Tag: Harvard Admissions Information

College Board Drops Plan For At-Home SAT Tests, Lacks Space for Needed Tests

College Board Drops Plan For At-Home SAT Tests, Lacks Space for Needed Tests

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The college board is throwing in the towel on at-home SAT tests, after a hit-and-miss experience with this spring’s A.P. tests–up to 20% of students on some early tests experienced trouble with the testing site and uploading responses for their AP exams.

More Colleges Will Be Dropping the SAT Requirement

Only yesterday, I posted on the responses of different universities and systems to the problems posed for students trying to boost SAT scores going into late admissions decisions, and for this fall’s college applications. Some important colleges and systems are dropping the SAT and the ACT already, most notably the University of California, which is dropping both tests going forward at least five years. They plan to look at developing their own test during that suspension of the current standardized tests, as I discussed in the post linked above.

The testing-industrial industry is still doing SAT/ACT test prep, of course, and promoting the tests, no doubt adding strategies for getting one of the limited seats that will be available. But there is alos no doubt that they are also in preliminary discussions on how to pivot to prepping for whatever new test the U.C. may come up with, should they come up with one. But that is not your problem, unless you are in 8th grade, as you read this.

The tests proceed, but who will require them?

Hours after posting on the evolving testing situation (linked above), I received a notification that the SAT was dropping its plans to attempt an at-home SAT. This is a good decision, given the impossible challenge of preventing cheating, which is another way to say, the challenges of creating a level playing field. (Add: the A.P. tests were open-book. Hard to control the effects of open books on the SAT.) But of course, since their business is giving tests, The College Board is still trying to proceed–but they do not have enough testing sites, or to put it more specifically, the College Board is never going to find enough space to safely separate the number of students needing to take the test. The results are predictable, with the College Board stating today that they are experiencing a test registration overload–scroll down and you can see that they admit lacking capacity, and suggest you look at alternate dates and alternate test sites–driving to Elko soon, anybody?

So expect this outcome: more colleges will drop their SAT requirement, and in doing that, they will almost certainly drop the ACT as well–it faces the same challenges. As smaller organization, not offering the massive suite of tests and “services” that the College Board incorporates, the ACT has fewer problems, but it does have that one huge problem everybody has: ACT will also find it difficult to impossible to find enough space, and I see no way they can guarantee a safe testing environment.

Given that it’s a legal requirement for schools to offer a safe environment for learning, no doubt even the Ivy League is going to have to start reconsidering its test-positive stance. I reported on the continuation of test polices of Harvard and Princeton in my last post. I will be suprised if they do not revisit this policy soon. Stay tuned for more.

College Application Essays for 2020-2021

Final note–I see that many of my current readers are looking at my posts on how to write a range of college essays, from the U.C. through the Ivy League. Please do note that my posts so far are from last year. Many of the essay prompts will stay the same this year, but please be aware that some will change or be tinkered with.

I will be starting to post on the 2020-2021 essay prompts next week, as I make some calls and check websites and sources to confirm which prompts are ready to go.

Y’all come on back soon.

Applying to College in 2019-2020: An Early Look at Early Application Data

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Greetings Rising Seniors and anybody else who wants to look at which colleges are a “fit” for them.

While this post is going to take a look at some early application results for this year, first let me digress for a paragraph: the “fit” of a college–how well it matches your needs and qualifications– is a bit more like the fit of a pair of good jeans than it is s simple statistical match. The ratings you see in various services like the U.S. News don’t tell you anything about how you will feel at a particular school. Location, including weather, culture and activities are also part of the package of things to consider, along with the usual suspects, like the size of the campus, class sizes and strength of programs.

But this is still early days, and I have talked about fit elsewhere (and will again, soon), so let’s move on to some data on the more popular names–though it’s never early to try to think outside the box, as I will show.

Early Admissions for Fall of 2019 (Class of 2023):

Princeton

13.9 % admitted (743 accepted out of 5,335 applicants, and you can assume that over 80% of those will accept and attend).

Harvard:

13.4% admitted. (935 accepted out of 6,598-and again, the yield–those who accept the admissions offer–will be in the 80% range)

Yale

13.1% admiited (794 accepted out of 6,016 early action applicants. This will also be a very high yield group, and Jeremiah Quinlan, the current Dean of Undergrad Admissions stated the 56% of those not accepted were deferred and will be reconsidered for admissions)

Columbia

Has not released results. They are the most chary in providing data among the Ivy League (that New Yawk attitude, I guess) but they did say that 4,461 students applied for binding Early Decision. They won’t tell you anything about their admit rate for ED, but I do want to point out that this means hundreds more early applicants this year over last. And now let’s jump to my go-to application for the Ivies, Cornell–great offerings across the board in terms of majors and quality of programs, and still the easiest Ivy to get into:

Cornell

22.6% accepted in Cornell’s Early Decision applications (1,395 admits out of 6,159 apps . . . Among other things to note, Cornell was overt in its appeal to legacy applicants, indicating that they should show their seriousness by doing an early decision app [and then pay whatever tuition package Cornell offers, as you give up your chance to wait to see what other offers might come when you apply E.D. . . Just remindin’] ).

