Thread: Some observations about 2020 #TestOptional announcements:
It seems like the come in a few broad categories:
a) We're test optional going forward
b) We're test blind
c) We're test optional as a x-year pilot
d) We're test optional for a year
And, some hybrids, of course
Group a) consists mostly of schools who've been debating for a while, or who had the proposal in the works pre-pandemic
Group b) burned it all down. Congrats. I wish I'd been brave enough to pursue that approach
Group c): Good enough. Do your research, as you should
But group d): Let's talk about them.
They'll admit this class in spring, 2021. They'll open their application for 2022 in August, 2021.
That's a month before the first test-optional cohort enrolls.
Some of these places may have just rushed through a one-year policy to deal with the tyranny of the urgent. Maybe they'll take steps to make it permanent (or a pilot project) in the interim. Let's hope so.
Maybe they'll see the light in review; free from the straitjacket of tests and the limitations they impose on selection, perhaps the admissions staff members will make some noise. Maybe there are faculty on those committees who will feel the same. Fingers crossed.
But I doubt it. Part of the panache of working at some of those places (you know, the ones who almost apologized for going test-optional for a year) is the country club aura tests lend an institution.
Because tests mean wealth, mostly.
But a one-year policy essentially says, "We've made up our minds, and we're going back as soon as we can." Which may be next year. Or the year over that. Who even knows?
But perhaps there is some hope, distasteful as it may be.
What if applications go up 25% from very good students who wouldn't have applied because they're "only" at 1350 or a 30?
Admit rates plummet. Decisions become even less predictable. 80% of the class is taken in ED. Aid goes down. Everything else they want.
Thread: It seems I'm spending more time telling people why I'm not too interested in the Dartmouth decision than it would take to just put it here. So here goes. I hope this is the last I'll say about it.
First, I've long said that if a college finds value in the SAT, they would be foolish not to use it. I just ask that they do the research, which Dartmouth did. And the lowest-scoring students at Dartmouth end up with a GPA of 3.1 or something like that. Horrible.
I am--frankly--a little suspicious of analysis that shows the SAT is better than HS GPA, because you know damn well if College Board or ACT could make that claim, they'd have done so long ago. They've never even whispered it.
This is the result of the DOJ investigating the NACAC Statement of Principles of Good Practice, which would have allowed this if the student had not withdrawn, but would have forbidden it if the student had notified the offering school that they had deposited elsewhere.
The DOJ treated college just like any other consumer purchase: Suppose car dealers agreed the Subaru dealer could not call you while you were on the way to the Ford dealer to buy the car you had agreed to buy, and offer you a better deal?
Thread: When someone tells you about the big drop in high school graduates, remember 2014. Because by 2037, we'll be back to numbers like we saw in 2014.
What's really compelling is the mix: America will be more diverse, and because different ethnic groups have different college participation rates, that's the big thing going on behind the numbers.
And, of course, New England has known this for a long time.
I've never received so many emails about my writing in CHE as I have for the most recent one about "The Number."
But here's a little insight into that.
Sunday morning, I logged in and checked our Tuition Deposits for Fall first-year students.
By Sunday evening (12 hours later) that number had gone up by 3.7%.
By this morning, it had gone up another 3.2% over that.
Expressed another way, 6.5% of all deposits we currently have came in during the last 24 hours. And we still have a day to go...the day that is traditionally the biggest, or at least one of the biggest.
The Daily Caller (ugh) has memos from the Florida DOE suggesting they were influencing @CollegeBoard on the AP African-American Studies curriculum as early as January 2022, and at the very minimum, July 2022.
So, to everyone who somehow believed that College Board made its own, independent decisions about the framework/curriculum and wrapped it all up in December, 2022, before DeSantis went public: Read this.
I normally wouldn't trust Daily Caller, but this serves their right wing agenda well; it's believable, and, I suspect, even they wouldn't publish a fabricated memo from the Florida DOE.
In order to win the nomination in 2024, DeSantis is going to have to do two things Trump did: