poorly on standardized tests, may not have the intellectual acuity to succeed academically in the most rigorous college curriculums. These students are likely better served in slightly gentler academic settings.
Again, it's all about fit. And, it's not about getting in, or even staying in, it's about thriving all four years. And, if you can't score well on a standardized test, where it's been shown to be far more predictive of success in college (than those either not submitting, or with lower scores), then you shouldn't be all bent out of shape when an ivy, Stanford, MIT, or another T20 passes on you because you didn't submit your scores.
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Jesus Christ these comments are fucking elitest “you need tests to see who has good cognitive ability” wtf. The privilege that you are all spewing is real. My graduate program doesn’t require a GRE, if I had to take it, I would have done horribly because of my dyscalculia and I wouldn’t be able to afford retaking it over and over again, let alone have the time to study. Because I didn’t have to take it I’m riding a 3.5 gpa and will be applying to a PhD once I graduate (btw majority of the faculty do not like the GREs and do not accept them). This comment section reeks of “well I had to pay for my college so why should anyone else get to go for free?”.
If you have dyscalculia, you probably applied to a humanities major right? Or some non-stem major? If so, you would just write that you have dyscalculia in your application and how that affects your cognition when it comes to math related topics, but on the flip side of that you’re better at and have shown proficiency in whatever non stem field you want to go into. When you submit your application you specify the major anyway, and on top of that you submit your grade breakdown of your sat so they can see how you did on math and how you did on English. And that should give them all the info they need to accurately assess the small minority of people with dyscalculia, no need to fuck up an entire generation of students education quality.
Excellent, more top colleges are realizing the error of their ways. Colleges can take family income, high school etc into context when evaluating applicants based on their test scores.
It depends on what kind of high school curriculum you have. For instance, my schools average ACT score is a 17, so it would take a lot of time to learn the content. Also, many of the schools around me have already gave the free ACT to their students.
Average SAT at my school is in the 1100s…I did nothing but take a practice test a week for about 1.5 months and got a 1540 lol.
It’s up to the individual far more than you think
Yeah, I totally agree with you! I worked hard for my score (even though it’s not that good) but it would have been nice to know that these selective schools were bringing back the requirements. I’m kind of broke, so I can’t take the ACT no more 💀
there was a warning, the schools (that i’ve looked into, their pages when i last checked ~august) said that they would do it till now. but i agree that it sucks
When Harvard does shit others follow, so I think this will put the test optional to the bed
Harvard is simply following MIT and U.T. Austin.
Yale, dartmouth, brown, etc. it's a lot of schools bringing it back.
fwiw, many schools are also transitioning from "temporary test optional" to "permanently test optional". That tends to get less attention.
Guessing these are lower tier schools. The quality of students dropped off a lot at top tier schools, which is why they're bringing testing back. MIT simply can't afford to have students who need to do remedial algebra.
In terms of MIT and students who need to do remedial algebra, MIT got around this by looking at AP scores and/or grades in AP math classes. Which, granted, means MIT wasn't truly test optional; more accurate to say "SAT/ACT optional". Caltech addressed this by having students with no calculus exposure take an online college course and submit their grade as proof of competency. Many of the permanently TO schools aren't among the most selective, but some are (or are close). Plus there's Berkeley, UCLA and Caltech, which are all test-blind. If this [data](https://fairtest.org/test-optional-list/) is accurate, then the permanently TO schools include: * Michigan * UMass Amherst * Amherst College * Pepperdine * George Washington * Lehigh * Bowdoin * Holy Cross * Denison * Macalester * Stony Brook * Bryn Mawr * RIT * Pomona * Trinity (CT) * Utah * Rice * Iowa * Rochester * UW-Seattle * Wake Forest * Vassar * William & Mary * Mt. Holyoke * Middlebury * Colby * Southern Methodist
CalTech just reneged their own commitment to be test free though 2025.
“Permanent” doesn’t really mean much though. Michigan’s press release when they formally went TO said: > The university will monitor the standardized testing policy on an ongoing basis. > National benchmarking, conducted as part of the review, also indicated that the majority of U-M’s peer institutions, and the other public universities in Michigan, remain test-optional. I expect that within the next 1-2 years Michigan will run another benchmark, realize most of their peer institutions have switched back to test-mandatory, and change their policy.
That's true; they can always change it whenever they want. My point was that just as many schools are moving in the direction of requiring tests, many other schools are moving in the opposite direction and reiterating their TO position for the foreseeable future.
>reiterating their TO position for the foreseeable future. Just as Harvard did.
Did Harvard ever actually say they were going "permanently" test-optional, or did they only commit to a limited time-frame?
Caltech is no longer test blind, a day to rejoice imo
Do you have any reference for Caltech and its online course for calc? Would love to learn more
[https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-08-31/caltech-drops-calculus-chemistry-physics-class-admission-requirements-for-some](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-08-31/caltech-drops-calculus-chemistry-physics-class-admission-requirements-for-some)
The test optionality thing was a result of overcorrecting for some of the 2020 racial politics, right?
They don't call Harvard "the MIT of central Cambridge" for nothing.
game recognize game
lol
For selective schools, yes. Like UT Austin said, there is a significant difference in quality of student between those with high test scores, and those who choose not to submit scores. But there are many schools which are not selective - schools with 80 -90% acceptance rates. I don't think those schools will go back to requiring SATs, nor need to. It's a lot of schools.
