More Colleges are Returning to the SAT and ACT
On February 5, 2024, Dartmouth College joined the likes of Georgetown, MIT, Georgia Institute of Technology, Purdue, several Florida schools, the various military academies, and many other colleges and universities in announcing it will again require scores from the admissions tests SAT or ACT, beginning in the fall of 2024, when students in the high school Class of ’25 submit their applications. Better Predictor of Success in College Dartmouth, long respected as a leader in data-driven research, recently studied the matter. In today’s “Update on Dartmouth’s Standardized Testing Policy,” the college stated “we believe a standardized testing requirement will improve –– not detract from –– our ability to bring the most promising and diverse students to our campus.” In short, its researchers found that SAT and ACT scores are a better predictor of success at their school than can be found in the mix of high school grades, student essays, and teacher recommendations alone. A Second Finding: Diversity Notably, there was a second message in Dartmouth’s announcement today. Its faculty researchers found that test scores help it find and attract students from beyond wealthy or legacy students. In the Update, it says
Founded in the mid-seventeenth century (!), Dartmouth has long been correctly viewed as a bastion of privilege and tradition. This identity rings especially true as seen from our local area of Lamorinda. When I attended graduate school at Dartmouth in the 1980s, it was beginning to change in meaningful ways. As I have kept up on alumni communications in the ensuing four decades, I have seen Dartmouth as an institution that takes diversity, equity, and inclusion genuinely and deeply to heart, and most would say it is the better for it. Who's Your Competition? With testing back in the game at Dartmouth and a growing list of highly selective schools, it is becoming more and more true that a student needs scores to compete these days. We’ve just weathered a temporary period when students could fly under the radar without the ACT or SAT. While that period is still in effect at UC and Cal State (and many, many other fine schools), Dartmouth’s move might signal a change to come. This fall, thousands of applicants from across America and around the world will submit scores who might not have taken the tests before now. Dartmouth’s policy will draw out the types of talented and promising students who may not have applied –– or may have been overlooked –– in the past four years. Quo Vadis? I have been wondering on the sidelines since March of 2020 whether colleges would eventually discover that the classes they admitted without standardized test assessments may not measure up to the cohorts they had admitted before the pandemic. I have tried to remain cautious and diplomatic with parents of my students, not to assert that SAT or ACT scores are important for their kids –– or important for colleges. After all, I’m biased since I make my living preparing students to take the tests. Accordingly, I am pleased that one of my alma maters, with its motto’s fabled Voice Calling in the Wilderness, has stepped forward today with its own position on the subject. Starting with the March 2024 SAT, the test is now administered in a digital format only. There will be no more paper SAT.
The SAT has always evolved The recently-ended version (2015 – 2023) introduced some fundamental changes that were well regarded by colleges and that have stood the test of time over these past eight years. That version of the SAT format will be remembered for re-committing to its role as a test of critical thinking –– repairing its reputation among universities in the process. This new revision is largely one of format As far reaching as the changes were in 2015, the switch to digital is be the most substantial format revision in the history of the SAT. Yet, it is important to note that the new test will contain questions very similar to those students have gotten to know over the previous eight years. Multistage Adaptive Testing: streamlined assessment This type of test is used for graduate school admissions and hiring screenings in several professional fields. It gets directly to the business of assessing a student’s skill level, faster and more precisely that a paper test can, and without wasting the student’s time on questions that have little impact of their assessment. In the test we had from 2015 to 2023, for example, every student had to confront a 58-question Math section with about ten to twelve (17% to 20%) of the most difficult questions. Fewer than 10% of students got those questions right: they were largely included in the test to separate, say, the 720 students from the 770 students. This didn’t do most students any good. It may even have done some harm: my students often tell me those questions give them the impression that they are performing badly. They ask themselves “why am I not able to do so many of these questions?”. In the new digital SAT, much of that goes away. Students will take the two sections –– 1) Reading and Writing and 2) Math –– in two stages for each section. Each of the four stages contains a module of questions. The first module is a “routing module” that contains a diverse mix of easy, medium, and hard questions, and it will be the same for all students. Based on the students’ outcome on the first module, they will be routed to one of two adaptive, or "targeted," second modules that will contain either easier or harder questions, on average, than those in the first module. The test adapts to each individual student’s skill level. In this way students see more questions clustered around their skill set, so they have more opportunities to show how they can succeed within that echelon of difficulty. The more advanced students don’t waste their time with elementary questions that do little to assess their skills, and the mid-level students don’t get overwhelmed with more complex and challenging questions aimed at the high-achieving students. The intent behind this, testing experts say, is that scores will be more precise, accurate, and meaningful representations of students’ knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSA) –– all while taking considerably less time than paper tests require. Radically new format, familiar questions Despite the wholly new testing interface, the content and questions will be nearly identical to those in the 2015 – 2023 SAT. The creation of a computer adaptive test requires an immense bank of statistical evidence about questions of every kind. For each question, the critical information is “how many students got this question right?” For years, College Board has been building a vast library of this information, and they are not about to make changes now in the question types as they move to adaptive testing. Quite the contrary, the adaptive design requires the test maker to use what they’ve learned about exactly how “easy” or “hard” every question is. Is the SAT a good test? After all the work that our kids put in to preparing for the SAT, in the end the test is simply a yardstick for measuring students’ demonstrated knowledge, reasoning ability, and resourcefulness under pressure. Focused preparation gets students ready to do their best, but “best” is different for everyone. It perhaps goes without saying that not everyone can score in the 95th percentile, but fortunately, not everyone needs to do that. We want our kids to prepare earnestly, work hard, and perform at their best on Test Day. If they do that, their SAT scores will likely be a realistic predictor of success in freshman year at a college that best suits them, one where they can grow and thrive.
Using Chatbot technology comes with some risks, however.
HERE ARE SOME IMPORTANT THINGS TO CONSIDER 1. Is it ethical? In a September 2023 podcast titled “A.I. and College Essays: Wrong Question, Wrong Answer,” Yale University admissions officers declared that using tools like ChatGPT to write college essays is a form of plagiarism. An applicant who submits a chatbot-generated essay, they said, would violate the university’s academic integrity policy and the student would not be considered for admission. 2. Will it produce the best result? Sanibel Chai, writing for the New Yorker Magazine in May, 2023, analyzed ChatGPT-produced college application essays and determined that they end up sounding “…heavy on banal reflections and empty-sounding conclusions.” She goes on to say that “ChatbotGPT failed hardest at the most important part of the college essay: self reflection.” Write a Good College-Admissions Essay? 3. Will it reflect a student’s personal experience and true voice?
Based on its programming, ChatGPT works by trying to understand the essay prompt and then spitting out strings of words that it predicts will answer the question. Everything it comes up with is based on the data it was trained on. AI can’t convey genuine human emotion or give voice to a high school student’s unique experience. 4. How about using ChatGPT to help with brainstorming ideas and coming up with essay drafts? This may seem like a good idea at first. However, it may prove difficult (and time-consuming!) to rewrite an AI-produced essay. The student will labor over trying to eliminate trite phrases, tired ideas and words that have little or no connection to the high school student trying to tell a college admissions officer who they are. So why even start? Better to take the time to write from scratch with words that speak an authentic truth.
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