Why Caltech is now requiring test scores

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to ask a question and don't want any pitchforks from the crowd.
What's the correlation between doing well on the SAT and being able to even do half-well in the Caltech curriculum? Doesn't Caltech check for AP Physics, Chem, Calc, Bio, etc.-all better measures for if someone can even begin the curriculum? Caltech students should be coming in with advanced material that the SAT just doesn't cover.

Disadvantaged high schools don't offer these courses.

At any rate, Caltech thought they could do without scores and were test blind for three years. They tried. It didn't work out.

Is Caltech reasonably accepting students from disadvantaged high schools now to warrant this? They aren't some great social mobilizer. It's a school producing future researchers who tend to be wealthier or have parents of advantaged backgrounds. I think it's strange to cover up the story by trying to shut down any questioners with claims of not uplifting the poor-the poor are hardly at all in the conversation to begin with.

NP. What is your guess as to why they went back to requiring test scores?

Isn’t the answer in the petition? The professors don’t really know how to teach. They rely on students being extraordinary. Reading between the lines, they need the kind of students who can teach material to themselves if the prof misses or can’t teach it properly on their own.

No, that’s not what they say. They say the mission is to teach extraordinary students at an extraordinary level, and that it is in fact no possible to make the non-extraordinary students extraordinary. There are plenty of other school where the failing students would be at the top or where the mission is to meet them where they are at.

Can you explain how the SAT remedies their issue? They have an applicant pool filled with math competition winners and students with advanced coursework beyond BC calc. They reasoned students are falling behind because a class that typically has 10-15 students resulted in poor scores within the Electrical Engineering department-not even a core class. Then, they also don't mention any other contexts-what's the change in class composition? As someone noted, their current class coming up is going to be 50% women, that's not typical for Caltech. For a long time they didn't let anyone in with a sub 700 SAT score, then they dropped that. What happened during that period? So much missing context from the writers, it's shocking that this is a professor.

[Anonymous]

There is a lot that doesn’t make sense and test scores are a small part of it.

I mean…you don’t need to know test scores to accept kids that will kick ass in Putnam. Kids that do very well in Math Olympiad and international Math contests would also do well at Putnam.

Same for the coding challenges they mention.

Princeton has 80% submitting high test scores and is hardly a blip with Putnam…I don’t know if they had any finalists.

MIT absolutely destroys everyone else in Putnam…I gather they look for the math contest winners and accept them in higher numbers compared to other applicants.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to ask a question and don't want any pitchforks from the crowd.
What's the correlation between doing well on the SAT and being able to even do half-well in the Caltech curriculum? Doesn't Caltech check for AP Physics, Chem, Calc, Bio, etc.-all better measures for if someone can even begin the curriculum? Caltech students should be coming in with advanced material that the SAT just doesn't cover.

Disadvantaged high schools don't offer these courses.

At any rate, Caltech thought they could do without scores and were test blind for three years. They tried. It didn't work out.

Is Caltech reasonably accepting students from disadvantaged high schools now to warrant this? They aren't some great social mobilizer. It's a school producing future researchers who tend to be wealthier or have parents of advantaged backgrounds. I think it's strange to cover up the story by trying to shut down any questioners with claims of not uplifting the poor-the poor are hardly at all in the conversation to begin with.

NP. What is your guess as to why they went back to requiring test scores?

Isn’t the answer in the petition? The professors don’t really know how to teach. They rely on students being extraordinary. Reading between the lines, they need the kind of students who can teach material to themselves if the prof misses or can’t teach it properly on their own.

No, that’s not what they say. They say the mission is to teach extraordinary students at an extraordinary level, and that it is in fact no possible to make the non-extraordinary students extraordinary. There are plenty of other school where the failing students would be at the top or where the mission is to meet them where they are at.