Your Takeway

I realize that this is far from a complete review of Ivy League early app data, but it is enough to “do the math.” And the math says that you can double to nearly triple your chances with an early application of whatever kind, on a raw statistical basis.

How do I know this? From last year’s data. Look below for a more complete picture of early versus regular decision last year (meaning people who were incoming freshman last August). The reality, however, is that the raw numbers don’t say a lot about any individual’s chances of admission, and there are important “other” factors, such as . . . well that legacy leverage, indicated above in that comment from Cornell. Yes, a legacy applicant who applies early will get a boost, it’s official. Please note, Dear Reader, that I am not commenting on that in any way; I am just stating the facts, which is the only purpose of this post. I have written about this before, however, and will write about this again . . . but for now, look below and you will find last year’s early and regular application data–then do the math as you start thinking about where to apply, and where to apply early

Last year’s data (Class of 2022):

Some Ivy League examples and Stanford in 2018:

Princeton:  Early Admissions–15.4%; Regular Admissions–5.5% (6.1% last year [2017] )

Harvard:  Early Admissions–14.539%; Regular Admissions–4.59% (5.2% last year [2017] )

Yale:  Early Admissions–14.68%; Regular Admissions–6.3% (6.9% last year [2017] )

Columbia–5.5% admit rate; no data supplied for early admissions admit rate. (At least some things are consistent . . . )

UPenn–Early Admissions–18.5%; Regular Admissions–8.39% (9.15% last year)

Brown: Early Admissions–21.7%*; Regular Admissions–7.2%

Cornell:  Early Admissions–24.3%; Regular Admissions–10.3%

Dartmouth–Early Admissions–24.9%; Regular Admissions–8.7%

Saving the toughest nut for last:

Stanford;  Regular Admissions–4.3%; Stanford has not released early application information, or not released it until the following year, for some time, but about 33% of the new class was admitted early. (Again, this is last year’s data. I will update on Stanford soon, but they are becoming the Columbia of the West Coast in terms of data stinginess . . . so much for information wanting to be free.

*Oh, and The Brown early admissions asterisk for fall of 2018 entry data (class of 2022) was due to this data being released indirectly via a presentation, rather than through a press release. I updated it separately, for my clients. This is a free blog site so . . . not everything gets posted here, but I do hope you find it useful, Oh Free Public User).

Finding The Right University: Some Resources

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College Search and Evaluation Software and Websites

Most of the people I help with college applications can be categorized in two ways:  those who are fixated on a list of big-name universities which are the ONLY places they can possibly consider applying to, and those who are overwhelmed by the information available and so feel paralyzed and unable to choose.  I usually start with the college names they know in both cases and then move on to things they may not have considered, such as this question: Would you want to live there if the university was not located there–a good thing to ask about a place where you are likely to spend at least four years of your life.

In addition to asking questions beyond the status of the university, which in itself is no guarantee of a good experience, it helps to use some of the excellent sources of information that are available today.  I have elsewhere discussed some of the books that can help with the college search, but increasingly the best information is available online.

I encourage my clients to use the information sources below to help narrow the search–I offer suggestions and give them information that falls into the gaps, so to speak, but your average searcher for a good university could do much of the work a college counselor might be paid to do (which is one of the reasons I prefer the title “College Advisor” and put most of my time into intellectual and essay development).  By sending my clients to the sites below and helping put the information in perspective, I can almost always help my clients with a good, varied list of colleges to pursue.  I suggest starting with somewhere around twenty names, then reducing this list to ten or twelve colleges–I used to recommend ten, but in these times, a few more apps is a good idea. So the first step is to empower yourselves, folks.   Take charge of your search, starting with the following sources:

Software And Sites You Should Definitely Use (if you can)

The College Board

www.collegeboard.org

If I may compare the college application game to the rackets, the College Board is the Godfather.  They have a finger in every pie and control much of the important data.  Go to their site, pick a college name and search—this will take you to their Big Future college search engine, which has all kinds of useful data and information—for example, cost estimates are broken down not just by in and out of state but also by on and off campus.

The Common Application

https://www.commonapp.org/CommonApp/default.aspx

Continuing with my rackets analogy, if the College Board is the Godfather, these guys are the consigliere.  Much of the information on the Collegeboard site can be found here, but focused specifically on the hundreds of universities using the Common App.  Not quite as detailed as the collegeboard, but you are most likely going to set up an account here and you might as well check out what they offer.

