Is it just me or test score will be more important than ever this year?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Let's do some calculation.
Penn is reinstating test required this coming year.
Class of 2029, median score is 1540. 51% submitting SAT.
Their true median score is probably 1490.
That's 50 point gap to make up when they switch to test required.

To maintain their median, Penn can potentially reduce the number of low score admits (previously non-submitters).
However, these are institutional priorities, i.e., hooked. It's unlikely Penn will reduce too many of them.
The other way to maintain the median score is to increase the test scores of unhooked admits.

Why are we assuming they are trying to maintain the median score?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Educators hate the College Board and the choke hold they have on people who don’t understand what they’ve done to education.

Listen to educators instead of championing the company trying to turn education into one high stakes test after another, like in other countries.

All studies point to the SAT score being the best predictor of a student’s success in college.

There’s a correlation between between the SAT and FRESHMAN YEAR GPA.

That’s it. That’s the research.

this is not what the MIT data showed. For MIT.

there is no data across all colleges.

That’s not what the UC data showed either. Or the UT data. Kuncel and Sackett at the University of Minnesota looked deeply into this using millions of datapoints from the college board and came to the same conclusion; the SAT is the best single predictor of college success. SAT and GPA is the best overall predictor. The data is pretty conclusive; people just don’t want to accept it.

It also predicts everything from patents to cited research and tenure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think so for the schools that have historically been test optional for large swaths (athletes, donors, legacy) or others. Schools like the below:

Duke
Northwestern
UChicago
Columbia
UCLA
Cal
Vanderbilt
Notre Dame
Michigan
WashU
USC

Look at all the SLACs...there is no scrutiny there AND they are almost all uber TO (Amherst, Pomona, Bowdoin, Midd, Davidson, Barnard etc)

Vandy and WashU always love high score applicants albeit still TO.
Columbia just settled with Trump. Unless they want to lose their funding again.

Agree the chilling effect would be most pronounced on test required schools.
Cornell
Brown
Dartmouth
Penn
Georgetown
Johns Hopkins

So what?

It's hard to get accepted to those schools anyways. Tests won't significantly change that dynamic.

If a high score raises your odds of admission from 2% to 4%, it doubles your odds of admission.

Based on a 2024 analysis of over 600,000 applications to ivy+ shows a 10-15% chance of admission to one of the schools with a 1500 SAT; 15-25% chance of admissions with a 1540 SAT; and 25-35% with a 1590 SAT score. If your SAT score was 1430, your chance of admission was about 5% This did not take into consideration any other factor about the student.

Source?

Nature magazine article.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-55119-0

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Educators hate the College Board and the choke hold they have on people who don’t understand what they’ve done to education.

Listen to educators instead of championing the company trying to turn education into one high stakes test after another, like in other countries.

All studies point to the SAT score being the best predictor of a student’s success in college.

There’s a correlation between between the SAT and FRESHMAN YEAR GPA.

That’s it. That’s the research.

The certainty with which you share incorrect information is an example of dunning kreuger. Perhaps you should reconsider everything you THINK you know in this debate. It is likely you have been lied to or been presented with bad facts from sources that you trusted that were not worthy of that trust.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Educators hate the College Board and the choke hold they have on people who don’t understand what they’ve done to education.

Listen to educators instead of championing the company trying to turn education into one high stakes test after another, like in other countries.

All studies point to the SAT score being the best predictor of a student’s success in college.

There’s a correlation between between the SAT and FRESHMAN YEAR GPA.

That’s it. That’s the research.

this is not what the MIT data showed. For MIT.

there is no data across all colleges.

That’s not what the UC data showed either. Or the UT data. Kuncel and Sackett at the University of Minnesota looked deeply into this using millions of datapoints from the college board and came to the same conclusion; the SAT is the best single predictor of college success. SAT and GPA is the best overall predictor. The data is pretty conclusive; people just don’t want to accept it.

It also predicts everything from patents to cited research and tenure.

Same is true for LSATs. I'd ask interviewees for it if my firm permitted it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let's do some calculation.
Penn is reinstating test required this coming year.
Class of 2029, median score is 1540. 51% submitting SAT.
Their true median score is probably 1490.
That's 50 point gap to make up when they switch to test required.

To maintain their median, Penn can potentially reduce the number of low score admits (previously non-submitters).
However, these are institutional priorities, i.e., hooked. It's unlikely Penn will reduce too many of them.
The other way to maintain the median score is to increase the test scores of unhooked admits.

Why are we assuming they are trying to maintain the median score?

Brown did, Dartmouth did, Harvard did.
Penn, being a school full of preprofessionals, will not deviate from this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think so for the schools that have historically been test optional for large swaths (athletes, donors, legacy) or others. Schools like the below:

Duke
Northwestern
UChicago
Columbia
UCLA
Cal
Vanderbilt
Notre Dame
Michigan
WashU
USC

Look at all the SLACs...there is no scrutiny there AND they are almost all uber TO (Amherst, Pomona, Bowdoin, Midd, Davidson, Barnard etc)

Vandy and WashU always love high score applicants albeit still TO.
Columbia just settled with Trump. Unless they want to lose their funding again.