Can you explain how the SAT remedies their issue? They have an applicant pool filled with math competition winners and students with advanced coursework beyond BC calc. They reasoned students are falling behind because a class that typically has 10-15 students resulted in poor scores within the Electrical Engineering department-not even a core class. Then, they also
don't mention any other contexts-what's the change in class composition? As someone noted, their current class coming up is going to be 50% women, that's not typical for Caltech. For a long time they didn't let anyone in with a sub 700 SAT score, then they dropped that. What happened during that period? So much missing context from the writers, it's shocking that this is a professor.

Dp, pretty clear they looked at the evidence and decided they needed standardized test scores, regardless of whether the petition was well written.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is a lot that doesn’t make sense and test scores are a small part of it.

I mean…you don’t need to know test scores to accept kids that will kick ass in Putnam. Kids that do very well in Math Olympiad and international Math contests would also do well at Putnam.

Same for the coding challenges they mention.

Princeton has 80% submitting high test scores and is hardly a blip with Putnam…I don’t know if they had any finalists.

MIT absolutely destroys everyone else in Putnam…I gather they look for the math contest winners and accept them in higher numbers compared to other applicants.

Love this comment. Also, Putnam is a flavor of math that most math majors don't even want to touch. Princeton undoubtedly has premiere math talent, but they spend their time doing graduate math coursework, not taking exams outside of class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To be clear, the text above is from a faculty petition to restore a requirement for standardized testing.

Having said that, PP is correct that Caltech is once again requiring standardized tests for students applying this fall.

Here's the official announcement:
https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/caltech-restores-standardized-test-requirement-for-undergraduate-admission

It’s ridiculous Hopkins, Harvard, Princeton, UPenn are still test optional this cycle. Univ Michigan, Rice UCLA and Vanderbilt too.

All the studies show scores matter. Schools not requiring scores are losing prestige, not just academically qualified and capable students.

I can assure you Princeton, the best math college in the United States, is doing perfectly fine on deciding if a student is smart enough to get through their program without the Collegeboard's silly exam

We’ll see, more likely than not Princeton also goes back to requiring scores within the next year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to ask a question and don't want any pitchforks from the crowd.
What's the correlation between doing well on the SAT and being able to even do half-well in the Caltech curriculum? Doesn't Caltech check for AP Physics, Chem, Calc, Bio, etc.-all better measures for if someone can even begin the curriculum? Caltech students should be coming in with advanced material that the SAT just doesn't cover.

Disadvantaged high schools don't offer these courses.

At any rate, Caltech thought they could do without scores and were test blind for three years. They tried. It didn't work out.

Is Caltech reasonably accepting students from disadvantaged high schools now to warrant this? They aren't some great social mobilizer. It's a school producing future researchers who tend to be wealthier or have parents of advantaged backgrounds. I think it's strange to cover up the story by trying to shut down any questioners with claims of not uplifting the poor-the poor are hardly at all in the conversation to begin with.

NP. What is your guess as to why they went back to requiring test scores?

Isn’t the answer in the petition? The professors don’t really know how to teach. They rely on students being extraordinary. Reading between the lines, they need the kind of students who can teach material to themselves if the prof misses or can’t teach it properly on their own.

No, that’s not what they say. They say the mission is to teach extraordinary students at an extraordinary level, and that it is in fact no possible to make the non-extraordinary students extraordinary. There are plenty of other school where the failing students would be at the top or where the mission is to meet them where they are at.

Can you explain how the SAT remedies their issue? They have an applicant pool filled with math competition winners and students with advanced coursework beyond BC calc. They reasoned students are falling behind because a class that typically has 10-15 students resulted in poor scores within the Electrical Engineering department-not even a core class. Then, they also
don't mention any other contexts-what's the change in class composition? As someone noted, their current class coming up is going to be 50% women, that's not typical for Caltech. For a long time they didn't let anyone in with a sub 700 SAT score, then they dropped that. What happened during that period? So much missing context from the writers, it's shocking that this is a professor.

Dp, pretty clear they looked at the evidence and decided they needed standardized test scores, regardless of whether the petition was well written.