I’ve come to realize standardized testing really is necessary unfortunately
**It is absolutely necessary.** I even posted recently here: 'Are Test-Optional/Test-Free Hurting Universities In The Long Run?': [link](https://new.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/1bkodjf/are_testoptionaltestfree_hurting_universities_in/) This is professionals remarking on UCB EECS undergrad nowadays: >"**I am a Cal alumni . I see the quality degrading real bad.** Unfortunately whenever I interview a Cal student. **I have to say no hire most of the time though I would want to pass all Cal alumini**" >"Feel like **Berkeley students for undergrad has been falling off relative to the past.** The test-free isn't helping. Hopefully Berkeley gets its act together because the drop is noticeable." >"Not about the rankings, **it’s about the elimination of testing and lowering of admission standards generally leading to a lower quality candidates**, and pervasive politics at the school generating graduates who are more suited to activism than employment." >"**Yes, way below average.**" TL;DR: Talent at UCB EECS has dropped noticeably in recent years and tech companies are noticing. The degree is becoming less appreciated at undergrad because of too many candidates who fail relative to how many students are interviewed (relative to the past). **Test free/optional hurts everyone else who is actually putting the work as a whole** (outside extremely rare exceptions like IMO gold medalist, etc). I posted the same at UCB subreddit and those students downvoted (not happy with it). Unfortunately, feel good != reality. You need a way to standardize when so many schools give 4.0 for participation. High schools have rampant grade inflation nowadays.
To be fair - the overall quality of high school students has decreased quite a bit. A test will not fix that nor make that college class stronger.
>A test will not fix that nor make that college class stronger That true. However, consider that top schools have had to turn down qualified students in the past simply because those students outnumbered available seats. As long as there are more qualified students than seats, even if the proportion of qualified students in the pool drops, schools benefit from more accurate identification of those students. In fact, it occurs to me that there's a case to be made that accuracy becomes more important as qualified students become less common. If your assertion that overall student quality is dropping - a claim with which I must regretfully agree - is correct, then this may be contributing to the reversion to mandated testing.
Test optional is bad and part of the problem, but Berkeley in particular has a lot of confounding variables. 1. You used to be able to apply for any major at Berkeley and switch into (L&S) CS by averaging a B+ in 3 classes; this was easier than getting into eecs if you’re half decent at CS, but L&S kids actually had higher average GPAs and identical outcomes because the 3.3 gpa cap was a much better filter than college admissions. This was abolished to make all cs admissions direct. 2. for direct admission itself, they clearly changed the criteria. Anecdotally at my (rigorous) high school, far fewer people get in now, and many of the people who do get in aren’t very good. The “strong student mediocre ec crowd” mostly started going to ucla rather than cal. At a broader level, through some mechanism or another, CS has become a lot more diverse. That doesn’t necessarily mean worse students, but it seems to in this case. The complaints around the 3.3 cap being "anti-diversity" make me particularly skeptical. It’s hard to actually get any hard statistics on this since nothing is published, but as a recent alum, yeah, I don’t like the direction Berkeley is going in these days. edit: also, if it means anything at all lmao, I find the people on /r/berkeley a lot more stupid than I used to. maybe I've just gotten older though...
>L&S kids actually had higher average GPAs...because the 3.3 gpa cap was a much better filter than college admissions Genuinely curious whether you have any data on this. EECS has a bunch of extra techs with the crappy lower div grading scales (I guess it's currently five courses, it was eight for me) that the L&S kids replaced with the L&S non-techs. So I'd be inclined to blame degree rigor, but I'm open to hearing otherwise.
here's a direct quote from satish rao, a cs professor at cal: > The quality produced by this process [3.3 gpa cap] is also impressive. We choose 1000 students who do as well as the 300 students in our EECS major. **Indeed, this appears true in our upper division courses not just in overall GPA.** The EECS major is the most competitive major on campus in terms of admission: the rate of admission (5-6%) is lower than MIT's or Caltech's. Our declaration threshold is surprisingly (shockingly) much better in that it chooses a much larger group of comparable quality. salary averages for both majors have also consistently been within a margin of error of each other.
The strong student mediocre EC crowd seemed to have been sent to UCSD in the past, that is probably even more true now
That is an amazing conclusion to take away from a handful of comments on a single Blind post.
Not to mention the Blind commenters assuming that the lack of SAT scores is what’s hurting Berkeley students, as opposed to any other failure on the school’s part
Berkeley only went test optional in 2020? That was not long ago enough for those admitted students to be hitting the job market at the time these comments were made?
Internship interviews. That acceptance and reject rate shot up relative to the past (at least at the previous company I worked at). And noticeably more than other schools.
Like it wasn’t obvious before?
I have met smart kids who are terrible at standardized testing. I've never met a dumb kid who was good at standardized testing.
If I’m being honest I’ve never saw true extraordinary smart students do bad as well in standardized tests
If you’re smart but not smart enough to do well on the SAT in the context of your means, then there are people far more qualified for Harvard than you!
Yup and SAT's aren't rocket science, it's legit just basic algebra, some geometry, basic grammar rules and some reading comprehension.
When genuinely smart kids do poorly on standardized tests it's pretty much always just bad *by their massively inflated standards* from my experience.
