Reply to Harvard going test optional thru 2026 at least

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[quote=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.  [/quote]

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