Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They very much do?

Currently, yes, but there's a major push to stop it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So, OP, you attended a regional college where you performed great (graduating summa), whereas your LSAT was lackluster for top law schools. Yet, it all worked out for you.

Please consider that others might be in the opposite position, with a middling performance in college, walk into the LSAT without prep and score >170.

Not everyone is trying to game the system from both ends (gpa and scores). A great test score gives a chance for those who may not have had a great GPA, which happens for a million reasons.

For undergrad admissions, top colleges absolutely consider context for scores. This can't be understated. College Board's Landscape product was very popular with colleges and only recently discontinued, I think due to federal pressure. Dartmouth's AO is on record explaining all about why they will appreciate the 1400 from the disadvantaged kid. Dartmouth requires scores for reasons that do benefit disadvantaged students.

I see your point to a degree, but not totally, especially when it comes to law school. In today's admissions scenario, an applicant to a law school with an average LSAT score of 170+ is simply not going to be admitted with a 158 or 159 even with a perfect college GPA. They're essentially shut out.

Of the 200 or so law schools in the country only about 25% of them require LSAT scores above 160.

Right. The top 50. The only ones worth going to.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband grew up dirt poor. He got a near perfect SAT score back in 1989 when the SAT was much harder.

Too many kids applying to colleges now with inflated GPAs, SAT/ACT (and AP exam for those that have them) help weed out from the 50k-100k applicants at a given school.

Your husband is a unicorn and with his near perfect SAT score should be smart enough to know that. If he doesn't, that only confirms my thesis that test scores don't tell you very much.

a 158 on the LSAT and first in your class at a top law school?

You are a unicorn.

If you don't know that, then it only confirms the weight of decades of peer reviewed research that test scores tell you quite a bit.

No, in today's law school admissions scenario I wouldn't be a "unicorn." I'd be a dinosaur. Extinct. No top law school would ever even admit me in the first place. It would pull their numbers down and put their ranking at risk. And they'd lose out on a candidate whose LSAT score obviously was a very bad predictor. And that's my whole point.

Anonymous wrote:Good info on why test optional will eventually be going away for the best schools. Yes, there will be some private schools that keep it up to use smoke and mirrors to elevate their median test scores (we all know who those schools are).

https://news.utexas.edu/2024/03/11/ut-austin-reinstates-standardized-test-scores-in-admissions/

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband grew up dirt poor. He got a near perfect SAT score back in 1989 when the SAT was much harder.

Too many kids applying to colleges now with inflated GPAs, SAT/ACT (and AP exam for those that have them) help weed out from the 50k-100k applicants at a given school.

The SAT was not harder and neither were AP tests. I works as a math tutor. We need to stop this nonsense that everything is inflated. Some students are just well prepared due to all resources at their disposal today.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was a foreign student who first saw the words SAT and Achievement Tests when I read the application requirements in the summer before my senior year. Scrambled to sign up for these tests, in addition to TOEFL (only offered a few times per year then). Just barely took all these tests in time. The only practice I had was the sample test attached to the brochure of each test. Where I was from, people would discount your scores if you retake a test. So I found it amusing that this country allows retakes. I was equally amused by how straightforward the math/stem subjects of these tests were.

Ok. But you, being a foreign student who had the wherewithal to even consider attending college in the United States likely came from relative privilege. Correct?

Absolutely not. There is a thing called scholarship😉 I also only went to a local school, so English was my second language. It’s difficult just to navigate a completely different system on my own. But it was fun to explore.

That’s your mindset: when others could do something better, they must be privileged or must have hired a million tutors.

In this time and age, everyone has access to the internet. Do not buy into the “I’m a bad tester” mindset.

From another thread…
“I was mentoring a kid who had a deliberate condition as a child. He had a lot to catch up in middle and high school. So he used Khan Academy (free). Later, when he thought he was a “bad SAT test taker,” he happened to see someone shared online with a perfect SAT score that they simply practiced with the College Board SAT test bank (again, free). He ended up getting 1560! Unfortunately, he was not allowed to write about how hard he had worked all by himself to achieve such an amazing score in the UC essays.”

You're going to have to provide more context. Where is this "local school?" Who were your parents? What did they do for a living? What kind of educational background did they have? Tell us more so we can understand your situation better.

You’re doubling down on your self-victimization. Forgot to add, my mentee was very empowered once he realized he could score 1560 by working hard on his own, without the help of tutors or prep classes.

Sounds like you’re highly privileged and just beat around the bush. I’ve heard a lot of these “immigrant who know nothing stories from people whose parents were doctors, high level businessman, etc.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So, OP, you attended a regional college where you performed great (graduating summa), whereas your LSAT was lackluster for top law schools. Yet, it all worked out for you.

Please consider that others might be in the opposite position, with a middling performance in college, walk into the LSAT without prep and score >170.

Not everyone is trying to game the system from both ends (gpa and scores). A great test score gives a chance for those who may not have had a great GPA, which happens for a million reasons.

For undergrad admissions, top colleges absolutely consider context for scores. This can't be understated. College Board's Landscape product was very popular with colleges and only recently discontinued, I think due to federal pressure. Dartmouth's AO is on record explaining all about why they will appreciate the 1400 from the disadvantaged kid. Dartmouth requires scores for reasons that do benefit disadvantaged students.

I see your point to a degree, but not totally, especially when it comes to law school. In today's admissions scenario, an applicant to a law school with an average LSAT score of 170+ is simply not going to be admitted with a 158 or 159 even with a perfect college GPA. They're essentially shut out.

Of the 200 or so law schools in the country only about 25% of them require LSAT scores above 160.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband grew up dirt poor. He got a near perfect SAT score back in 1989 when the SAT was much harder.