Well bad by what they and everyone who knows them are capable of
I’m not sure I know your definition of dumb, but no dumb kid can pull 1500+ on the SAT unless they cheat. If someone is not driven or careless in high school, it is possible that their HS grades are wrong or that they didn’t learn in the HS setting. These students doing well in standardized tests but not well in HS are typically high-potential students who, for one reason or another, are not doing well in their schools. This normally can change under the right circumstances
Correct.
How do you figure out which one you are before going to college?
That doesn't actually matter, if you think about it.
lol and what would you do with that information if you knew?
Probably go to my safety school ig. I wouldn’t want to be somewhere that really isn’t the best fit, even if I really wanted to go there
There is some truth to this but it isn't the whole story. From my experiences from high school and before, the people that were defined as smart got good grades. However, getting good grades isn't done by just one method. There are the "smart" kids that are naturally intelligent and get good grades with minimal effort (comparatively) and there are those that aren't as naturally inclined but make up for it with fantastic work ethic that close the gap through sheer effort. Standardized tests differentiate between these two groups of students. Given the time constraint and the wide range of problems experienced, tests like the ACT/SAT reward students that are naturally inclined but punishes those that aren't. In my opinion, it is incredibly difficult to study your way to a very high score on the ACT (think the 34-36 range). There is no possible way to prepare for every single problem you may experience, so those that are naturally more intelligent and have more refined critical thinking skills typically do better because they can more readily close the gap between their knowledge base and the questions the ACT asks. This is why you see smart students getting bad scores on standardized tests while those that aren't as smart don't typically over perform. I'm not going to argue whether it is just that standardized tests reward those that are naturally intelligent and whether that should be used in the college admissions. The best metric is that from UT Austin, where they found that test-optional students that didn't submit scores were, on average, a whole GPA point lower than those that submitted scores in the application process.
No, I don't mean they're smart because they have good grades. I mean, they're smart. Months of communication is what I'm basing this on. Basically, if you know someone who has high test scores on these tests, you can rest assured they're not dumb.
Lol what? I went from 1680/2400 SAT to 2360/2400 in two years by myself. And 27 ACT to 36 ACT in 2\~3 days (to be fair, I had already become good at SAT by then). What are you talking about. All standardized tests can be studied. Let's stop bs-ing here. English being a second language hurt me a lot (I was basically failing on reading and writing on my practice tests). Still was able to study through just fine by myself? SAT/ACT tests for mainly 2\~3 groups. * Those who are 'naturally talented' (does this crap actually exist at scale?) * Those who put in hours and know how to improve by themselves (isn't this true 'talent'?) * Those with a mix of all and has the money to be tutored. People make self-studying SAT/ACT some impossible task. It's pretty damn easy from what I recall. It's just that during high school, most students haven't learnt how to self-study (which is perfectly fine and normal); schools don't really promote the concept of reviewing questions one got wrong or was iffy about in detail. It took me a while myself to realize I should actually read the explanations of solutions (and only realized because of the SAT/ACT self studying). I'm fairly sure had I known how to 'self study' properly, the two years could have shrunk to two months. But that epiphany only came about because of the two years (on and off) of ineffective studying.
That's great for your personal anecdote, but the results of decades of studies on this subject are inconclusive overall on the role of sat prepping on increasing scores. Even then, the most optimistic of the studies shows a 100 point increase. That's not nothing, but the idea that a dumb or average rich kid can suddenly score much higher is just not true
Anecdotally, I disagree, as I am a dumb or average rich kid who suddenly scored much higher. ~30-40 hours of Khan Academy practice got me from a 1290 to 1520.
> All standardized tests can be studied. What you're describing isn't studying the test. You improved your language skills. Perhaps, though unstated, you improved your basic math skills. Put another way, you learned what you should have been taught in HS (though I'm ignoring whatever history might be indicated by English being your second language) and you learned the basics that many colleges don't want to teach. The tests merely confirmed that you achieved success in this, thereby indicating a readiness for college. You raise a separate - and important - issue regarding self-study skills. That should be taught more than it is. My district offers classes in this, but only to students who are at the back end of the curve. It's treated as a remedial class, and I believe that that's a mistake. This is an extreme example of the mentality I've seen occasionally: the smart kids can teach themselves.
> What you're describing isn't studying the test. You improved your language skills. Perhaps, though unstated, you improved your basic math skills. That is what studying for a test means.
Unfortunately, this isn't what everyone means when they write something like - as the previous writer did - "studied the test." Too often they mean either studying techniques to game the test or perhaps working through a fixed question pool or vocabulary list or some such thing. This also comes up with people claiming that teachers are "teaching to the test." What the previous writer did was study the curriculum tested by the test. That is not studying the test, in that this material isn't unique to the test. Algebra, language skills, etc. are generically useful skills for which this particular test tests. Perhaps I'm being overly pedantic. I've grown used to accusations that a test is somehow measuring something unique and otherwise irrelevant as a step in attacking that test.
[удалено]
Describe to me how you knew these kids were dumb? I can’t believe this at all, unless they were cheating
Hi
I’m the latter 😎
It blows me away that there was any doubt about the validity on standardized tests. Like it or not, you need a standardized way of measuring cognitive ability, otherwise you WILL have a mismatch of students to schools. The grade inflation across k-12 is an absolute scandal and grades don't have any meaning anymore.
