Reply to No, test optional isn’t the reason your kid didn’t get in.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]NP.  I'm first-generation college; my mother did not attend high school.  I was only admitted to a top business school because I had the highest GMAT's in the class.  Otherwise, I would not have gotten a top M.B.A., Ph.D., and career at Goldman Sachs.

Sports teams measure 40-yard dash and vertical leap.  Standardized tests are a similar way to objectively identify talent, including talented minorities from bad schools.[/quote]

Except they are not objective.  They can be an indicator,  but are not an absolute measure by any means. So TO allows a student to submit that to demonstrate some added proficiency.

What some fail to understand is that there are incredibly smart and accomplished students who don't test well. I have one for whom testing can be a crap shoot based on phrasing of questions.  Can be a super high scorer or meh. The low score doesn't mean she knows the content less, and the question phrasing is irrelevant to real life scenarios. Fortunately,  she did great and 1 and done, but, having taught test prep in grad school,  I see how it is its own thing and not always an indicator of the acumen. [/quote]
My kid struggles with essays.   Why is it ok to just drop the test scores but not the essays? [/quote]

Because ultimately, everyone needs to know how to write.  It will help you advance in life.  If you want to attend college, you need to know how to write, even as a STEM major. 
If someone cannot write at a minimum level, they will struggle in college.  Plenty of people do really well in life without doing well on the SAT.  Studies demonstrate that.

[/quote]

Business writing and the kind of [b]cringy confessional auto-fiction[/b] demanded on college applications are very different skills. [/quote]

Your perception that this is what is demanded in college essays might be your issue.  Being a good writer means adapting your language to various situations and audiences.  [/quote]

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