Too many kids applying to colleges now with inflated GPAs, SAT/ACT (and AP exam for those that have them) help weed out from the 50k-100k applicants at a given school.

Your husband is a unicorn and with his near perfect SAT score should be smart enough to know that. If he doesn't, that only confirms my thesis that test scores don't tell you very much.

a 158 on the LSAT and first in your class at a top law school?

You are a unicorn.

If you don't know that, then it only confirms the weight of decades of peer reviewed research that test scores tell you quite a bit.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So, OP, you attended a regional college where you performed great (graduating summa), whereas your LSAT was lackluster for top law schools. Yet, it all worked out for you.

Please consider that others might be in the opposite position, with a middling performance in college, walk into the LSAT without prep and score >170.

Not everyone is trying to game the system from both ends (gpa and scores). A great test score gives a chance for those who may not have had a great GPA, which happens for a million reasons.

For undergrad admissions, top colleges absolutely consider context for scores. This can't be understated. College Board's Landscape product was very popular with colleges and only recently discontinued, I think due to federal pressure. Dartmouth's AO is on record explaining all about why they will appreciate the 1400 from the disadvantaged kid. Dartmouth requires scores for reasons that do benefit disadvantaged students.

I see your point to a degree, but not totally, especially when it comes to law school. In today's admissions scenario, an applicant to a law school with an average LSAT score of 170+ is simply not going to be admitted with a 158 or 159 even with a perfect college GPA. They're essentially shut out.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why not then GPA optional?

What if my home life or mental health was extremely disrupted for a year or more, why should that turn into a compounding four year disadvantage? What if my personality doesn’t suit a teacher’s? GPA is measuring circumstances, not capability.

A 3.5 at a one school is different than a 3.5 at another. The raw number, however, anchors perception and is hard to sort out amongst 10s of thousands of apps. Applicants depend on AOs ‘knowing’ specific schools. This is flawed thinking. GPA reflects your school as much as it reflects you.

The SAT is the one place a genuinely brilliant disadvantaged kid can signal something that four years of compounding circumstances couldn’t suppress. It objectively levels the playing field. And if they have a bad day, or month, it can be retaken.

For starters, you're not really talking about a "disadvantaged" kid. You're talking about a kid who had access to everything but had other issues. That kind of situation can be addressed in essays and recommendations. As for the "what if my personality doesn't suit a teacher" point, respectfully, that's total bullshit. If a student is consistently not performing in the classroom across the board and year after year, it's not because of "personality."

What you're missing when it comes to the SAT is that it doesn't "objectively level the playing field." Not at all. The fact that you can prepare for it destroys any semblance of objectivity.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband grew up dirt poor. He got a near perfect SAT score back in 1989 when the SAT was much harder.

Too many kids applying to colleges now with inflated GPAs, SAT/ACT (and AP exam for those that have them) help weed out from the 50k-100k applicants at a given school.

Your husband is a unicorn and with his near perfect SAT score should be smart enough to know that. If he doesn't, that only confirms my thesis that test scores don't tell you very much.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband grew up dirt poor. He got a near perfect SAT score back in 1989 when the SAT was much harder.

Too many kids applying to colleges now with inflated GPAs, SAT/ACT (and AP exam for those that have them) help weed out from the 50k-100k applicants at a given school.

Your husband is a unicorn and with his near perfect SAT score should be smart enough to know that. If he doesn't, that only confirms my thesis that test scores don't tell you very much.

So my father who spent part of his childhood in government housing and did get a perfect SAT is also a unicorn?

People don’t want to admit that a good part of intelligence and athletics/speed is genetic. People will hit a wall that they wo t surpass no matter the amount of study, prep or training.

Thus drives the parents that pay $$$$$& and lobby and cheat to get their kids ahead batsh@t crazy because they can’t get that score up no matter what they tried with their kid.

There are plenty of kids like mine that had zero prep, never had tutors or extra Kumon who score in the 99% first attempt.

This. I grew up lower class and would never have been able to put together a compelling holistic application for college, with no APs offered + only the free ECs my high school offered. My ability to score in the 99th percentile on standardized tests with no prep helped level the playing field for me. I will die on this hill!!

You didn’t participate in anything in high school? I was borderline homeless most of my life and got into a top college, because I had the basic stats but also had participated in many community organizations and had leadership. It’s pretty unlikely that we’re going to start accepting poor kids who just go to school and have a nice score- most at the top have the scores, the extracurriculars, and the story.

Anonymous wrote:I think many schools take these types of socioeconomic differences into consideration. That's what they mean when they say that they review applications "in context." I personally think that makes sense for the reasons that you described in your post. My DS got tutoring for the SAT and took it multiple times before ending up with an excellent score. It seems silly to pretend that an under-resourced kid from an under-resourced high school and my DS were on equal footing going into the SAT. (Many on DCUM may disagree.) Anyway, some schools used a product from College Board called Landscape to get this type of context. Unfortunately, the College Board discontinued the product because they are afraid of the current administration.

https://allaccess.collegeboard.org/update-landscape

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you think the SAT is easily gamed by rich kids, wait til you hear about extracurricular activities. And that is where the focus shifts under test optional, since everyone already has perfect grades these days.

Is it really, though? If a rich kid submits a perfect transcript from a good school with a long list of impressive and expensive sounding extras but no test scores, won't AOs assume the scores weren't good and be puzzled by that? And if a disadvantaged kid submits a perfect transcript and a list of extras that include working or taking care of siblings, etc., and no test scores, won't AOs again assume the scores weren't good but be less puzzled?

No they won't be puzzled by the lack of an SAT score, test optional means test optional.

Puzzled isn't the right word. I mean they'll assume the score wasn't great in both instances, but being human they're more likely to hold that against the advantaged kid whether consciously or not.