The way I interpret this is: if you are underprivileged/first gen college applicant, and if you have an otherwise good application, we don’t care if you omit your scores.
If you went to a top private school and are full pay, you better believe that we expect you to submit your scores and for them to be exceptional.

I have no problem with that btw, and my DC are in the latter category.

[mastodon]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does it mean "Your test scores could help you but omitting them from your application won't hurt" or "admissions stuff presume that your scores were not good if you don't submit them and they will choose someone with decent/mediocre scores over someone who doesn't, all other things being equal"?

I may be skeptical, but I am starting to doubt the line given out by our school's counselors that the scores only matter if they help you. There's a negative deduction to be made there.

Any views?

That's a good way to put it. "Optional" doesn't mean all apps are considered equal. It just means your app will not be rejected because of missing test scores. Everyone knows kids with good/high test scores will definitely include them so, if it's missing, well, it creates more doubts in adcom's mind. Human nature.

Maybe, but TO applicants ARE getting accepted. It's zero sum.

Of course some are accepted w/o test scores. That really doesn’t prove anything though

Proves that one can get accepted into selective colleges without test scores under test optional. Not submitting a SAT/ ACT is not a deal breaker. Unimaginable even 5 years ago. Yeah COVID accelerated the trend but TO is now pretty much a mainstay.

I’d give it a few more years before making such a definitive statement.

All 8 Ivies, Stanford, Northwestern, TO through 2024. Harvard through 2026. U of California test blind.

Ok - a few more years.

Catch the trend.

2024 is next year. Wait and see.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does it mean "Your test scores could help you but omitting them from your application won't hurt" or "admissions stuff presume that your scores were not good if you don't submit them and they will choose someone with decent/mediocre scores over someone who doesn't, all other things being equal"?

I may be skeptical, but I am starting to doubt the line given out by our school's counselors that the scores only matter if they help you. There's a negative deduction to be made there.

Any views?

That's a good way to put it. "Optional" doesn't mean all apps are considered equal. It just means your app will not be rejected because of missing test scores. Everyone knows kids with good/high test scores will definitely include them so, if it's missing, well, it creates more doubts in adcom's mind. Human nature.

Maybe, but TO applicants ARE getting accepted. It's zero sum.

Of course some are accepted w/o test scores. That really doesn’t prove anything though

Proves that one can get accepted into selective colleges without test scores under test optional. Not submitting a SAT/ ACT is not a deal breaker. Unimaginable even 5 years ago. Yeah COVID accelerated the trend but TO is now pretty much a mainstay.

I’d give it a few more years before making such a definitive statement.

All 8 Ivies, Stanford, Northwestern, TO through 2024. Harvard through 2026. U of California test blind.

Ok - a few more years.

Catch the trend.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does it mean "Your test scores could help you but omitting them from your application won't hurt" or "admissions stuff presume that your scores were not good if you don't submit them and they will choose someone with decent/mediocre scores over someone who doesn't, all other things being equal"?

I may be skeptical, but I am starting to doubt the line given out by our school's counselors that the scores only matter if they help you. There's a negative deduction to be made there.

Any views?

That's a good way to put it. "Optional" doesn't mean all apps are considered equal. It just means your app will not be rejected because of missing test scores. Everyone knows kids with good/high test scores will definitely include them so, if it's missing, well, it creates more doubts in adcom's mind. Human nature.

Maybe, but TO applicants ARE getting accepted. It's zero sum.

Of course some are accepted w/o test scores. That really doesn’t prove anything though

Proves that one can get accepted into selective colleges without test scores under test optional. Not submitting a SAT/ ACT is not a deal breaker. Unimaginable even 5 years ago. Yeah COVID accelerated the trend but TO is now pretty much a mainstay.

I’d give it a few more years before making such a definitive statement.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The is interesting. It also newly allows the Ivies to take excellent sports recruits from city schools. Kids who have a 3.5 GPA or whatnot but would never have obtained an SAT above 1000 are now signing to the Ivies. I'm seeing this in DCPS.

Really give an example. I know several kids who were admitted to Ivies this year as sports recruits and were required to meet minimum SAT scores several hundred points higher than 1000.

