Colleges afraid of losing application revenue and interest due to enrollment cliff are staying Test Optional ...
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Anonymous
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There is information to suggest SAT/ACT can be predictive of thriving in college but many colleges who could move to test required are also scared of losing application numbers as the enrollment cliff hits in the next 2-5 years. So there's a group of nervous colleges fighting for the candidates who have high GPAs but test poorly:
Test Optional stalwarts: U Chicago Notre Dame Columbia UCs Swarthmore Pomona Carleton Williams Amherst Test Required or soon to be: Princeton Harvard UPenn Cornell MIT Stanford Georgetown Claremont McKenna |
Anonymous
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LACs will remain test optional to continue to attract applicants. They also tend to have a lot of athletes, proportionally.
UC Regents are their own kettle of fish. Depends on how the political winds are blowing among the regents. Faculty senate is in favor of bring back the test requirement. Other schools have their own reasons they need to keep apps up, like Columbia (recent controversies), and Notre Dame has football. |
Anonymous
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The enrollment cliff is not going to have any impact at these schools for many years , if then. There’s no nervousness.
Look elsewhere for why they choose to remain test optional. |
Anonymous
| CMC really sticks out in the test required group. Their scores must be among the most inflated with their percentage of admitted students submitting SAT at less than 30%. |
Anonymous
Dartmouth, Brown and Yale were the very first to go back to test required after Covid. The first two collected all the data and have the studies to back that test optional students did not do as well over 5 years. |
Anonymous
| Okay so high test scores correlate with higher GPA in school, makes sense. But can someone show evidence that it leads to post college success. My guess is that success after school is attributable to many other factors beyond scores. |
Anonymous
| TO allows schools to lie about their average scores in the rat race (human race) for rankings. That's it. |
Anonymous
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OP, what is your background? What are your credentials?
Because these schools give our fee waivers like candy. They don't rely on application fees to stay afloat. That's a tiny part of their budgets. They probably spend more on postage. |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
Having been through athletic recruiting at NESCAC schools and the like, I can tell you that TO schools still want test scores for pre-reads. |
Anonymous
Agree. The OP is a moron. Bored, SAHM or underemployed CS worker. |
Anonymous
| UCs have been TO for a long time. They are not in danger of enrollment cliff. LOL |
Anonymous
Strange OP didn’t note the first to do it |
Anonymous
We don't have the most recent CDS yet for this year's class at CMC (2025-26), but the last published one (2024-25) has SAT/ACT at 39% submitted which is low. But almost half of their student body comes from CA and their have historically been far fewer test sites in CA until the last 12-18 months only. So I suspect that the number will be higher in the next CDS (25/26) or (26/27). They will be test required in 2028. Where we live in CA - SF Bay - it was actually impossible to get SAT test sites in SF just 2 years ago. It just started to get easier 18 months ago and that's true across CA. I knew people 2 yrs ago flying to Arizona to take the SAT. It's hard to do that and take the test multiple times as people on this board seem to do. Even now, there are still zero locations in SF city to offer the ACT, you have to drive an hour away or more. You can take the SAT in SF thankfully. I think this issue over low availability of test site was because there was low demand as UCs/Cal States are test blind vs TO? Either way, this year's class at our DD's school seems to be testing a lot more. |
Anonymous
I thought Yale had some kind of wacky "test choice" option where students can avoid submitting SAT/ACT and just substitute their AP tests? |