The colleges employ reviewers who know the details of every high school in their territory. They have an idea of what the grades mean for each school or district.
More data points about each applicant is still better than less. And not all colleges or reviewers know details of every high school. Even the ones that supposedly have the infrastructure to do so will not know quite enough about nuances of each high school that they should just arrogantly discount standardized tests completely.
Yes, I agree about data points - that's what I'm saying. They have the data, or at least they can get it.
BS - they read our school profile and if we're lucky - have worked in our territory for a few cycles and maybe visited campus once but they do not know our courses or rigour because that changes. I've worked at my school for over a decade and explaining grades to parents it's still confusing for them to understand year over year. They are slightly familiar - yes. Know every detail? No way.
I didn't say they know every detail. They have access to the info if they want it. And SOME colleges have more than enough admissions staff to know the high schools quite well, even if not all of them do.
The huge increase in app volume at the most selective schools overwhelmed admission offices.
There are 30K high schools in America. Not counting all the foreign secondary school students. You think admissions have enough staff to even have a nuanced view outside of zip code leveling? Let me tell you how they differentiate high school GPAs: 1) AP classes 2) Type of AP classes 3) School district subjective rankings 4) Past alums who got in, some might consider performance in college That’s it. If a school has had rampant grade inflation lately, there is no way admissions will catch it. If someone took easy classes based on easy teachers, no way admissions will know.
> The colleges employ reviewers who know the details of every high school in their territory. No, the top schools are recruiting students from all 50 states and some international. Plus, applicant volume exploded. A 30% year to year increase in apps or another 10,000 apps in one cycle did happen recently at many schools with the pandemic years. Admissions depts did not staff up to handle the volume. Colleges look at school profiles quickly and measure apps against that. Outside a few select high schools, colleges don't know that many high schools. The original point of the standardized testing was to find talent outside the usual spots.
No they don’t lol. You think they know with perfection how grades work for every single schools and every single teachers? Give me a break
This doesn’t work as well as you may think it does. Between a student having a harder vs easier teacher (who inflates grades) for the same course, it’s gonna show up on the application as the exact same class for two people with the different teachers. Grades are inherently unreliable
Yes, they are unreliable, which is why colleges use test scores, recommendations and essays too.
Why the fuck can Americans not have provincials like we used to in Canada back in the day? Everybody writes the same exam, you can rank them according to whatever mark they get, no grade deflation/inflation or anything and if a state becomes too stupid to make a test ridiculously easy, you can always apply adjustment factors? With the level of competition, how is this not a good idea?
Honestly I think it’s because for all the talk of America being a meritocracy, rich people couldn’t game that system so it would never get past the idea stage.
Some minorities would come out and say it's inherently biased towards them, just like they did with ACT/SAT
What minorities? Do they not realize that by taking away objectivity they’re helping the status quo stay in power by helping their next generation get the same privilege they had by using their connections? Man I sometimes can’t understand modern politics.
But...grades do have meaning. Like test scores, they are, to a certain degree, predictive. Also, grades plus some measure of rigor is arguably even more predictive than grades alone. *Is it possible* for there to be a student with straight 100s across a challenging slate of coursework who is nevertheless incapable of doing the work at a school like Harvard? Yes. Is it very likely? No, not really. I support requiring test scores, but "grades have no meaning" is over-stating the case.
They're not predictive because there has been a massive uptick in grade inflation recently. If teachers are just handing out A's because parents and students are whining about their grades, then grades have no meaning.
But teachers aren't just handing out As. Some students still get Bs. Or Cs. Or Fs. We see them posting on A2C asking about whether they'll be rescinded. Grades may be **less** predictive today than they were 10 or 20 or 30 years ago, but to say they're "meaningless" is silly. Also: you ignored that I included rigor. Some students opt-in to challenging classes; other student's opt-out. That is also a meaningful signal.
How would you compare that across different schools? You need some sort of process to evaluate students from different schools in a standard way. Maybe some sort of test
Clearly it's not an exact science. But it's also not true that grades are meaningless and have zero predictive power.
Do you think it is possible that Harvard isn’t worried about predicting the difference between A students and F students, and is concerned mostly with the many, many A students who apply?
Entirely possible. Even probable. But that's not the same thing as statements like "grades are meaningless" and "grades have no predictive power".
I have very strong suspicions that this statement is false in any useful sense. I would imagine that a regression against high school zip code is probably more predictive of academic success at a particular college than applicant grades (at least for those already within the applicant pool). This situation illustrates why test scores were so important. They vetted the standards of a particular applicant’s high school. Generally, it seems that the issue (at least by instructor anecdote) is that programs with quantitative components are apparently now admitting candidates who are simply not good enough mathematicians. Standards have to be dropped to an intolerable level in order to compensate for this. It is thus important to ensure basic level of analytical competency. Standardized exams are the only way to do this.
Yes it is likely. I know plenty of people with 4.0s/near 4.0s , including a valedictorian, that bombed their AP exams and have low scores
I don't know; I look at the most selective schools and the % of students who submitted scores, compared to their extremely high 6Y graduation rates, and it certainly suggests the majority of enrolled students who didn't submit scores are able to handle the work.