Yes, US athletes particularly in non-revenue sports are often required to submit scores. High SATs from athletes, particularly those that aren’t the top picks, is still standard because it allows the schools to keep the numbers for their athletes high.

Top picks and foreign athletes often don’t submit and aren’t asked to submit now.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does it mean "Your test scores could help you but omitting them from your application won't hurt" or "admissions stuff presume that your scores were not good if you don't submit them and they will choose someone with decent/mediocre scores over someone who doesn't, all other things being equal"?

I may be skeptical, but I am starting to doubt the line given out by our school's counselors that the scores only matter if they help you. There's a negative deduction to be made there.

Any views?

I think the top concern is making sure that kids who get in without using test scores are really prepared for the classes they’ll be taking.

I wonder what percentage of kids with SAT math scores under 700, or the ACT equivalent, actually pass first-year STEM classes for majors at T50 universities. The math SAT is a lot easier than any college math test or physics test I ever took, and my school wasn’t super highly ranked for math or physics.

Affluent, neurotypical DMV kids who have relatively low test scores and get in to tough scores need to try to get remediation before they go to college, arrange for tutoring in advance and be careful about how they pick their classes, not buy the hogwash about how test scores are meaningless. If test scores are used to shut poor kids who can’t afford test prep out of good schools, that’s bad. But, if affluent, neurotypical kids who get the test prep classes have truly weak scores, not just scores a little below average, that simply is not great.They might be wonderful kids, but they’re going to work really hard to survive STEM weedout classes.

Standardized testing is just one data point and might ( only) predict college success during freshman year. If the kid has rigor over 4 years of HS and have good time management skills, that will trump a one test snapshot.

And...not everyone wants to do STEM in college.

Agree. Maybe we should worry about the STEM majors’ writing skills.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The is interesting. It also newly allows the Ivies to take excellent sports recruits from city schools. Kids who have a 3.5 GPA or whatnot but would never have obtained an SAT above 1000 are now signing to the Ivies. I'm seeing this in DCPS.

Really give an example. I know several kids who were admitted to Ivies this year as sports recruits and were required to meet minimum SAT scores several hundred points higher than 1000.

I know football recruits who were admitted to Ivies with only GPAs (no testing).
It must vary by sport,

One of the downsides of Test Optional from an applicant's perspective is determining reaches, matches and safeties, gauging one's chances.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does it mean "Your test scores could help you but omitting them from your application won't hurt" or "admissions stuff presume that your scores were not good if you don't submit them and they will choose someone with decent/mediocre scores over someone who doesn't, all other things being equal"?

I may be skeptical, but I am starting to doubt the line given out by our school's counselors that the scores only matter if they help you. There's a negative deduction to be made there.

Any views?

That's a good way to put it. "Optional" doesn't mean all apps are considered equal. It just means your app will not be rejected because of missing test scores. Everyone knows kids with good/high test scores will definitely include them so, if it's missing, well, it creates more doubts in adcom's mind. Human nature.

Maybe, but TO applicants ARE getting accepted. It's zero sum.

Of course some are accepted w/o test scores. That really doesn’t prove anything though

Proves that one can get accepted into selective colleges without test scores under test optional. Not submitting a SAT/ ACT is not a deal breaker. Unimaginable even 5 years ago. Yeah COVID accelerated the trend but TO is now pretty much a mainstay.

Anonymous wrote:The is interesting. It also newly allows the Ivies to take excellent sports recruits from city schools. Kids who have a 3.5 GPA or whatnot but would never have obtained an SAT above 1000 are now signing to the Ivies. I'm seeing this in DCPS.

Really give an example. I know several kids who were admitted to Ivies this year as sports recruits and were required to meet minimum SAT scores several hundred points higher than 1000.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does it mean "Your test scores could help you but omitting them from your application won't hurt" or "admissions stuff presume that your scores were not good if you don't submit them and they will choose someone with decent/mediocre scores over someone who doesn't, all other things being equal"?

I may be skeptical, but I am starting to doubt the line given out by our school's counselors that the scores only matter if they help you. There's a negative deduction to be made there.

Any views?

I think the top concern is making sure that kids who get in without using test scores are really prepared for the classes they’ll be taking.

