Harvard going test optional thru 2026 at least

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The kids I know from the DMV who were admitted to Harvard (3) all took took the SAT and all had scores >1550. These rules don't apply to this area.

I think this is true but it also makes the test weigh less, imo, compared to other factors. Or, another way of looking, makes it more competitive because test optional applicants who might not have gotten in with scores will now get a slot. I personally think the kids most hurt are the 1400-1490/33-34 kids as those scores are better than almost everyone who takes the test but now at the bottom 25% of almost all top 50 universities. I think those scores used to be a bump and now they could potentially hurt you.

As is always stated, tests are no longer necessary or sufficient.

It does not make the test weigh less. Don't kid yourself.

Surely it does. Test scores used to be sufficient and predictive. Not any more.

[Anonymous]

Absolutely. When a test is optional, it virtually guarantees that the average of submitted scores has zero predictive power about the average (expected) score of an admitted class, as it is based on a (self-selected) sample that has the incentive to report only if the score is outstandingly good. Also, very likely that the average score increases rapidly over time (the distribution shifts to the right) as fewer and fewer students submit scores, and do so only if they score higher and higher. A race to the top, in a manner of speaking, with a shrinking sample - toward eventual irrelevancy as AOs will need to weight the submitted scores less and less in making their decisions. My prediction is that if others were to mimic Harvard, standardized testing will sink toward permanent irrelevancy. In the meantime, the test score ranges and averages serve one and only one purpose - to help applicants decide whether they should submit their test scores or not.

No value judgment on this as I am one who believes there are both pros and cons to tests, even though my kids are decent test-takers but not mega-scorers (no chance of 1500s in this family). There is definitely something objectively appealing about a standardized test, and on the whole tests like SAT and ACT are well-designed compared to many other high school tests used around the world that promote rote and even selective learning and insane levels of prepping. However, in my view, the death knell of testing was struck once colleges started letting kids report only their best or superscored test results from an unlimited no. of attempts. This created a huge inequity and weakened the predictive power of tests (which is also their biggest selling point for colleges), not just in terms of resources needed but also the type of kids and families who are likely to benefit - ones who can afford thousands of dollars in prep and repeated test-taking and have the "drive" to do so. It also led to a race to the top of the worst kind, where an entire industry of test-prepping grew to shovel kids into endless rounds of unproductive drilling, practice-testing and testing to somehow hit upon the best possible configuration of scores in N tries. Imagine the amount of true learning that could have happened in the time spent on an exercise whose benefits to society are near-zero. Worst of all, a test that was actually created to promote basic fairness and predict college-readiness has both these objectives weakened.

In spite of my rant above, I believe standardized tests are good things as they test important skills that are decently correlated with certain aspects of intelligence, reading skills and test-taking abilities, all of which are good predictors of success in college. BUT, to be able to do what they are best for, standardized tests need to be on a somewhat level playing field in terms of conditions that are unrelated to college readiness. They need to be (a) mandated to a maximum no. of attempts (2 or less), (b) administered in a way that makes prepping difficult (changing formats with high level of secrecy and unpredictability about content), and (c) increase math and analytical content with some reduction of the reading part (to level the playing field for bilingual students, which will also, I believe, benefit students from disadvantages backgrounds, without compromising the test's predictive power). None of this will be done because of the profit-motive. The industry of testing and prepping will take a massive financial hit from (a) and (b), and (c) will probably be resisted by everyone from nativists to humanities departments. But eventually if testing fades away, the industry will fade away entirely too, so (a) and (b) could be ways to actually save their existence in any form.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think this is great. Rich private school parents won't like it though.

Talk to a college counselor -- you still need to submit them.

Right. Which is why rich private school parents will hate it. Their kids will still be expected to submit, and their scores will still need to be off the charts, but the rest of humanity won't have to. It will level the playing field for the rest of the world. It's great.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The kids I know from the DMV who were admitted to Harvard (3) all took took the SAT and all had scores >1550. These rules don't apply to this area.