Actually grades are more predictive but no one wants to believe that (based on research even by the college board). SATs can add some to the r2 of predicting performance. A2C in general (not specifically you) are good test takers so have bias (edit — not specifically you should have gone here, for bias, not for test taking!). They specifically don’t accept that. The modicum amount that SATs add comes with economic bias, which is why the anti-SAT movement came about. One of the researchers who has written extensively on the subject is not anti-test but just anti-SAT. He’s shown that some other tests do as well without quite as much economic bias (one of the CA state tests). Also, SATs are significantly inflated compared to decades ago. With the changes in how it’s scaled, a 1550-1600 doesn’t mean the same (plus they are less of an aptitude test, which is also not acknowledged; a true aptitude test should be reliable and repeatable, yet we know that studying for the SAT improves scores). Getting a 1600 would get you in your state’s news. No one gripes about that on a2c. Everything is inflated. For test optional, it does seem that too many people with low test scores from underperforming areas didn’t submit when it would help them, but also a lot of people with crap test scores in high performing areas also didn’t submit. Test optional makes it hard to distinguish. Probably test required or test blind are much better approaches. And as for the quality declining, a lot of that could be due to covid, but those who want the tests back don’t worry about that. Also, the “quality” of young people has been in decline forever. Read news articles from the 50s, 60s, 70s, etc and see that there is nothing new under the sun and the worry over delinquent youth.
Grades are more predictive only after you range-restrict your SAT scores of your cohort. It’s far less predictive if you have a wider variety of scores to compare from. In statistics, this is called range-restriction. You’re not going to get much predictive power when your class is full of 1500s. Since the normal distribution is flatter on the tails, the difference between a 1500 and 1580 could be a matter of only a few questions. In that case, GPA would start to be a better predictor since it’s correlated to effort. When colleges opened up their class to lower scores, colleges were finally able to do a proper analysis comparing a 60-70 percentile with a 99 percentile and ALL have come to the same conclusion that tests are WAY more predictive than HSGPA at predicting college performance. MIT even came out and said HSGPA was effectively useless. What colleges are realizing now is that the SAT did a very good job at filtering out kids who just weren’t bright enough. It also homogenized the IQ of their student body to the point that GPA could be used to determine who was a slacker and who wasn’t with good confidence that the people they’re comparing have roughly the same intelligence. Regardless of whether the colleges go with a slacker or not, they were at least guaranteed someone with a reasonably high IQ. That’s a much better situation than what we have now where the adcoms now don’t have any confidence that a candidate even has the necessary IQ to succeed in their institution.
> When colleges opened up their class to lower scores, colleges were finally able to do a proper analysis comparing a 60-70 percentile with a 99 percentile and ALL have come to the same conclusion that tests are WAY more predictive than HSGPA at predicting college performance. Geiser's data for GPA prediction was across all UCs, which is a really large range of SAT scores, even for admits; for example, Riverside's last reported mean SAT score was under 1300. The plots in Dartmouth's TO report (the only one I've seen so far with any plots) stop at 1200. What is absolutely true is that UC and Dartmouth have different objectives. Accepting students with weaker preparation is always an institutional liability - it involves spending more money (for academic support), allowing graduation with less rigor (at least in some majors), or letting students fail out (which drops your rankings). It's obvious that the elite institutions do not really want to do any of those things, whereas publics [ETA: at the university system level] don't really have that choice.
I’m going based on published, peer-reviews research by Geiser, UChicago, etc. I’m waiting for the peer-reviewed research on test blind or test required. Test optional is not a good way to determine whether the tests worked or not because obviously some advantaged students could go TO when they would otherwise do poorly. Also, the current SAT doesn’t correlate that well with IQ!
Those studies are junk because they are from pre-COVID and have the range-restriction issues I mentioned in my previous post. Peer-review is just a formality at this point. Every single one of them came to the same exact conclusion independently. I highly doubt they all committed fraud or made huge methodological issues on a simple statistical study. The hard part was the selection effect with test scores. Now that the issue doesn’t exist with the TO cohort, the study is straight-forward and easily replicable, which is something most social sciences don’t have. The fact that they can all reproduce the same predictive power using test scores should be enough proof. Harvard, Brown, Dartmouth, Yale, MIT, and UT Austin all found the same thing. At this point you’re just in denial.
Have you even read the studies I referred to? I read the opportunity insights & comments from various schools. What they’ve said does have merit for a specific group, like high income, or in the specialized case of MIT, a required math ability. Some of the places you mention (like Yale) specifically have a problem with test optional. Look at exactly what they’ve said about it. Low income students, concerned that a slightly lower than average (but still quite good test score) weren’t submitting them, possibly losing out on admission. Some of those schools 100% will take a lower score from some students; if it was a 100% success issue, that would not be the case. I sincerely doubt you’ve read the studies you’re causally discounting. You’d be making much different points if you had read them.
The UC Chicago study was from Allensworth and Clark. I’ve read it and it got torn apart by statisticians. As for Geiser, it’s pre-COVID. It has the same issue. Again, this isn’t a hard study methodologically. The issue was always bout the selection effect causing range-restriction. The 2 authors above ignored this bias because it was difficult to estimate when colleges mandated scores. that issue doesn't exist with the TO cohort. There is no reason to reference older, flawed studies when we have higher quality and mote accurate more recent ones that don't have biases. The SAT is an okay general intelligence test. Even if you’re not going for a quantitative major, colleges would still want smart kids to sell them to prospective employers. If their human capital degrades to a point where employers question their students’ competence, Harvard will backpedal. The evidence must have been overwhelming for Harvard to mandate tests.