Yes, I understand the conclusion. I'm asking for the DCUM to look at the clear logical gaps and to question the intentions of bringing back these standardized scores outside of just what a college AO says (in this case, a professor).

[Anonymous]

Old enough to remember when people used CalTech here as an example of why standardized tests were going to go away. How quickly times change.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to ask a question and don't want any pitchforks from the crowd.
What's the correlation between doing well on the SAT and being able to even do half-well in the Caltech curriculum? Doesn't Caltech check for AP Physics, Chem, Calc, Bio, etc.-all better measures for if someone can even begin the curriculum? Caltech students should be coming in with advanced material that the SAT just doesn't cover.

Disadvantaged high schools don't offer these courses.

At any rate, Caltech thought they could do without scores and were test blind for three years. They tried. It didn't work out.

Is Caltech reasonably accepting students from disadvantaged high schools now to warrant this? They aren't some great social mobilizer. It's a school producing future researchers who tend to be wealthier or have parents of advantaged backgrounds. I think it's strange to cover up the story by trying to shut down any questioners with claims of not uplifting the poor-the poor are hardly at all in the conversation to begin with.

NP. What is your guess as to why they went back to requiring test scores?

Isn’t the answer in the petition? The professors don’t really know how to teach. They rely on students being extraordinary. Reading between the lines, they need the kind of students who can teach material to themselves if the prof misses or can’t teach it properly on their own.

No, that’s not what they say. They say the mission is to teach extraordinary students at an extraordinary level, and that it is in fact no possible to make the non-extraordinary students extraordinary. There are plenty of other school where the failing students would be at the top or where the mission is to meet them where they are at.

Can you explain how the SAT remedies their issue? They have an applicant pool filled with math competition winners and students with advanced coursework beyond BC calc. They reasoned students are falling behind because a class that typically has 10-15 students resulted in poor scores within the Electrical Engineering department-not even a core class. Then, they also
don't mention any other contexts-what's the change in class composition? As someone noted, their current class coming up is going to be 50% women, that's not typical for Caltech. For a long time they didn't let anyone in with a sub 700 SAT score, then they dropped that. What happened during that period? So much missing context from the writers, it's shocking that this is a professor.

Dp, pretty clear they looked at the evidence and decided they needed standardized test scores, regardless of whether the petition was well written.

Yes, I understand the conclusion. I'm asking for the DCUM to look at the clear logical gaps and to question the intentions of bringing back these standardized scores outside of just what a college AO says (in this case, a professor).

There aren’t clear logical gaps, we simply don’t have access to all the information the school did when deciding to abandon test blind and return to test required.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to ask a question and don't want any pitchforks from the crowd.
What's the correlation between doing well on the SAT and being able to even do half-well in the Caltech curriculum? Doesn't Caltech check for AP Physics, Chem, Calc, Bio, etc.-all better measures for if someone can even begin the curriculum? Caltech students should be coming in with advanced material that the SAT just doesn't cover.

Disadvantaged high schools don't offer these courses.

At any rate, Caltech thought they could do without scores and were test blind for three years. They tried. It didn't work out.

Is Caltech reasonably accepting students from disadvantaged high schools now to warrant this? They aren't some great social mobilizer. It's a school producing future researchers who tend to be wealthier or have parents of advantaged backgrounds. I think it's strange to cover up the story by trying to shut down any questioners with claims of not uplifting the poor-the poor are hardly at all in the conversation to begin with.

NP. What is your guess as to why they went back to requiring test scores?

Isn’t the answer in the petition? The professors don’t really know how to teach. They rely on students being extraordinary. Reading between the lines, they need the kind of students who can teach material to themselves if the prof misses or can’t teach it properly on their own.

No, that’s not what they say. They say the mission is to teach extraordinary students at an extraordinary level, and that it is in fact no possible to make the non-extraordinary students extraordinary. There are plenty of other school where the failing students would be at the top or where the mission is to meet them where they are at.

