Dartmouth reinstates the SAT

[Langue_doc]

The college found that not only were the SAT scores more reliable in predicting student success, but also that students who withheld their SAT scores might have been admitted.

The first few paragraphs from the article:

Dartmouth College announced this morning that it would again require applicants to submit standardized test scores, starting next year. It's a significant development because other selective colleges are now deciding whether to do so. In today's newsletter, I'll tell you the story behind Dartmouth's decision.

Last summer, Sian Beilock — a cognitive scientist who had previously run Barnard College in New York — became the president of Dartmouth. After arriving, she asked a few Dartmouth professors to do an internal study on standardized tests. Like many other colleges during the Covid pandemic, Dartmouth dropped its requirement that applicants submit an SAT or ACT score. With the pandemic over and students again able to take the tests, Dartmouth's admissions team was thinking about reinstating the requirement. Beilock wanted to know what the evidence showed.

"Our business is looking at data and research and understanding the implications it has," she told me.

Three Dartmouth economists and a sociologist then dug into the numbers. One of their main findings did not surprise them: Test scores were a better predictor than high school grades — or student essays and teacher recommendations — of how well students would fare at Dartmouth. The evidence of this relationship is large and growing, as I explained in a recent Times article.

A second finding was more surprising. During the pandemic, Dartmouth switched to a test-optional policy, in which applicants could choose whether to submit their SAT and ACT scores. And this policy was harming lower-income applicants in a specific way.

The researchers were able to analyze the test scores even of students who had not submitted them to Dartmouth. (Colleges can see the scores after the admissions process is finished.) Many lower-income students, it turned out, had made a strategic mistake.

They withheld test scores that would have helped them get into Dartmouth. They wrongly believed that their scores were too low, when in truth the admissions office would have judged the scores to be a sign that students had overcome a difficult environment and could thrive at Dartmouth.

[dismalist]

We can't prevent all good things from happening!

Whatever ways various colleges weight attributes of potential admittees, the SAT relatively favors the poor. And this, in spite of the well off paying for their progeny to get test prep. The reasons are easy to see:

--the poor go to lousy high schools. Only HS grade inflation makes the kids competitive to enter a good college, but not to graduate.

--the poor cannot compete with the rich in doing anything that costs money while in HS. How about music lessons? Tennis anyone? Instead, they may have to work part time. The SAT is their one chance.

Let's remember that Harvard first used the SAT to get kids who didn't come from the blue blood families that sent their kids to private schools on the East coast.

That family income plays some role here is the greatest discovery since finding that the earth is round. Turns out that if colleges discriminated in favor of the poor, which is legal,  they'd get almost as many Blacks as if they discriminated in favor of Blacks, which is illegal. Yet, so far, no college except Dartmouth has seen the connexion. I guess that discriminating in favor of Blacks rather than the poor gets them more money. :-)

[Sun_Worshiper]

Indeed, the most recent wave of research is showing that while the SAT is biased towards the well off, so too are the factors that colleges were leaning on in lieu of standardized tests, such as letters of recommendation and activities. And at the same time, standardized tests are better predictors of future success than high school GPA, since grade inflation has eroded the meaningfulness of grades.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement of standardized tests, but a good lesson on the dangers of jumping on a trend (i.e. dropping the SAT requirement) without thinking it through thoroughly. My university, for example, was all too happy to drop the SATs and other standardized tests, just because they saw that the Ivy league schools (and their peers) were doing so.

[TreadingLife]

It also makes sense that if everything is now watered down (everyone has a 4.0, and pretty much everyone does, even at the college level regardless of the quality of the school) and everyone has a positive letter of recommendation (I mean, who agrees to write a bad letter and who asks someone to write a letter that might be bad? The answer is no one, so letters of recommendation are pretty useless as well) then society needs something objective or near objective to truly assess what students know. The certification/accreditation has to come from somewhere, and it isn't coming from high school grades/degrees or even college/and even some graduate degree grades and degrees (think grad programs with no qualifying exams, no GREs/GMAT etc, no theses, no comprehensive exams.) In the "good old days" a piece of paper was all you needed to signal your worth. Now the marketplace and schools need something more than the degree to signal quality and comprehension.