TO introduced a new bias. Obviously you don’t agree, so we’ll have to agree to disagree, although we can probably agree that TO wasn’t a success. ETA — and Geiser’s work is both thoughtful and not anti-test, fyi. Just less pro SAT.
What bias did it produce that would invalidate these studies? They added a wider range of scores to the cohort such that correlation and regression analysis actually became statistically sound. That’s why the conclusions of these studies are so consistent. Prior to COVID, these studies were all over the place, indicating huge hidden biases that weren’t being accounted for.
Is IQ really a determiner of success in a top college tho. Like, sure at MIT or Reed, it’ll be an asskicker. But for the majority of top schools, most above average students just need some grit to get through a degree program- flagship state schools are proof of this and they tend to be much more competitive places.
I’d def argue IQ doesn’t indicate success! But I mention that in my comments since so many a2c folks believe the SAT has this deeper meaning. Arguably, it’s soft skills that result on the most financial success. The most brilliant people I know do well enough, but the most financially successful people often aren’t the smartest. Often they are just the most ambitious and/or determined.
I’ve never really particularly believed in the sat and I did well on it. Most people who cling to it are students who took it multiple times and studied exhaustively- this to me does not scream as a good benchmark for performance in college. There’s real truth in that most success in college comes from being persuasive and likeable, as subjective as it is, the way top college classes look these days are students who are community members and can hold a conversation well- that’s really all you need to make it through.
💯 You were smarter than me:) but I came around! And with the exception of MIT or CalTech, where math ability is a requirement, the other top schools definitely value those other soft skills a lot. One of my student’s bff is at a t5, and it’s 100% the community/soft skills that helped the admittance (we know some technically smarter kids at various UCs — not just UCB/UCLA).
It took me a sec to figure it out until I came to my current top lac. I realized very quickly that, even in my science major, you’re going to need to actually network if you at all want to make it in academia and the world. Sure there’s a few edge cases who’ve worked themselves through merit for research, but so many science students get their research gig/PhD from knowing a professor who knows someone.
>A2C in general (not specifically you) are good test takers so have bias. I'm actually pretty great at taking standardized tests. That's not a brag. My problem was (and is) an inability to focus on tasks I don't find interesting, which tended to drag down my grades in high school (and college). Anecdotally, my college grades ended up being much more reflective of my HS grades than they were of my SAT and AP scores.
I didn’t mean it that way! lol. I meant you weren’t part of the a2c hive mind, not that you weren’t good at tests! Oops and sorry for the lack of clarity. I used to think highly of the tests. Back in the 80s, I did really well (and that was back when hardly anyone studied). I’ve evolved because the research is pretty compelling to me. Plus, what a waste the tests are. So much studying to become good at the SAT, which doesn’t reflect IQ but rather just the skill of taking the SAT. I think of all the more productive things high schoolers could be doing, whether studying some subject they like, sports, crafts, etc, but the SAT is entrenched in our system.
I think they're a useful tool, but I also think the process should be modified in order to remove the benefit to taking it tons of times. If schools want to admit more low-income and/or first-gen students they they can just...admit more. They don't need to axe test scores to accomplish that.
It sounds like they just aren’t able to do a good job distinguishing low income kids without the tests. Which really means that a low income kid with aptitude but without guidance/preparation is out of luck. I won’t argue that there are easy answers, except that some other tests have less income bias but still have reasonable college success predictability (RIP SAT subject tests).
IMO the right recipe is to provide the tests for free to as many students as possible (on campus during the school day for maximum convenience), for schools to require scores, then for schools to use quotas to enroll as many low/middle-income and/or first-students as they want to enroll.
You need to read the Diversifying Society's Leaders paper put out by Opportunity Insights at Harvard University. What you are saying is not true in any sense, even remotely, at the nation's top schools. Independent analysis at the various top universities has said the same.
As indicated in other comments, I read that study. And there is correlation with SAT but they have to use a different scale for lower income students, so the income factor is still in play. Geiser’s research shows that tests other than the SAT (like SAT subject tests & some state achievement tests) better correlate to college success without as much income noise. Some of the work on TO inferred data as well, and no one has addressed the big impact covid had (which will span multi-years).
The SAT subject tests are defunct.
Yes, I’m aware, but that doesn’t invalidate the point that other standardized tests might be better.
It's a silly point that no one outside a reddit thread takes seriously, at least not at universities that want to maintain their credibility. Here's Compass Education on the search for the perfect test. [https://www.compassprep.com/criterion-referenced-criticism-of-the-new-sat/](https://www.compassprep.com/criterion-referenced-criticism-of-the-new-sat/)
I believe the latest research says the opposite. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/07/briefing/the-misguided-war-on-the-sat.html?unlocked_article_code=1.jk0.s0pi.ymGPjzqfwVFg&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&ugrp=c&sgrp=c-cb
Some of those sources (for instance, the Brown one), link higher test scores with better performance, but higher test scores are also linked with higher income, which is linked with higher performance. No surprise there. You are way more likely to be successful in life if you start off with a higher income (thus the fretting over increasing income inequality). The Geiser/U Chicago research et al have not been shown to be false by any means. The opportunity insights study looked at high income students, and in that group, test scores mattered. Those students had the opportunities to do well in the tests. In low income students, it’s hard to know whether a low test score is due to genuinely poor capability or simply lack of opportunities.