I think this is true but it also makes the test weigh less, imo, compared to other factors. Or, another way of looking, makes it more competitive because test optional applicants who might not have gotten in with scores will now get a slot. I personally think the kids most hurt are the 1400-1490/33-34 kids as those scores are better than almost everyone who takes the test but now at the bottom 25% of almost all top 50 universities. I think those scores used to be a bump and now they could potentially hurt you.

As is always stated, tests are no longer necessary or sufficient.

They don’t hurt you, if you don’t submit scores, schools assume you did far worse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The kids I know from the DMV who were admitted to Harvard (3) all took took the SAT and all had scores >1550. These rules don't apply to this area.

I think this is true but it also makes the test weigh less, imo, compared to other factors. Or, another way of looking, makes it more competitive because test optional applicants who might not have gotten in with scores will now get a slot. I personally think the kids most hurt are the 1400-1490/33-34 kids as those scores are better than almost everyone who takes the test but now at the bottom 25% of almost all top 50 universities. I think those scores used to be a bump and now they could potentially hurt you.

As is always stated, tests are no longer necessary or sufficient.

They don’t hurt you, if you don’t submit scores, schools assume you did far worse.

DS had a bit of a rough start to HS, mainly B+/Bs with one or two A-s in his first year. After neuropsych testing and a learning plan, he started on an upward trend, finally garnering all As in his senior fall semester. He nailed a 35 on the ACT (not necessarily expected - thought the roof was going to blow off when he got his score - as parents, we were just hoping he would break 30). He felt, as did his college counselor, that the score validated his measure as a learner and growing strength as a student. While he would've liked to have ended up at a more competitive school, there is no way we or he envisioned that he would've been admitted to where he did in ED. I don't think his college counselor even thought that at the beginning of this semester.

Generally I am not a fan of standardized tests as time, tutoring, and money can boost many scores. In this instance, I think my son really benefited from them.

[Anonymous]

Good. Anyways, the SAT is culturally biased. And with super scoring, what's the point?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Good. Anyways, the SAT is culturally biased. And with super scoring, what's the point?

It is? My, fancy that. Try telling all the non-whites and immigrant heritage students who somehow manage to beat the native white Americans on the SATs.....

We all know in reality white and Asian and South Asian applicants to Harvard are still going to be expected to submit scores while the desirable protected categories will get more leeway without scores. It's more of the different standards for different people admissions game and makes it easier for Harvard to rig it to achieve their desired social engineering.

[Anonymous]

Ok just for fun, here's the % of asians in Harvard admissions classes. Can you guess when the target went from 22.5% to 25%?


Harvard Admitted Class of % Asian American
2025 25.9%
2024 24.5%
2023 25.4%
2022 22.7%
2021 22.2%
2020 22.1%
2019 21.0%
2018 19.7%
2017 19.9%
2016 20.7%
2015 17.8%
2014 18.2%

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Good. Anyways, the SAT is culturally biased. And with super scoring, what's the point?

It is? My, fancy that. Try telling all the non-whites and immigrant heritage students who somehow manage to beat the native white Americans on the SATs.....

We all know in reality white and Asian and South Asian applicants to Harvard are still going to be expected to submit scores while the desirable protected categories will get more leeway without scores. It's more of the different standards for different people admissions game and makes it easier for Harvard to rig it to achieve their desired social engineering.

The cultural bias argument has the most plausibility for the verbal section. But the math section? Please. Unless expecting people to know geometry is culturally biased. You could throw out the verbal section and get exactly the same group differences.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think this is great. Rich private school parents won't like it though.

Talk to a college counselor -- you still need to submit them.

Right. Which is why rich private school parents will hate it. Their kids will still be expected to submit, and their scores will still need to be off the charts, but the rest of humanity won't have to. It will level the playing field for the rest of the world. It's great.

I’m not sure it really does level the playing field for the rest of the world. I went to public school in a state with shitty public schools (not the east coast). I got a 1520 and that was before the adjusted sat scores upward. Schools definitely looked at me from my sat scores that would not have looked at a kid from nowheresville otherwise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Good. Anyways, the SAT is culturally biased. And with super scoring, what's the point?