Perhaps some of us should go work in the nascent certification industry. That's where the growth will be. 

[lightning]

Our Admissions Office marketing materials were proudly emblazoned "test-optional." What they didn't highlight was that a lot of university-sponsored scholarships were still test-mandatory.

A lot of potential students were cut out of scholarship consideration for many of our financial aid opportunities, because they just didn't know that "test-optional" was only for admissions and not scholarships. They thought test-optional was across the board, which is a logical thing to assume, for those that don't work in academe.

Yup, you guessed it. It was the lower income students that got screwed. A lot of those students still got things like the Pell, but for those admitted lower income students whose parents were not poor enough for Pell, they missed out because they didn't send their test scores.

I have a feeling that we will be requiring standardized test scores, again in the future.

[marshwiggle]

It also makes sense that if everything is now watered down (everyone has a 4.0, and pretty much everyone does, even at the college level regardless of the quality of the school) and everyone has a positive letter of recommendation (I mean, who agrees to write a bad letter and who asks someone to write a letter that might be bad? The answer is no one, so letters of recommendation are pretty useless as well) then society needs something objective or near objective to truly assess what students know. The certification/accreditation has to come from somewhere, and it isn't coming from high school grades/degrees or even college/and even some graduate degree grades and degrees (think grad programs with no qualifying exams, no GREs/GMAT etc, no theses, no comprehensive exams.) In the "good old days" a piece of paper was all you needed to signal your worth. Now the marketplace and schools need something more than the degree to signal quality and comprehension.

Perhaps some of us should go work in the nascent certification industry. That's where the growth will be. 

Absolutely. As they say, "Nature abhors a vacuum."

[ciao_yall]

We can't prevent all good things from happening!

Whatever ways various colleges weight attributes of potential admittees, the SAT relatively favors the poor. And this, in spite of the well off paying for their progeny to get test prep. The reasons are easy to see:

--the poor go to lousy high schools. Only HS grade inflation makes the kids competitive to enter a good college, but not to graduate.

--the poor cannot compete with the rich in doing anything that costs money while in HS. How about music lessons? Tennis anyone? Instead, they may have to work part time. The SAT is their one chance.

Let's remember that Harvard first used the SAT to get kids who didn't come from the blue blood families that sent their kids to private schools on the East coast.

That family income plays some role here is the greatest discovery since finding that the earth is round. Turns out that if colleges discriminated in favor of the poor, which is legal,  they'd get almost as many Blacks as if they discriminated in favor of Blacks, which is illegal. Yet, so far, no college except Dartmouth has seen the connexion. I guess that discriminating in favor of Blacks rather than the poor gets them more money. :-)

No, they used it to keep out Jews who couldn't pass the cultural biases in the test. This created an opportunity for Stanley Kaplan to start his business doing test prep.

[dismalist]

We can't prevent all good things from happening!

Whatever ways various colleges weight attributes of potential admittees, the SAT relatively favors the poor. And this, in spite of the well off paying for their progeny to get test prep. The reasons are easy to see:

--the poor go to lousy high schools. Only HS grade inflation makes the kids competitive to enter a good college, but not to graduate.

--the poor cannot compete with the rich in doing anything that costs money while in HS. How about music lessons? Tennis anyone? Instead, they may have to work part time. The SAT is their one chance.

Let's remember that Harvard first used the SAT to get kids who didn't come from the blue blood families that sent their kids to private schools on the East coast.

That family income plays some role here is the greatest discovery since finding that the earth is round. Turns out that if colleges discriminated in favor of the poor, which is legal,  they'd get almost as many Blacks as if they discriminated in favor of Blacks, which is illegal. Yet, so far, no college except Dartmouth has seen the connexion. I guess that discriminating in favor of Blacks rather than the poor gets them more money. :-)

No, they used it to keep out Jews who couldn't pass the cultural biases in the test. This created an opportunity for Stanley Kaplan to start his business doing test prep.