College Navigator

http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/

If the College Board is the Godfather, this is the Oracle of Delphi.  This is a federal website and it is built right on the source of education statistics for the U.S.  The site is a function of the Institute of Education Sciences, which is essentially the data clearing house for education facts nationally, among other things.  Graphics windows that open up when you search are not flashy, but the layout is very easy to use and clear, and  you can see very detailed breakdowns of costs from tuition to room and board to an estimate of extra expenses, as well as test scores and pretty much any other statistic you might want, though some of the numbers may be a year behind.   Go now if you haven’t already.   They are the data set, really, that everybody else uses.

Naviance

www.naviance.com

If your school or district has not purchased this service, then you are only going to be frustrated in reading this; if so, convert your frustration to political action and advocate that the board or school purchase Naviance.  Naviance is an institutional software package and service, meaning that it can be purchased by school districts but not by individuals.  There are legitimate institutional reasons for this limitation.  If your district does use Naviance, it will perform most of the functions of a traditional college counselor by providing a highly accurate picture of your chances of gaining admission to a particular university—this feedback is specific to your profile and to your school’s profile.  This includes scattergram reports updated annually for your school.  See Cappex, below, for more on that.   Of course, Naviance can’t read your essays and evaluate them, nor is it very good at figuring out if you are going to get an athletic or music scholarship, to name a couple of very important admissions factors.  But  if your school does have Naviance, Congratulations!  Go see your counselor posthaste.  If you do not have access to Naviance, the two sources above and those I list below can help you approximate Naviance.  In any case, any prediction made by Naviance or any other service is a based on data, in other words is based on the past, and the past is becoming less and less reliable as a predictor of the future except for the general truth that every year it is becoming harder to gain admissions to most selective universities.

Apps and Sites That Are Worth A Look

Cappex

www.cappex.com

Cappex is trying to be a free version of Naviance, with a dose of attitude.  They even have  scattergrams  for the schools they discuss.  Scattergrams are xy graphical representations of results on student applications, with GPA and ACT/SAT score as the two factors represented.  This means that, like all of these predictive tools, we can’t factor in essays, talents, et al, and we don’t know exactly how large the sample is for the Cappex data either, but they do claim to show the results of all of their members who applied, and this number is definitely growing.  There are many other nice features here—their profiles of universities, which include the scattergram,  are reasonably informative and can quickly give you an idea of where you fall among applicants–the most selective unis are shifted way up toward the top right in the scattergrams . . .

College Ray

http://collegeray.com

A good statistical site with a lot of data, presented in a straightforward fashion.  It is searchable and has statistical info like that offered by the College Board, et al.  It’s not clear where they intend to go with this site—it was developed by Harvard undergraduates for the HackHarvard web app incubator–but it offers good info in an easy-to-use format.

Admissions Splash

www.admissionssplash.com

This is a Facebook app that works with around 1,500 schools, matching your profile with the schools and giving you a prediction of your chances to be admitted.  This is a numbers only site—GPA, SAT/ACT—so essays, talents and other factors are not weighed.  This is true of all the software or apps which predict admissions chances, though Naviance, above, has more specific information  and theoretically should be  a bit more accurate.  Still, Splash is worth a look as you search.  It will give you a score range from 1-100 and chances are calculated from “fair” to “great.’  They claim to have a 90-97% predictions.  Keep in mind that you are providing private information—while they have no plans at the moment for using your data, they have not “determined” the long-term use of the data.  In addition to the calculator for predicting admissions, they have a question and answer function and a blog on topics related to college and college admissions.  As with college confidential, almost none of the information offered by individuals can be validated and you are probably wasting your time reading a bunch of responses which purport to offer “insider’ info.

Unigo

www.unigo.com

This is a participant driven site—think of it as the Yelp of universities.  Or you might think of it as an attempt to create a college student Borg.  Good for some idea of aspects of your potential colleges that are not readily clear in statistics—social life, for example—but I always wonder what the basis for comparison is—how do you really know how to rate the social life at your school against that of another?  Without, say, attending both?  An epistemological mystery, but anecdotally this site is useful for things like reviews of dorm life to what the stereotypes of students at the school are, or is.  They also (claim to) rate schools against each other.

Can Give Interesting Information But Probably Not Worth The Time

College Confidential

I like most of the “official’ info, by which I mean the commentary the adults in charge offer, but the various chat threads and discussions of how to finesse an app to a particular school are pretty much sliced lunchmeat.  The discussion threads do have occasional tidbits of good information, but it’s like looking for a pearl in the tanks of a sewage plant.   Buy a rabbit’s foot instead of spending time reading the chat(ter).  The people who work at universities in or with insight into admissions have frequently lambasted the information offered here, with good reason.