I wonder what percentage of kids with SAT math scores under 700, or the ACT equivalent, actually pass first-year STEM classes for majors at T50 universities. The math SAT is a lot easier than any college math test or physics test I ever took, and my school wasn’t super highly ranked for math or physics.

Affluent, neurotypical DMV kids who have relatively low test scores and get in to tough scores need to try to get remediation before they go to college, arrange for tutoring in advance and be careful about how they pick their classes, not buy the hogwash about how test scores are meaningless. If test scores are used to shut poor kids who can’t afford test prep out of good schools, that’s bad. But, if affluent, neurotypical kids who get the test prep classes have truly weak scores, not just scores a little below average, that simply is not great.They might be wonderful kids, but they’re going to work really hard to survive STEM weedout classes.

Standardized testing is just one data point and might ( only) predict college success during freshman year. If the kid has rigor over 4 years of HS and have good time management skills, that will trump a one test snapshot.

And...not everyone wants to do STEM in college.

+1 there are plenty of majors that don’t require math skills.

I’m the one saying that having a 700 math SAT would be really helpful in a hard STEM class.

Obviously, you’re right. But my guess would be that math SATs would be a relevant to STEM class passing rates than verbal SATs are to passing rates in other classes, because the verbal SAT test is less like a normal college test, and because the process of grading a humanities or qualitative social sciences test or paper involves many different variables.

I could be wrong about that.

If I’m right, maybe schools could ask for math SATs from students who want to major in business or STEM but stop asking for verbal scores, or for math scores from students who won’t be taking much math in college.

The drawback to that is that high schools would then have even less incentive to invest in teaching English, history, geography and civics than they do now. So, that might be good for a few students who want to go to Amherst but bad for America.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does it mean "Your test scores could help you but omitting them from your application won't hurt" or "admissions stuff presume that your scores were not good if you don't submit them and they will choose someone with decent/mediocre scores over someone who doesn't, all other things being equal"?

I may be skeptical, but I am starting to doubt the line given out by our school's counselors that the scores only matter if they help you. There's a negative deduction to be made there.

Any views?

I think the top concern is making sure that kids who get in without using test scores are really prepared for the classes they’ll be taking.

I wonder what percentage of kids with SAT math scores under 700, or the ACT equivalent, actually pass first-year STEM classes for majors at T50 universities. The math SAT is a lot easier than any college math test or physics test I ever took, and my school wasn’t super highly ranked for math or physics.

Affluent, neurotypical DMV kids who have relatively low test scores and get in to tough scores need to try to get remediation before they go to college, arrange for tutoring in advance and be careful about how they pick their classes, not buy the hogwash about how test scores are meaningless. If test scores are used to shut poor kids who can’t afford test prep out of good schools, that’s bad. But, if affluent, neurotypical kids who get the test prep classes have truly weak scores, not just scores a little below average, that simply is not great.They might be wonderful kids, but they’re going to work really hard to survive STEM weedout classes.

Standardized testing is just one data point and might ( only) predict college success during freshman year. If the kid has rigor over 4 years of HS and have good time management skills, that will trump a one test snapshot.

And...not everyone wants to do STEM in college.

You’re replying to me here. Note that I was a National Merit Scholar and have horrible typos in every post. So, my posts are a great illustration of why high test scores aren’t everything.

But it seems as if the people here obsessing about top schools mostly want their kids to be premeds or CS majors at top schools, without having any idea of what passing a real math class at a top school involves. It’s like saying to your kid, “Hey, go stand in front of a firebreathing dragon and see if you’re a Targaryen. I’ve heard there’s good money in that!” If the kids themselves are hungry for a challenge, that’s great. But I’m afraid that a lot of parents are trying to push their kids into the fire simply to get some of that (rapidly evaporating) FAANG money.

My guess is that good test scores would be a lot more relevant for the Targaryen flammability classes than for an ordinary humanities or social sciences class.