That is not correct. At Harvard, a Jewish quota was in place by 1926, disguised as a new admissions policy. Using the SAT to find non blue bloods dates from 1933. That was the explicit policy of James Bryan Conant, who became president of Harvard that year.

[jimbogumbo]

"Test scores were a better predictor than high school grades — or student essays and teacher recommendations — of how well students would fare at Dartmouth".

Almost certainly true at elites. Certainly not true at the vast majority of campuses. Most acutely at regional publics and cc's, where grades and the type of courses taken are far stronger predictors.

[dismalist]

"Test scores were a better predictor than high school grades — or student essays and teacher recommendations — of how well students would fare at Dartmouth".

Almost certainly true at elites. Certainly not true at the vast majority of campuses. Most acutely at regional publics and cc's, where grades and the type of courses taken are far stronger predictors.

It's not a question of either or or. The evidence suggests that standardized tests add to the predictive power of success in college of HS grades taken by themselves.

It doesn't seem as though any researcher has bothered to distinguish among types of schools. And, anyway, it's a question of not throwing out information.

[I got no skin in this game. The best that colleges can do for their customers is to choose their preferred admission criteria. Just wish everybody kept it legal, :-)]

[artalot]

I think this is an example of Ivy reality being different from the rest of the world. Test scores have never been a great predictor of success at my pseudo-SLAC; they have been a great predictor of privilege and tendency toward anxiety. For us, it usually the type/level of the class - if a student hasn't had Calculus, they won't do well in any of the engineering degree programs; if they haven't had AP English or similar they likely won't do well in humanities programs. I'd rather have 20 students who made mediocre test scores but passed an advanced English class than 5 who aced the SAT and can't handle it when they get a B in college.

[Hibush]

Dartmouth wants to admit students who will thrive in a challenging classroom environment among other elements of success. What they may have found is that they admitted people who, despite an A average in high school, were not able to hack Dartmouth classwork. My guess is that they think they could have elimintated some of those if they had had GRE scores to work with.

In the absence of GRE scores, they would have to institute some other proxy, such as blacklisting high schools that give top grades to second-rate students. That would be justified based on the data they had, but not fair to other applicants from those high schools.

If this is Dartmouth's use of GREs, then the rationale does not apply to very many other schools.

[dismalist]

Dartmouth wants to admit students who will thrive in a challenging classroom environment among other elements of success. What they may have found is that they admitted people who, despite an A average in high school, were not able to hack Dartmouth classwork. My guess is that they think they could have elimintated some of those if they had had GRE scores to work with.

In the absence of GRE scores, they would have to institute some other proxy, such as blacklisting high schools that give top grades to second-rate students. That would be justified based on the data they had, but not fair to other applicants from those high schools.

If this is Dartmouth's use of GREs, then the rationale does not apply to very many other schools.

Older [2016] College Board propaganda says the SAT adds information to HS GPA even in low selectivity schools. Newer data says some underrepresented minority students or the otherwise disadvantage can benefit from having their SAT considered. This is essentially what Dartmouth has done.

My broader point is to ask why throw away information.

[spork]

[. . .]

My broader point is to ask why throw away information.

Organizations will throw away information if doing so is in the incentive of the organizations' leaders.

I once witnessed an enrollment management VP claim that quality of applicants had increased over time because their average SAT scores had increased. He deliberately ignored the fact that the university had gone test-optional in the middle of his time series.

[dismalist]

[. . .]

My broader point is to ask why throw away information.

Organizations will throw away information if doing so is in the incentive of the organizations' leaders.

I once witnessed an enrollment management VP claim that quality of applicants had increased over time because their average SAT scores had increased. He deliberately ignored the fact that the university had gone test-optional in the middle of his time series.

Absolutely!

So getting rid of SAT's makes it less transparent in rejecting less prepared kids. We all gotta live! :-)