Agree the chilling effect would be most pronounced on test required schools.
Cornell
Brown
Dartmouth
Penn
Georgetown
Johns Hopkins

So what?

It's hard to get accepted to those schools anyways. Tests won't significantly change that dynamic.

If a high score raises your odds of admission from 2% to 4%, it doubles your odds of admission.

Based on a 2024 analysis of over 600,000 applications to ivy+ shows a 10-15% chance of admission to one of the schools with a 1500 SAT; 15-25% chance of admissions with a 1540 SAT; and 25-35% with a 1590 SAT score. If your SAT score was 1430, your chance of admission was about 5% This did not take into consideration any other factor about the student.

Source?

Nature magazine article.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-55119-0

These are attendance rate. The correlation with test scores would be even higher for acceptance rate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Let's do some calculation.
Penn is reinstating test required this coming year.
Class of 2029, median score is 1540. 51% submitting SAT.
Their true median score is probably 1490.
That's 50 point gap to make up when they switch to test required.

To maintain their median, Penn can potentially reduce the number of low score admits (previously non-submitters).
However, these are institutional priorities, i.e., hooked. It's unlikely Penn will reduce too many of them.
The other way to maintain the median score is to increase the test scores of unhooked admits.

So, if this is true - and it may be - then the advice to submit lower test scores to schools that are returning to test required is completely wrong. What exactly are private college counselors saying? Ours suggested DC could submit lower scores than in previous cycles.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let's do some calculation.
Penn is reinstating test required this coming year.
Class of 2029, median score is 1540. 51% submitting SAT.
Their true median score is probably 1490.
That's 50 point gap to make up when they switch to test required.

To maintain their median, Penn can potentially reduce the number of low score admits (previously non-submitters).
However, these are institutional priorities, i.e., hooked. It's unlikely Penn will reduce too many of them.
The other way to maintain the median score is to increase the test scores of unhooked admits.

So, if this is true - and it may be - then the advice to submit lower test scores to schools that are returning to test required is completely wrong. What exactly are private college counselors saying? Ours suggested DC could submit lower scores than in previous cycles.

If test scores are required, kids MUST submit their best score. Counselors could advise that it might make sense to apply even if a DC's scores were below the TO mean (or even below the 25%), but 'required' means that all applicants must submit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think so for the schools that have historically been test optional for large swaths (athletes, donors, legacy) or others. Schools like the below:

Duke
Northwestern
UChicago
Columbia
UCLA
Cal
Vanderbilt
Notre Dame
Michigan
WashU
USC

Look at all the SLACs...there is no scrutiny there AND they are almost all uber TO (Amherst, Pomona, Bowdoin, Midd, Davidson, Barnard etc)

Vandy and WashU always love high score applicants albeit still TO.
Columbia just settled with Trump. Unless they want to lose their funding again.

Agree the chilling effect would be most pronounced on test required schools.
Cornell
Brown
Dartmouth
Penn
Georgetown
Johns Hopkins

So what?

It's hard to get accepted to those schools anyways. Tests won't significantly change that dynamic.

If a high score raises your odds of admission from 2% to 4%, it doubles your odds of admission.

Based on a 2024 analysis of over 600,000 applications to ivy+ shows a 10-15% chance of admission to one of the schools with a 1500 SAT; 15-25% chance of admissions with a 1540 SAT; and 25-35% with a 1590 SAT score. If your SAT score was 1430, your chance of admission was about 5% This did not take into consideration any other factor about the student.

Source?

Nature magazine article.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-55119-0

Did you guys look at this?

We estimate that Asian American applicants had 28% lower odds of ultimately attending an Ivy-11 school than white applicants with similar academic and extracurricular qualifications. The gap was particularly pronounced for students of South Asian descent (49% lower odds).

WTH! 49% lower?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think so for the schools that have historically been test optional for large swaths (athletes, donors, legacy) or others. Schools like the below:

Duke
Northwestern
UChicago
Columbia
UCLA
Cal
Vanderbilt
Notre Dame
Michigan
WashU
USC

Look at all the SLACs...there is no scrutiny there AND they are almost all uber TO (Amherst, Pomona, Bowdoin, Midd, Davidson, Barnard etc)

Vandy and WashU always love high score applicants albeit still TO.
Columbia just settled with Trump. Unless they want to lose their funding again.

Agree the chilling effect would be most pronounced on test required schools.
Cornell
Brown
Dartmouth
Penn
Georgetown
Johns Hopkins

So what?

It's hard to get accepted to those schools anyways. Tests won't significantly change that dynamic.