It is? My, fancy that. Try telling all the non-whites and immigrant heritage students who somehow manage to beat the native white Americans on the SATs.....

We all know in reality white and Asian and South Asian applicants to Harvard are still going to be expected to submit scores while the desirable protected categories will get more leeway without scores. It's more of the different standards for different people admissions game and makes it easier for Harvard to rig it to achieve their desired social engineering.

Harvard is Harvard. The school will choose from the best of the best - SAT or not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Absolutely. When a test is optional, it virtually guarantees that the average of submitted scores has zero predictive power about the average (expected) score of an admitted class, as it is based on a (self-selected) sample that has the incentive to report only if the score is outstandingly good. Also, very likely that the average score increases rapidly over time (the distribution shifts to the right) as fewer and fewer students submit scores, and do so only if they score higher and higher. A race to the top, in a manner of speaking, with a shrinking sample - toward eventual irrelevancy as AOs will need to weight the submitted scores less and less in making their decisions. My prediction is that if others were to mimic Harvard, standardized testing will sink toward permanent irrelevancy. In the meantime, the test score ranges and averages serve one and only one purpose - to help applicants decide whether they should submit their test scores or not.

No value judgment on this as I am one who believes there are both pros and cons to tests, even though my kids are decent test-takers but not mega-scorers (no chance of 1500s in this family). There is definitely something objectively appealing about a standardized test, and on the whole tests like SAT and ACT are well-designed compared to many other high school tests used around the world that promote rote and even selective learning and insane levels of prepping. However, in my view, the death knell of testing was struck once colleges started letting kids report only their best or superscored test results from an unlimited no. of attempts. This created a huge inequity and weakened the predictive power of tests (which is also their biggest selling point for colleges), not just in terms of resources needed but also the type of kids and families who are likely to benefit - ones who can afford thousands of dollars in prep and repeated test-taking and have the "drive" to do so. It also led to a race to the top of the worst kind, where an entire industry of test-prepping grew to shovel kids into endless rounds of unproductive drilling, practice-testing and testing to somehow hit upon the best possible configuration of scores in N tries. Imagine the amount of true learning that could have happened in the time spent on an exercise whose benefits to society are near-zero. Worst of all, a test that was actually created to promote basic fairness and predict college-readiness has both these objectives weakened.

In spite of my rant above, I believe standardized tests are good things as they test important skills that are decently correlated with certain aspects of intelligence, reading skills and test-taking abilities, all of which are good predictors of success in college. BUT, to be able to do what they are best for, standardized tests need to be on a somewhat level playing field in terms of conditions that are unrelated to college readiness. They need to be (a) mandated to a maximum no. of attempts (2 or less), (b) administered in a way that makes prepping difficult (changing formats with high level of secrecy and unpredictability about content), and (c) increase math and analytical content with some reduction of the reading part (to level the playing field for bilingual students, which will also, I believe, benefit students from disadvantages backgrounds, without compromising the test's predictive power). None of this will be done because of the profit-motive. The industry of testing and prepping will take a massive financial hit from (a) and (b), and (c) will probably be resisted by everyone from nativists to humanities departments. But eventually if testing fades away, the industry will fade away entirely too, so (a) and (b) could be ways to actually save their existence in any form.

This is the first accurate assessment I've read on any of this over the past few years. Very well said. Especially this - the death knell of testing was struck once colleges started letting kids report only their best or superscored test results from an unlimited no. of attempts. This created a huge inequity and weakened the predictive power of tests (which is also their biggest selling point for colleges), not just in terms of resources needed but also the type of kids and families who are likely to benefit - ones who can afford thousands of dollars in prep and repeated test-taking and have the "drive" to do so. It also led to a race to the top of the worst kind, where an entire industry of test-prepping grew to shovel kids into endless rounds of unproductive drilling, practice-testing and testing to somehow hit upon the best possible configuration of scores in N tries. Imagine the amount of true learning that could have happened in the time spent on an exercise whose benefits to society are near-zero. Worst of all, a test that was actually created to promote basic fairness and predict college-readiness has both these objectives weakened.