I scrounged around and found that faculty members at the University of Arkansas looked into this question. They reported that students who passed college precalculus, but who had math SATs under 680, had a 56% college Calculus I pass rate, and that Calculus I students with math SATs over 680 had a 78% pass rate:

https://peer.asee.org/determination-of-success-in-the-calculus-sequence-based-on-method-of-placement.pdf

It’s possible that Calculus I is the same at the University of Arkansas as at MIT, and that having a math SAT score under isn’t necessarily the end of the world at MIT. But my guess is that, even at Tufts or Rochester, Calculus I would be harder than at Arkansas, and that the gap in pass rates between students with scores over 680 and students with lower scores would be wider.

If there are any college professors here who have comparable data from other schools handy, it would be interesting to see their numbers.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does it mean "Your test scores could help you but omitting them from your application won't hurt" or "admissions stuff presume that your scores were not good if you don't submit them and they will choose someone with decent/mediocre scores over someone who doesn't, all other things being equal"?

I may be skeptical, but I am starting to doubt the line given out by our school's counselors that the scores only matter if they help you. There's a negative deduction to be made there.

Any views?

That's a good way to put it. "Optional" doesn't mean all apps are considered equal. It just means your app will not be rejected because of missing test scores. Everyone knows kids with good/high test scores will definitely include them so, if it's missing, well, it creates more doubts in adcom's mind. Human nature.

Maybe, but TO applicants ARE getting accepted. It's zero sum.

Of course some are accepted w/o test scores. That really doesn’t prove anything though

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does it mean "Your test scores could help you but omitting them from your application won't hurt" or "admissions stuff presume that your scores were not good if you don't submit them and they will choose someone with decent/mediocre scores over someone who doesn't, all other things being equal"?

I may be skeptical, but I am starting to doubt the line given out by our school's counselors that the scores only matter if they help you. There's a negative deduction to be made there.

Any views?

I think the top concern is making sure that kids who get in without using test scores are really prepared for the classes they’ll be taking.

I wonder what percentage of kids with SAT math scores under 700, or the ACT equivalent, actually pass first-year STEM classes for majors at T50 universities. The math SAT is a lot easier than any college math test or physics test I ever took, and my school wasn’t super highly ranked for math or physics.

Affluent, neurotypical DMV kids who have relatively low test scores and get in to tough scores need to try to get remediation before they go to college, arrange for tutoring in advance and be careful about how they pick their classes, not buy the hogwash about how test scores are meaningless. If test scores are used to shut poor kids who can’t afford test prep out of good schools, that’s bad. But, if affluent, neurotypical kids who get the test prep classes have truly weak scores, not just scores a little below average, that simply is not great.They might be wonderful kids, but they’re going to work really hard to survive STEM weedout classes.

Standardized testing is just one data point and might ( only) predict college success during freshman year. If the kid has rigor over 4 years of HS and have good time management skills, that will trump a one test snapshot.

And...not everyone wants to do STEM in college.

+1 there are plenty of majors that don’t require math skills.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does it mean "Your test scores could help you but omitting them from your application won't hurt" or "admissions stuff presume that your scores were not good if you don't submit them and they will choose someone with decent/mediocre scores over someone who doesn't, all other things being equal"?

I may be skeptical, but I am starting to doubt the line given out by our school's counselors that the scores only matter if they help you. There's a negative deduction to be made there.

Any views?

I think the top concern is making sure that kids who get in without using test scores are really prepared for the classes they’ll be taking.

I wonder what percentage of kids with SAT math scores under 700, or the ACT equivalent, actually pass first-year STEM classes for majors at T50 universities. The math SAT is a lot easier than any college math test or physics test I ever took, and my school wasn’t super highly ranked for math or physics.

Affluent, neurotypical DMV kids who have relatively low test scores and get in to tough scores need to try to get remediation before they go to college, arrange for tutoring in advance and be careful about how they pick their classes, not buy the hogwash about how test scores are meaningless. If test scores are used to shut poor kids who can’t afford test prep out of good schools, that’s bad. But, if affluent, neurotypical kids who get the test prep classes have truly weak scores, not just scores a little below average, that simply is not great.They might be wonderful kids, but they’re going to work really hard to survive STEM weedout classes.

Standardized testing is just one data point and might ( only) predict college success during freshman year. If the kid has rigor over 4 years of HS and have good time management skills, that will trump a one test snapshot.

And...not everyone wants to do STEM in college.