If a high score raises your odds of admission from 2% to 4%, it doubles your odds of admission.

Based on a 2024 analysis of over 600,000 applications to ivy+ shows a 10-15% chance of admission to one of the schools with a 1500 SAT; 15-25% chance of admissions with a 1540 SAT; and 25-35% with a 1590 SAT score. If your SAT score was 1430, your chance of admission was about 5% This did not take into consideration any other factor about the student.

Source?

Nature magazine article.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-55119-0

Did you guys look at this?

We estimate that Asian American applicants had 28% lower odds of ultimately attending an Ivy-11 school than white applicants with similar academic and extracurricular qualifications. The gap was particularly pronounced for students of South Asian descent (49% lower odds).

WTH! 49% lower?

Bc they all apply for stem or engineering. They haven’t learned what the other Asians have already.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let's do some calculation.
Penn is reinstating test required this coming year.
Class of 2029, median score is 1540. 51% submitting SAT.
Their true median score is probably 1490.
That's 50 point gap to make up when they switch to test required.

To maintain their median, Penn can potentially reduce the number of low score admits (previously non-submitters).
However, these are institutional priorities, i.e., hooked. It's unlikely Penn will reduce too many of them.
The other way to maintain the median score is to increase the test scores of unhooked admits.

So, if this is true - and it may be - then the advice to submit lower test scores to schools that are returning to test required is completely wrong. What exactly are private college counselors saying? Ours suggested DC could submit lower scores than in previous cycles.

If test scores are required, kids MUST submit their best score. Counselors could advise that it might make sense to apply even if a DC's scores were below the TO mean (or even below the 25%), but 'required' means that all applicants must submit.

My question wasn’t whether they should submit or not at a test required schoolbut whether they have a realistic shot at that school where their score is lower than the 50% during test optional. The post I replied to suggested they may need a higher score now than they did to submit during test optional.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let's do some calculation.
Penn is reinstating test required this coming year.
Class of 2029, median score is 1540. 51% submitting SAT.
Their true median score is probably 1490.
That's 50 point gap to make up when they switch to test required.

To maintain their median, Penn can potentially reduce the number of low score admits (previously non-submitters).
However, these are institutional priorities, i.e., hooked. It's unlikely Penn will reduce too many of them.
The other way to maintain the median score is to increase the test scores of unhooked admits.

So, if this is true - and it may be - then the advice to submit lower test scores to schools that are returning to test required is completely wrong. What exactly are private college counselors saying? Ours suggested DC could submit lower scores than in previous cycles.

If test scores are required, kids MUST submit their best score. Counselors could advise that it might make sense to apply even if a DC's scores were below the TO mean (or even below the 25%), but 'required' means that all applicants must submit.

My question wasn’t whether they should submit or not at a test required schoolbut whether they have a realistic shot at that school where their score is lower than the 50% during test optional. The post I replied to suggested they may need a higher score now than they did to submit during test optional.

Depends on your definition of "realistic" most of the schools that have returned to test required are highly rejective so its hard to say even kids with above the median score have a "realistic" shot. But by definition half of the admitted students are below the median. Though look at the CDS data for the median scores pre covid as that may be an indicator of what they will return to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let's do some calculation.
Penn is reinstating test required this coming year.
Class of 2029, median score is 1540. 51% submitting SAT.
Their true median score is probably 1490.
That's 50 point gap to make up when they switch to test required.

To maintain their median, Penn can potentially reduce the number of low score admits (previously non-submitters).
However, these are institutional priorities, i.e., hooked. It's unlikely Penn will reduce too many of them.
The other way to maintain the median score is to increase the test scores of unhooked admits.

So, if this is true - and it may be - then the advice to submit lower test scores to schools that are returning to test required is completely wrong. What exactly are private college counselors saying? Ours suggested DC could submit lower scores than in previous cycles.

The median will not drop 50 points. 30 points is the maximum, it will stay above 1500.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let's do some calculation.
Penn is reinstating test required this coming year.
Class of 2029, median score is 1540. 51% submitting SAT.
Their true median score is probably 1490.
That's 50 point gap to make up when they switch to test required.

To maintain their median, Penn can potentially reduce the number of low score admits (previously non-submitters).
However, these are institutional priorities, i.e., hooked. It's unlikely Penn will reduce too many of them.
The other way to maintain the median score is to increase the test scores of unhooked admits.

So, if this is true - and it may be - then the advice to submit lower test scores to schools that are returning to test required is completely wrong. What exactly are private college counselors saying? Ours suggested DC could submit lower scores than in previous cycles.

The median will not drop 50 points. 30 points is the maximum, it will stay above 1500.

Correct me if I am wrong as I am just using gpt to gather data.

Dartmouth 50% sat:
2020, 2021, 2022: 1500
2023: 1550
2024: 1540

2024 is the first year Dartmouth reinstated test required.