Can you explain how the SAT remedies their issue? They have an applicant pool filled with math competition winners and students with advanced coursework beyond BC calc. They reasoned students are falling behind because a class that typically has 10-15 students resulted in poor scores within the Electrical Engineering department-not even a core class. Then, they also
don't mention any other contexts-what's the change in class composition? As someone noted, their current class coming up is going to be 50% women, that's not typical for Caltech. For a long time they didn't let anyone in with a sub 700 SAT score, then they dropped that. What happened during that period? So much missing context from the writers, it's shocking that this is a professor.

Dp, pretty clear they looked at the evidence and decided they needed standardized test scores, regardless of whether the petition was well written.

Yes, I understand the conclusion. I'm asking for the DCUM to look at the clear logical gaps and to question the intentions of bringing back these standardized scores outside of just what a college AO says (in this case, a professor).

There aren’t clear logical gaps, we simply don’t have access to all the information the school did when deciding to abandon test blind and return to test required.

Oh my god, you are dense. Neither did the professors writing the letter, basing their decision off of a couple exam scores and a few meetings where they ate at students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Old enough to remember when people used CalTech here as an example of why standardized tests were going to go away. How quickly times change.

Still waiting for the UCs to create their own standardized exams like they promised...

[Anonymous]

Good for the faculty for speaking out about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Good for the faculty for speaking out about it.

They're very brave with their tenure and PhDs to flex over the students. What a brave lot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m on the fence about reinstating SAT. I’m all for moving toward tests as GPA’s can vary widely based on school policies/retakes/ grade inflation and vary even among teachers within schools. However, college board is a racket. It’s a poorly constructed test and frankly any test that signing up for an expensive prep course can raise your score 200 is not an effective test. I wish the US had something similar to the British school model with A levels.

The faculty are missing the mark. Correlation does not mean causation. Test blind or optional occurred at the same time during the pandemic. The sophomores that are so deficient missed foundational upper level math skills spending half their freshman and sophomore years in virtual. They jumped into junior year after 2 years of basically self learning and then crammed to get good scores on their tests and AP exams.

To get into Cal Tech, kids need AP Calc BC, Physics etc. Don’t tell me that a kid who can get an A in those classes and a 4 or 5 on the AP wouldn’t have been able to prep for the SAT.

I heavily agree and have been waiting patiently for the pro-Test crowd to begin promoting Harder tests, not just testing for testing. We need a math section that tests beyond pre cal, and there needs to be an associated level of skill with your SAT score (710 means student knows X-level of information would be a great start). Right now, I really don't think there's much difference between a 1400 scorer and a 1570 scorer, one just needs to brush up on their finding a determinant skills or read a little quicker.

You just need to hang out with more pro-test people. And look! Here I am, available. We should do lunch.

The SAT is a *much* weaker test than it used to be, and has been trending worse. Some of the recent changes to the verbal side included switched out longer passages for sentence or two quotations. Also, the SAT doesn't really do the job any more of differentiating between very smart and extremely smart kids -- far too many 1600s. Further, it has been intentionally made more "coachable" to encourage students to take it again and again, boosting the College Board's coffers. And let's not get started on junking the free response and "no calculator" math questions...

However, despite the nonsense, it still has predictive power.

Note that 1400 vs 1570 is more than a standard deviation -- there's going to be a significant difference in academic horsepower between people who score at those different levels.

For what it's worth, I am really looking forward to data released over the next couple of years as the Annapolis-based CLT becomes more established. They're coded as right-wing, but if you actually *look* at their sample tests, instead of going straight to "Ew, Those People" the question variety is good, the reading passages are vastly longer than what's now on the SAT, and thus far there has only been one student who maxed it out.

Other than the CLT, I'm stuck with the hope that some other country's tests gain traction. No need to translate the Gaokao -- the West African Examination Council produces solid test content in English, and unless I am confusing it with the JAMB, they did announce that they would start offering their tests at a location or two in the US.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to ask a question and don't want any pitchforks from the crowd.
What's the correlation between doing well on the SAT and being able to even do half-well in the Caltech curriculum? Doesn't Caltech check for AP Physics, Chem, Calc, Bio, etc.-all better measures for if someone can even begin the curriculum? Caltech students should be coming in with advanced material that the SAT just doesn't cover.