[Anonymous]

Great. More excuses for this school and others to take stupid rich kids.

[Anonymous]

Let me rephrase that. Another way for this school and others to accept stupid rich kids.

"What? We had no idea their sat score was 800, total."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Absolutely. When a test is optional, it virtually guarantees that the average of submitted scores has zero predictive power about the average (expected) score of an admitted class, as it is based on a (self-selected) sample that has the incentive to report only if the score is outstandingly good. Also, very likely that the average score increases rapidly over time (the distribution shifts to the right) as fewer and fewer students submit scores, and do so only if they score higher and higher. A race to the top, in a manner of speaking, with a shrinking sample - toward eventual irrelevancy as AOs will need to weight the submitted scores less and less in making their decisions. My prediction is that if others were to mimic Harvard, standardized testing will sink toward permanent irrelevancy. In the meantime, the test score ranges and averages serve one and only one purpose - to help applicants decide whether they should submit their test scores or not.

No value judgment on this as I am one who believes there are both pros and cons to tests, even though my kids are decent test-takers but not mega-scorers (no chance of 1500s in this family). There is definitely something objectively appealing about a standardized test, and on the whole tests like SAT and ACT are well-designed compared to many other high school tests used around the world that promote rote and even selective learning and insane levels of prepping. However, in my view, the death knell of testing was struck once colleges started letting kids report only their best or superscored test results from an unlimited no. of attempts. This created a huge inequity and weakened the predictive power of tests (which is also their biggest selling point for colleges), not just in terms of resources needed but also the type of kids and families who are likely to benefit - ones who can afford thousands of dollars in prep and repeated test-taking and have the "drive" to do so. It also led to a race to the top of the worst kind, where an entire industry of test-prepping grew to shovel kids into endless rounds of unproductive drilling, practice-testing and testing to somehow hit upon the best possible configuration of scores in N tries. Imagine the amount of true learning that could have happened in the time spent on an exercise whose benefits to society are near-zero. Worst of all, a test that was actually created to promote basic fairness and predict college-readiness has both these objectives weakened.

In spite of my rant above, I believe standardized tests are good things as they test important skills that are decently correlated with certain aspects of intelligence, reading skills and test-taking abilities, all of which are good predictors of success in college. BUT, to be able to do what they are best for, standardized tests need to be on a somewhat level playing field in terms of conditions that are unrelated to college readiness. They need to be (a) mandated to a maximum no. of attempts (2 or less), (b) administered in a way that makes prepping difficult (changing formats with high level of secrecy and unpredictability about content), and (c) increase math and analytical content with some reduction of the reading part (to level the playing field for bilingual students, which will also, I believe, benefit students from disadvantages backgrounds, without compromising the test's predictive power). None of this will be done because of the profit-motive. The industry of testing and prepping will take a massive financial hit from (a) and (b), and (c) will probably be resisted by everyone from nativists to humanities departments. But eventually if testing fades away, the industry will fade away entirely too, so (a) and (b) could be ways to actually save their existence in any form.

This is the first accurate assessment I've read on any of this over the past few years. Very well said. Especially this - the death knell of testing was struck once colleges started letting kids report only their best or superscored test results from an unlimited no. of attempts. This created a huge inequity and weakened the predictive power of tests (which is also their biggest selling point for colleges), not just in terms of resources needed but also the type of kids and families who are likely to benefit - ones who can afford thousands of dollars in prep and repeated test-taking and have the "drive" to do so. It also led to a race to the top of the worst kind, where an entire industry of test-prepping grew to shovel kids into endless rounds of unproductive drilling, practice-testing and testing to somehow hit upon the best possible configuration of scores in N tries. Imagine the amount of true learning that could have happened in the time spent on an exercise whose benefits to society are near-zero. Worst of all, a test that was actually created to promote basic fairness and predict college-readiness has both these objectives weakened.

Amen. RIP, ETS