NEWS: UC schools are dropping SAT requirement for class of 2021

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:GPAs are relatively meaningless, owing to grade inflation.

So, if schools drop standardized testing as a req't for admission, the who process becomes entirely subjective.

The schools will love this. What could go wrong?

Especially if you're Asian....

You go on thinking grades are meaningless. Tell your kids grades don’t matter. See where it gets them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Vassar and Pomona are also going test-optional next year, as are Tufts, BU and Davidson. Seems like the SAT’s days may be numbered.

You might be correct, but none of these are ivy league schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Vassar and Pomona are also going test-optional next year, as are Tufts, BU and Davidson. Seems like the SAT’s days may be numbered.

You might be correct, but none of these are ivy league schools.

And to you that’s all that matters. Got it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Vassar and Pomona are also going test-optional next year, as are Tufts, BU and Davidson. Seems like the SAT’s days may be numbered.

You might be correct, but none of these are ivy league schools.

And to you that’s all that matters. Got it.

They are the standard in higher education and thus if they dont go test optional, it wont be the end to the SATs. Princton took a century to allow transfer students, and they only allow 10 of them a year these schools practise elitism going trst optional isnt a good look for them. If the ivy schools dont many schools like Georgetown, WashU etc will follow in their footsteps.

[Anonymous]

I hope they drop GPA as well.
My DC can crank out good essays and can get teachers to write fancy recommendation letters. I hope they only require these, the less the better. Equal opportunity regardless what we did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And what will happen, practically speaking, is that good testers will take the tests and submit scores anyway.

If the tests are actually offered at some point again this year.

Plenty of juniors already have SAT scores, although may not have the chance to get it higher via retests. Our HS offered an SAT prep class in the Fall that was nearly all juniors and they all, including my DS, took it in December. Glad we got that done early!

My daughter was scheduled to take it the weekend before MCPS closed. Some locations stayed open, some closed. Hers closed. No idea when she’s going to be able to take it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But back to a key question from a prior post. Does anyone actually KNOW how test-optional colleges have been operating, or whether the UC system is going to operate differently? Is there any data out there?

By the way, Harvard actually lost its lawsuit after depositions were taken, although the case is on appeal. The people who sued emphasized the zero-sum theory of college admissions. If you act affirmatively in favor of one group, the argument goes, you are implicitly acting against other groups. Favoring athletes discriminates against non-athletes. Favoring legacies discriminates against non-legacies. Favoring underrepresented minorities discriminates against Caucasians and Asians. That's the argument.

In my opinion, and Harvard's, that kind of favoritism is not the same as "discrimination" toward any particular group, especially in the context of affirmative action. It's just a recognition that diversity within the school is good for the school and for society. Also, there are populations that tend to do well once admitted, and also do well after graduation, even though they don't do all as well on standardized tests. For this reason, many people are suspicious of standardized tests even though they do not discriminate in the traditional sense, in that the graders at the College Board don't know the race of any particular test taker. But the system as a whole can seem discriminatory, especially if the tests are accurate predictors for many students but not students from all groups.

Really? Every bit of reporting I saw on this claims that the judge sided with Harvard.

[Anonymous]

The College Board needs to be destroyed and replaced with a fair, free standardized system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If the university can still consider SAT/ACT scores for students who submit then, doesn’t that put students who don’t submit at a disadvantage?

Let’s say you have two applicants who are equally qualified....but one submits a stellar SAT score, and one submits no score at all. Wouldn’t they be more likely
to admit the student with the strong test score?

Wondering if this change is more of a talking point than an actual change. Unless the process is “SAT blind”, I don’t see how it wouldn’t still be an advantage to submit test scores.

Thoughts?

Maybe use the PSAT scores?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If the university can still consider SAT/ACT scores for students who submit then, doesn’t that put students who don’t submit at a disadvantage?

Let’s say you have two applicants who are equally qualified....but one submits a stellar SAT score, and one submits no score at all. Wouldn’t they be more likely
to admit the student with the strong test score?

Wondering if this change is more of a talking point than an actual change. Unless the process is “SAT blind”, I don’t see how it wouldn’t still be an advantage to submit test scores.

Thoughts?

Maybe use the PSAT scores?

Unfortunately, there were big issues with scores from the Oct 16th test date. A bad test form. See for example https://www.compassprep.com/major-drop-in-psat-scores

It will be interesting to see what happens with large numbers of schools having test optional policies. It seems to me it gives the college cover to admit whoever they want because all the score submitters will have scores that are high enough based on past admission data for the college.

Grades are a weird variable here too, with the all-important second semester of junior year gone up in smoke.

[Anonymous]

"Really? Every bit of reporting I saw on this claims that the judge sided with Harvard."

Harvard won in the trial level court. You are correct. I wrote that sentence and I meant to say that the Harvard lawsuit plaintiffs lost. I accidentally left out some words and ended up stating the opposite of what I meant. I'm not sure how I did that. I was trying to correct someone else and made it worse. Sorry for the confusion.

[Anonymous]

Some selective liberal arts colleges have been test optional for a few years. How has it worked? Does anybody who knows care to share?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some selective liberal arts colleges have been test optional for a few years. How has it worked? Does anybody who knows care to share?

I haven't seen data quoted, but it's hard to imagine that a test-optional highly selective LAC's process is scalable to the level of the UC system. Inherently more subjectivity involved.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some selective liberal arts colleges have been test optional for a few years. How has it worked? Does anybody who knows care to share?

I haven't seen data quoted, but it's hard to imagine that a test-optional highly selective LAC's process is scalable to the level of the UC system. Inherently more subjectivity involved.

I don't understand the scalability point. Why not? There are probably a dozen SLACs and midsize universities that have gone test optional. Meanwhile, some big state universities like Michigan have not gone test optional but have taken an increasingly holistic approach to evaluating applications.

[Anonymous]

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-05-21/uc-drops-sat-and-act-test-requirement-for-admission

They’re officially phasing it out now, not just for next year. Majors are going to be way more important to employers in my opinion.