UC system officially drops SAT, ACT scores from use in admissions and scholarships
By Andrew Morris
5/15/2021
SAN FRANCISCO — The University of California has agreed to drop SAT and ACT scores from its admissions and scholarship process, marking a distinct shift away from the decades-long high school tradition.
An announcement came Friday in the form of a legal settlement with students, as first reported by the Chronicle. The UC Board of Regents had first been considering the move early last year. UC Berkeley’s chancellor even spoke out in November 2019 against the exam requirement, saying the tests “really contribute to the inequities of our system.”
Activists have long argued that standardized tests put minority and low-income students at a disadvantage. Critics say test questions often contain inherent bias that more privileged children are better equipped to answer. They also say wealthier students typically take expensive prep courses that help boost their scores, which many students can’t afford.
The UC Board of Regents voted in May 2020 to eliminate the SAT and ACT testing requirement for incoming freshman students. Critics of the testing system argued that low-income students of color and those with disabilities were disadvantaged without elite tutors or strategic test prep services.
The SAT and ACT tests can still be used when considering a student for admissions in the fall of 2022, but the test will be optional.
FairTest, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit group that is generally opposed to standardized testing, announced last month that more than 1,400 accredited colleges and universities that grant bachelor’s degrees won’t require students applying for fall 2022 admission to submit test scores. That is more than 60% of the undergraduate institutions in the United States, the group said.
The UC hopes to have another test in place for freshman students enrolling in the fall of 2025.
Source: https://abc30.com/education/uc-system-drops-using-sat-act-scores-in-admissions/10639112/
New Data: Applications Surge At Larger, Selective Colleges
By Michael T. Nietzel
3/16/2021
Larger and more selective universities are going to like what they’re seeing in the latest college application data, summarized in a March 9 letter from Common Application to its member institutions. The Common App is a standardized form accepted by 900 colleges and universities, including all the Ivy League schools. Like other early indicators about where fall semester enrollments may end up, these figures suggest it could be a good year for institutions that have larger undergraduate enrollments (more than 10,000) and employ a selective admissions policy (admitting fewer than 50% of applicants).
The letter summarizes application data through March 1. To measure the differences between last year and this, comparisons are limited to colleges that were Common App members both years.
Here are some of the main takeaways:
Overall Totals. Through March 1, 2021, Common App had received 6,060,037 first-year applications to member institutions, an 11% increase over the 2019–20 total through the same date (5,457,932 applications).
There was also a 2% year-over-year increase in the number of unique applicants – those who submitted at least one application. On average, each unique applicant submitted 5.78 applications, a 9% increase over the 2019–20 rate (5.32 applications per applicant).
Applications from women rose by 4%. The number of male applicants was relatively flat compared to last year.
Types of Institutions
- Application increases varied considerably by region. Colleges located in the Southwest and Southern states saw increases of 22.7% and 15.5%, respectively. Those in the Western and Midwestern states had growth of 12.4% and 10.5%, respectively. The smallest increases were in the Northeast (9.5%) and Mid-Atlantic states (7.9%).
- Doctoral universities saw a 15% increase in application volume relative to 2019–20. Baccalaureate colleges also increased relative to 2019–20, by about 7%. Applications were flat for Master’s level universities, and they were down by 2.6% at special-focus four-year colleges and by 5.6% at baccalaureate/associate degree colleges.
- Application volume increased 11% and 12% at private and public member institutions, respectively.
International Students. Applicants living outside the United States increased by 10% relative to 2019-20. Although applications from China declined by 18%, other countries showed significant growth, including India (+29%); Canada (+22%); Pakistan (+39%); the United Kingdom (+23%); and Brazil (+42%).
Underrepresented Students. Common App paid particular attention to the numbers for three groups of applicants: first-generation, fee-waiver, and racially underrepresented students. Overall, there was a 1% year-over-year decline in first-generation applicants, and a 1% increase in applications from fee-waiver students. In contrast, applications from non-first-generation students was up 4% and from non-fee waiver recipients, applications increased by 3%.
The letter, written by Jenny Rickard, Common App’s President and CEO, added, “larger, more selective member institutions experienced greater year-over-year increases in application volume than smaller, less selective members. This was especially true for applications submitted by applicants who’ve been historically underrepresented in higher education.” For example:
- Applications to large, more selective institutions from first-generation applicants rose 20%;
- For fee-waiver recipients, applications to large, more selective institutions increased 22%;
- And for traditionally underrepresented racial/ethnic minority (URM) subgroups (Black or African American, Latinx, American Indian or Alaska Native, or Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander), applications were up by 24% to the large, more selective colleges and universities.