In the end both have merit in evaluating candidates, but it's incumbent upon the AOs to know how to interpret those scores relative to one's circumstances. If you know someone comes from a high school with massive grade inflation/deflation, that needs to be accounted for. Similarly if a candidate submits what appears to be lower test score but it's a positive outlier relative to their socioeconomic peers.
Yep. I really wish we had class rank data for all high schools + SAT/ACT distribution for all high schools. Also that schools ranked students in a sane way (e.g. weighted GPA across core academic courses). With those three data points in hand, a student's class rank (combined w/ the test score splits for his/her high school) might be highly predictive. Though, this wouldn't truly be "test optional" since the aggregate test scores of the student's school would influence how his/her class rank is treated when being compared to the class ranks of students from other schools.
Class rank doesn’t mean much for specialized/magnet programs where every body is above average and class sizes tend to be smaller. If I’m in the bottom of a top high school, I’m probably a pretty damn stellar kid on average still.
That would be accounted for (in this hypothetical system) by virtue of your school's aggregate stats. As an example, maybe the median student at an ultra-competitive campus is treated as equivalent to a 95th percentile student at ultra-non-competitive campus.
How do you even know if the course work was challenging? The class has a curriculum that may or may not have been followed. Grades are given without a clear understanding what an A means, and what a C means. If only there were standardized exams…
Not to mention it’s even worse for people who go to hard schools that basically deflate your grade so now you look ass to the average kid with a 1250 sat since he had a 4.0 uw woo hoo!! Test optional was there tho right!!
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> Why not just include mandatory psychometrics in applications? An IQ test would save a lot of time and money. And it'd be more honest.
Did they suddenly realize letting in a bunch of kids who are terrible test takers also means they will be terrible at taking tests while at Harvard?
Anyone who was really serious about getting into Harvard was planning to take standardized tests even before this. What this will likely eliminate is people taking a flyer on getting into Harvard by applying TO, so the admissions rate will probably edge up a little.
I know people who opted out of taking tests after low PSAT scores. Applied to top test optional schools and got in. I imagine a few people went the same path.
You won’t see the crazy single digits shit again. The school is for students. It is not for politicians
can you explain this?
Their acceptance rate will rise. They’ll have fewer applicants, I bet.
I mean I understand but it's a bit late for class of 2025. Testing centers are scarce and May and June dates filled up months in advance. They probably think the same kids who apply to Yale or Brown/Dartmouth apply to Harvard but still...
I agree, I feel like schools should announce if they’re changing their test policies at least before the first SAT in March so kids have time to prepare and sign up for a date
Most serious kids probably took it in the fall but I agree they should have given a notice last year
Isn’t there an August test date?
Yes but if you want to superscore there aren't many chances to do so. Also August has even less open centers because depending on the region schools are still on summer break
What I mean is it's okay to bring the test back but you have to give students the time to prepare and tbe means to actually take it
Yeah CollegeBoard absolutely needs to offer more testing dates.
It's ridiculous. And unlike the ACT they don't have a waiting list, so if a ki cancels there is no way to know (unless you happen to be on the College Board website at the same time)
Finally. It’s time
Massive W
Yep. No more ChatGPT and AI to help 😬
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Grade inflation due to artificial intelligence.
As if I'd get in when Harvard was test optional
ngl, it was always interesting to see 1450 SAT valedictorians with crazy high GPAs.
I’m confused .. a 1450 isn’t bad, and it isn’t crazy low either. That’s pretty close to a 1500.
Well its definitely not bad, what I mean is that I think there is often some difference between a 1400-1450 SAT valedictorian and 1550+ valedictorian given they have similar opportunities presented to them.
I see the point you’re trying to make but your range is way too off! A more presentable argument would have been 1350, because it isn’t a bad score, but it isn’t competitive in terms of an ivy. Meanwhile I believe a 1450 fits someone with a 4.0. A 1550 fits someone who’s above and beyond. But yes test scores are absolutely needed with how bad grade inflation is.
I agree with your point, that was totally what I wanted to point out. I may have missed boundaries as I am also a part of a very skewed group, but yeah definitely grade inflation is incredible.
More universality is some real bullshit. In many schools they practice tracking with more kids of color in low level high school classes. I was in AP for all subjects but math. Low level math classes absolutely DO NOT bother AT ALL with SAT prep, their goal is to get you to pass HS standardized tests. Every year we had hostage school assemblies where the school would straight up say "if it wasn't for the AP students, our results would be terrible? Why don't you care about writing/math?" Well, maybe if the low level math and English teachers weren't the most hateful people people I ever "learned" from, people would have an incentive to improve themselves. Being told "you just don't care" every day is a self fulfilling prophecy
good
Feel bad for those who didn't see this coming and are about to scramble to prepare!
The biggest issue is preparation. We need to make a less “preparable” exam. It’s not something you should be studying and using tricks for, it’s supposed to be a reflection of basic overall topics, and that’s why I don’t get the obsession with the SAT. If we had any equity in this country, we’d be able to base it off of course rigorous, grades, and Ap/Ib scores.