Disadvantaged high schools don't offer these courses.

At any rate, Caltech thought they could do without scores and were test blind for three years. They tried. It didn't work out.

Is Caltech reasonably accepting students from disadvantaged high schools now to warrant this? They aren't some great social mobilizer. It's a school producing future researchers who tend to be wealthier or have parents of advantaged backgrounds. I think it's strange to cover up the story by trying to shut down any questioners with claims of not uplifting the poor-the poor are hardly at all in the conversation to begin with.

NP. What is your guess as to why they went back to requiring test scores?

Isn’t the answer in the petition? The professors don’t really know how to teach. They rely on students being extraordinary. Reading between the lines, they need the kind of students who can teach material to themselves if the prof misses or can’t teach it properly on their own.

No, that’s not what they say. They say the mission is to teach extraordinary students at an extraordinary level, and that it is in fact no possible to make the non-extraordinary students extraordinary. There are plenty of other school where the failing students would be at the top or where the mission is to meet them where they are at.

Can you explain how the SAT remedies their issue? They have an applicant pool filled with math competition winners and students with advanced coursework beyond BC calc. They reasoned students are falling behind because a class that typically has 10-15 students resulted in poor scores within the Electrical Engineering department-not even a core class. Then, they also
don't mention any other contexts-what's the change in class composition? As someone noted, their current class coming up is going to be 50% women, that's not typical for Caltech. For a long time they didn't let anyone in with a sub 700 SAT score, then they dropped that. What happened during that period? So much missing context from the writers, it's shocking that this is a professor.

Dp, pretty clear they looked at the evidence and decided they needed standardized test scores, regardless of whether the petition was well written.

Yes, I understand the conclusion. I'm asking for the DCUM to look at the clear logical gaps and to question the intentions of bringing back these standardized scores outside of just what a college AO says (in this case, a professor).

There aren’t clear logical gaps, we simply don’t have access to all the information the school did when deciding to abandon test blind and return to test required.

Oh my god, you are dense. Neither did the professors writing the letter, basing their decision off of a couple exam scores and a few meetings where they ate at students.

Well, one of us is dense, but it isn’t me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To be clear, the text above is from a faculty petition to restore a requirement for standardized testing.

Having said that, PP is correct that Caltech is once again requiring standardized tests for students applying this fall.

Here's the official announcement:
https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/caltech-restores-standardized-test-requirement-for-undergraduate-admission

It’s ridiculous Hopkins, Harvard, Princeton, UPenn are still test optional this cycle. Univ Michigan, Rice UCLA and Vanderbilt too.

All the studies show scores matter. Schools not requiring scores are losing prestige, not just academically qualified and capable students.

I can assure you Princeton, the best math college in the United States, is doing perfectly fine on deciding if a student is smart enough to get through their program without the Collegeboard's silly exam

We’ll see, more likely than not Princeton also goes back to requiring scores within the next year.

Yep. Kids weren't hacking the courses. Anxiety, depression unprepared for the rigor. They will revert back. I was really surprised they did not require them this year like Yale, Brown and Dartmouth.

I think grades + scores + rec + ap scores + HS rigor info give you the biggest picture of an Applicant's aptitude. The more info, the better. I added HS rigor info because the schools have already said they will not hold a school against a kid. If a poor inner city school kid in a failing district shows aptitude---they aren't expecting it to be as high as those in the private and high-rated school districts--it's scaled and the potential is shown.

The number of applicants has gotten too large everywhere and TO is a LARGE part of that. The self-selection no longer exists. Kids would not apply to these T10, T20 schools back when scores were required (even A students) when their scores were below the 25-50% mean. Now you have 26 ACT and 900 SAT grade inflated A students applying to Harvard, etc.