- In contrast, similar sized but less selective schools saw declines or only small increases from these three applicant groups.
The Role of Test-Optional Policies
Although there may be several reasons for the shifts in applicants’ behavior this year, one of the most likely is the adoption of some type of optional test admission policy by many colleges and universities. The majority of Common App member institutions, many for the first time, used a test optional policy this season.
According to the letter sent to members, “Not surprisingly, given the difficulties students faced in accessing testing sites during the pandemic and members’ flexible policies around test score submission, the share of applications with self-reported test scores fell significantly from the prior year. Only 12% of returning members always required a test score for applicants for the 2020-21. Last season, about 77% of overall applications were submitted by applicants who self-reported a test score to Common App. Through March 1 of 2021, this percentage was 46%.”
In addition, three notable trends were detected:
- “First-generation, fee waiver recipients, and URM applicants were less likely to self-report test scores than their non-first-generation, non-fee waiver recipients, and non-URM peers.
- More selective institutions were also far more likely to receive applications from applicants who had self-reported test scores than their less selective peers.
- First-generation, fee waiver recipients, and URM applicants who submitted applications to more selective institutions were far more likely to have reported test scores than applicants submitting applications to less selective institutions.”
In fact, Rickard identified the dramatic increase in applications to more selective institutions by underrepresented student subgroups as something of a “silver-lining of this incredibly challenging year.”
Attention now turns to several questions: with all the shifts in institutional practice and applicant behavior, and with the pandemic perhaps beginning to recede, what will “yield” (the percentage of accepted students who enroll at a given school) look like come the fall? Will entering cohorts be larger than normal at the schools seeing a bump in applications? Will colleges struggling to hold their enrollments steady become even less selective? Will institutions intensify their “bidding wars” as they attempt to lure students to their campus? Will test-optional admission policies grow even more popular?
In an increasingly deregulated admissions environment, the next few months are likely to see a scramble for students unlike anything in recent memory.
Selective universities see increased interest after waiving test scores. Smaller schools deal with the opposite issue
By AMELIA NIERENBERG
3/16/2021
Prestigious universities like Cornell never have a hard time attracting students. But this year, the admissions office in Ithaca, New York, is swimming in 17,000 more applications than it has ever received before, driven mostly by the school’s decision not to require standardized test scores during the coronavirus pandemic.
“We saw people that thought ‘I would never get into Cornell’ thinking, ‘Oh, if they’re not looking at a test score, maybe I’ve actually got a chance,’” said Jonathan Burdick, Cornell’s vice provost for enrollment.
But while selective universities like Cornell and its fellow Ivy League schools have seen unprecedented interest after waiving test scores, smaller and less recognizable schools are dealing with the opposite issue: empty mailboxes.
In early December, applications to Cal Poly Pomona, east of Los Angeles and part of the California State University system, were down 40% over the previous year from would-be freshmen, and 52% from transfer students, most of whom started their higher education at community colleges.
A drop in applications does not always translate into lower enrollment. But at a time when many colleges and universities are being squeezed financially by the pandemic and a loss of public funding, the prospect of landing fewer students — and losing critical tuition dollars — is a dire one at schools that have already slashed programs and laid off staff.
To avoid that, the faculty and administrators at Cal Poly Pomona, which lost $20 million in state funding this fiscal year, spent December calling students who had started their applications but not submitted them, or who had applied in the past and were not accepted.
“It’s like Amazon,” said Luoluo Hong, who oversees admissions at the Cal States, a network of largely commuter schools. “‘There’s a purchase in your cart!’ And then we’re trying to follow through and close the deal.”
The California State system extended the application deadline for all its schools by two weeks, and Cal Poly Pomona managed to close the gap. But its herculean effort, at a time when Ivy League schools had to add an extra week just to consider their influx of applicants, further underscored inequities in higher education that have been widened by the pandemic.
“It’s impacting both students from an equity perspective,” said Jenny Rickard, CEO of The Common Application, which is used by colleges across the country, “and then it’s also showing which colleges and universities are more privileged.”
The nation’s most selective four-year institutions, both public and private, saw a record-breaking 17% increase in applications this year, according to Common App. Small liberal arts schools felt a boon, with applications to Haverford and Swarthmore increasing by 16% and 12%, respectively. So did large state schools like UCLA, where freshman applications increased 28%.
Applications to the primary campus at Penn State, a Big Ten School, increased by 11%. Harvard saw a whopping 42% spike, while Colgate University in upstate New York received 103% more applications.