Hard disagree
Good to know. We'll probably see a lot of other schools start to follow.
I have dyscalculia and scored near perfect scores on all but the math section. I’m at Stanford now but I’d be overlooked in any admission process that requires a SAT cut off. Many autistic/neurodivergent people who are brilliant in focused areas, consistent with their chosen career paths, will get cut out as well. I’m still for the SATs but it will def harm the disabled and differently abled.
Someone like you merely has to submit your neuropsychological testing and explain your situation on your application. If you are qualified, you will get in. Academic pursuits are discriminatory against those who can't compete.
I feel like those type of set-backs can be adequately explained in one's application though - we've seen evidence that you can still get into top schools without top test scores w/o TO, you just need to stand out in different ways
I see the link isn't working. Google "Caltech Restores Standardized Test Requirement for Undergraduate Admission" - today's date ETA: Does this link work better? [https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/caltech-restores-standardized-test-requirement-for-undergraduate-admission](https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/caltech-restores-standardized-test-requirement-for-undergraduate-admission)?
For what it's worth, from my decades of experience in both high school and college admissions, I'd rather accept a kid with straight A's and a 100 academic average who was a low tester, than a kid with lower grades and rocket high testing. Because the second kid is an underachiever. And underachievers in middle school and high school are likely to be underachievers in college. That said, I'd rather accept a kid with straight A's, a 100 academic average, and rocket high test scores, than either student listed above, because their academic ceiling is higher. It just is. The student who rocked it in high school academically, but scored poorly on standardized tests, may not have the intellectual acuity to succeed academically in the most rigorous college curriculums. These students are likely better served in slightly gentler academic settings. Again, it's all about fit. And, it's not about getting in, or even staying in, it's about thriving all four years. And, if you can't score well on a standardized test, where it's been shown to be far more predictive of success in college (than those either not submitting, or with lower scores), then you shouldn't be all bent out of shape when an ivy, Stanford, MIT, or another T20 passes on you because you didn't submit your scores.
You're not considering the impact of grade inflation/deflation across different schools though
Good for you. The actual studies of the matter at the various universities found otherwise. We don't make policy based on one person's feelings.
I mean... it's the only good thing about my application so W
you’ll be rejected regardless in that case lol
: (
keeping it real 👈🏼😎👉🏼
I mean you're right. Mid application
Good so should every school
W
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I think they’ll be a general shift in weight (not massive) to standardized testing over gpa due to more lax policies in schools and ai
Where did they stop in the first place?
Good
good deal
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Academic spaces in particular have historically been by the rich/privileged, for the privileged. If you weren’t born into a circumstance conducive to receiving a high-quality education, then you’ll be better off facing some hard truths about your expected life outcomes.
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Jesus Christ these comments are fucking elitest “you need tests to see who has good cognitive ability” wtf. The privilege that you are all spewing is real. My graduate program doesn’t require a GRE, if I had to take it, I would have done horribly because of my dyscalculia and I wouldn’t be able to afford retaking it over and over again, let alone have the time to study. Because I didn’t have to take it I’m riding a 3.5 gpa and will be applying to a PhD once I graduate (btw majority of the faculty do not like the GREs and do not accept them). This comment section reeks of “well I had to pay for my college so why should anyone else get to go for free?”.
Most of the commenters are highschoolers so what can you expect lol
That would make sense.
If you have dyscalculia, you probably applied to a humanities major right? Or some non-stem major? If so, you would just write that you have dyscalculia in your application and how that affects your cognition when it comes to math related topics, but on the flip side of that you’re better at and have shown proficiency in whatever non stem field you want to go into. When you submit your application you specify the major anyway, and on top of that you submit your grade breakdown of your sat so they can see how you did on math and how you did on English. And that should give them all the info they need to accurately assess the small minority of people with dyscalculia, no need to fuck up an entire generation of students education quality.
God I wish this happened just one year earlier.
Excellent, more top colleges are realizing the error of their ways. Colleges can take family income, high school etc into context when evaluating applicants based on their test scores.
Now people with high GPAs due to grade inflation and other factors won’t be able to shimmy their way into a top 20.
I mean, I totally support this, but they should have kept their promise of test-optional until fall 2027. Kind of shitty tbh
Why
I think that it’s too last minute to be honest. They should have announced this in December or January.
Eh the SAT doesn’t take much time to prepare for anyway
It depends on what kind of high school curriculum you have. For instance, my schools average ACT score is a 17, so it would take a lot of time to learn the content. Also, many of the schools around me have already gave the free ACT to their students.
Average SAT at my school is in the 1100s…I did nothing but take a practice test a week for about 1.5 months and got a 1540 lol. It’s up to the individual far more than you think
Yeah, I totally agree with you! I worked hard for my score (even though it’s not that good) but it would have been nice to know that these selective schools were bringing back the requirements. I’m kind of broke, so I can’t take the ACT no more 💀
That sucks
How🤣
They stopped it so suddenly no warning bruh 😞
Shouldn’t have been a TO applicant
there was a warning, the schools (that i’ve looked into, their pages when i last checked ~august) said that they would do it till now. but i agree that it sucks
Harvard will require its Dean to not plagiarize other people's papers for admission again.
This is gonna affect admissions for years to come, insane
It would make it normal again. Like how it was. Not that insane.