But smaller or less recognizable institutions, both public and private, saw precipitous declines.
Applications fell by 14% at the State University of New York, the largest public college system in the country. At Portland State in Oregon, freshman applications were down 12% and transfers down 28%. Loyola University Maryland, a private liberal arts school in Baltimore, has seen a 12% drop in total applications, even after extending its deadline by two weeks.
The declines come at a time when colleges and universities have been battered financially by the coronavirus, with estimated losses of more than $120 billion from plunging enrollment and dried-up revenue streams like food services and athletic events.
Many institutions outside the top tier were struggling even before the pandemic, and a smaller freshman class could mean further distress, including more slashed programs and faculty layoffs — making them, in a vicious cycle, even less attractive to prospective students. A few colleges have even shut down permanently during the pandemic.
“COVID didn’t create this challenge, but it certainly exposes and exacerbates the risk that institutions face financially,” said Susan Campbell Baldridge, a former provost of Middlebury College and co-author of “The College Stress Test,” a book that examines the financial threats to some U.S. colleges and universities.
Even before the pandemic, Baldridge said, “the rich were getting richer and the poor were getting more and more challenged, in terms of institutions.” The pattern of applications during the pandemic is just “further evidence” of a long-term trend, she said.
Common App data does not include community colleges because they typically allow anyone to enroll. But those schools, which often provide low-income students a first step into higher education, also saw steep declines. In the fall of 2020, freshman enrollment fell by more than 20%.
“We saw the largest declines by far among students from low-income high schools, high-minority high schools, urban high schools, who ordinarily would have gone to community colleges this fall, and who just vanished,” said Doug Shapiro, vice president for research at the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, which publishes educational reports.
Those students often have to work or lack online access, making it harder to apply, he said. “Those are students that are going to have the most difficulty getting back on track, even once the pandemic is over.”
About 3% fewer students who would be the first in their families to go to college submitted applications this year, according to Common App data, along with a 2% drop in students who qualified for waived admissions fees — a proxy for family income.
But although fewer people from those groups applied overall, some selective schools saw big increases from students who are typically underrepresented at elite institutions. The University of California, Berkeley, received 38% more applications from Black, Latino and Native American hopefuls than in 2019. New York University saw 22% more applications from both Black and Latino students.
There is little doubt what is driving those gains: making standardized test scores optional for applicants. About 1,700 schools did not require SAT or ACT scores this year.
“When students are trying to gauge their likelihood of getting admitted, they will often look to, well, ‘What are the test score averages?’ or ‘What’s the GPA average?’” Rickard of Common App said. Without a test score, she said, “maybe they aren’t sure exactly where to aim, or they think this is their opportunity to try to get into a more selective institution.”
Although most schools that waived standardized tests this year did so temporarily, a growing number are making it permanent because of concerns that the tests are inherently biased. The University of California system, which serves nearly 300,000 students and includes some of the nation’s most-desired schools, decided last year to suspend consideration of SAT and ACT scores. Applications across the system increased 16% this year, a record high.
“The elimination of that barrier really did drive application increases,” said Emily Engelschall, who oversees admissions at the University of California, Riverside.
The experiment with ignoring test scores could extend beyond the coronavirus crisis, some admissions officers said. The University of Chicago had already declared itself test optional in 2018. And several Ivy League schools, including Harvard, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania, have said they will not require test scores for next year’s applicants, most of whom are currently high school juniors.
Cornell had made a significant effort in recent years to expand the diversity of its applicant pool, but Burdick, who oversees admissions, said nothing had as big of an impact as waiving test scores. “We didn’t see an expansion of wealthy kids saying, ‘Well, I’ll apply to Cornell.’ That was already happening,” he said.
Burdick said his staff had developed a new way to review applications — a “universal transcript review” — focused on the rigor of the classes that applicants took in high school and how they performed in them.
“The essay, the resume and the letters assume a smidgen more importance than they would have in a system in which the test score just sort of sat there like a big object on the review process,” Burdick said.
While Cornell and its peers enjoy their bounty, the state systems and less-selective private schools that educate the majority of U.S. college graduates are bracing for long-term distress if the drop in applications leads to depressed enrollment and lower tuition revenue.
Colleges usually admit students they think will attend. But this year, with increased competition for them, admitted students might start playing the field, or get stuck on waitlist limbo at more selective schools as a hectic year shuffles out.
“For us,” said Hong of Cal State, “what is ultimately going to matter is: You’re admitted to college. But do you go?”
c.2021 The New York Times Company