College Admissions Counseling

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the College Board, the administrator of the SAT, will once again allow students to decide which SAT scores to submit to colleges.  This new policy will go into effect for the class of 2010. This policy previously existed under the name of score choice and was eliminated by the College Board several years ago. Currently, all SAT scores are submitted to a college when the student applies. At this time, there is no information on the College Board site confirming this report.

The ACT allows students to choose which scores to send and it is logical to assume that the College Board is changing their policy to compete with the ACT which has been gaining in popularity in the past few years.

The reality is that for most students the ability to withhold certain scores has no effect on their admissions chances. Virtually all colleges will take the students highest test score if multiple scores are submitted. Moreover, the withholding of scores may work to the disadvantage of some students since most colleges take the highest sub scores on the SAT to reach a composite score. If a student has a great math score on one test but a better critical reading on another test, most colleges will combine those sub scores to reach a higher overall score. If the student withholds one of those exams, their overall scores will be viewed by the colleges as lower.

The ability to withhold scores also arguable works to the disadvantage of less affluant students who can’t afford to take the SAT multiple times.

Bottom line? This announcement, if true, appears to be nothing more than a new marketing ploy from the College Board that adds no real benefit to the students taking the exam.

“The results (of the new SAT validity study)  show that the changes made to the SAT did not substantially change how well the test predicts first-year college performance.”  That is a quote from a new report from the College Board addressing a “large-scale national validity study of the SAT”.

As previously reported,  the new writing section is the best predictor of college success of the three SAT sections.  This is an interesting finding considering the problems that have been previously addressed regarding the writing section. The report finds that high school grades are overall a better predictor of college succes than the SAT, but the College Board suggests that a combination of high school grades and SAT scores is the best predictor of college success.

A New York Times articles provides a counterpoint to the College Board’s discussion of the new SAT report with comments from Robert Schaeffer of FairTest.

The bottom line? High school grades continue to be the most effective predictor of college success althought the new SAT writing section is a better predictor than the other two sections. Given the problems with the new Writing section and the reluctance of many colleges, including the most selective, to use the new Writing section in admissions decisions, there appears to be increasing legitimacy to the argument that replacing the SAT may be a good idea.

There are a variety of resources available to help students in the search for the right college. One of the resources I have not talked about before are the blogs of students who have just been through the college admissions process. Although there are limits to any resource, the student blogs provides a different prospective than that provided by professional college counselors like myself.

Among the better student blogs are those of The College Student Blog, written by Parker, a student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and The Free College Counselor, a blog by Daniel, Yale class of 2012. These blogs are fairly new but many of the entries I have seen would be helpful for students in the college search process.

Sallie Mae has announced that they are “affirming (their) commitment to provide federal student loan access to all students, all schools”. I will be the first to say that I am not generally a great fan of Sallie Mae but they are one of the leaders in the college student loan industry so it is important when they make an announcement such as this. Personally, I think the credit crises in the student loan industry is in large part a myth, but if there was any concern about students being able to get loans for college, this news should help.

Yale College has officially announced that they are increasing the enrollment by 15% by creating two new residential colleges.  The new colleges are expected in open in 2013.  I first reported on the possibility of Yale expanding back in September 2007.

For those students for whom Yale would be a good option, this is great news. However, as I have said repeatedly, not every college is appropriate for every student, even if you can gain admission. Yale is a wonderful college but there are many wonderful colleges throughout this country. And yes, even many in other countries.

Community colleges are a great choice for many students who either are interested in a technical type program or who want to save some money the first two years of college. But there are some little known problems that can occur with those students wishing to transfer to a four year college after a community college.

Jay Matthews, and education columnist for the Washington Post, highlighted some of those problems in an article entitled Community College Transfer Mess. One particular problem, that I have also seen among students with whom I work, is the failure of four year institutions to fully recognize all of the work done at the two year college. A related problem is that the four year institutions will often have requirements for a particular major that mandates a student take the course at the four year college and will not fully recognize a similar course taken at the community college.

There are also often concerns about financial aid for students transferring to a four year college since some four year colleges will reserve their best aid for incoming freshman, leaving less aid for transfer students. The result is that the last two years of college can often cost more than they would have if the student had started at the four year college initially. This offsets some, or all, of the savings a student receives from initially attending a community college. The New York Times also an article today discussing the problems with getting loans that some students at community colleges are having.

I have written about many of these issues in my college transfer help article. Transferring from one college to another can work great for some students but like most things related to college admissions, you need to know all of the issues before making a choice.

A new study out of Chicago reinforces what I have suggested in the past and that is that spending too much time preparing to take the ACT is not beneficial. The study found, in part, that studying to much was not beneficial because it took time away from studying the broad content knowledge that students need to know to do well on the ACT.

This is not to say that a student should go in cold to the ACT and just see what happens. At the very least the student should have reviewed the instructions of the exam before taking the test so as to not waste time reading instructions the day of the exam. I also suggest that a student take at least one practice exam just to get some level of comfort with taking this type of test. However, spending a great deal of time in review for the ACT is probably not beneficial.

The SAT is more susceptible to test preparation and I will often recommend that a student do more test preparation for the SAT if they have chosen to take that test. However, this is a point os diminishing return where spending too much time, even on the SAT, is not beneficial.

Wake Forest University has announced that they are going test optional beginning with the freshman class of 2009. While I have reported on a number of liberal arts colleges that have recently gone test optional, this news is important because Wake Forest is the highest ranked national university to adopt a test optional admissions standard. US News currently ranks Wake Forest as number 30 on the list of national universities. Although you know that I don’t put faith in arbitrary rankings, few would dispute that Wake Forest is a top university.

One of the arguments in the past has been that liberal arts colleges can go test optional because they don’t have as many applicants, but that the national universities don’t have the resources to evaluate all of their applicants. Wake Forest has announced that they will be adding 20% to their admissions staff to better evaluate their applicants and to encourage underrepresented students to apply to Wake.

Scott Jaschik at Inside Higher Ed has an excellent article about some of the discussions that Wake Forest had on whether to go test optional. Scott also reviews this years admissions results at Worcester Polytechnic University which last year became the first selective science school to go test optional.

I am sometimes asked if students need to take both the SAT and ACT and the quick answer is no. A student only needs to take one standardized test for college admissions. The question then becomes, which test.

All students should take at least one practice test of the SAT and ACT. The College Board and ACT each offer a free practice test for students to take. The practice test should be taken under standard testing procedures to get the best estimate of your score. After taking each test the student should consider on which test they had the best score and focus their studies on that test. To compare the scores on the two tests, look at one of the comparison tables available.

There are other issues and some of those are reviewed at our page on the SAT or ACT.

Smith College has announced that they are going test optional beginning with the class entering in 2009. International students will continue to need to submit standardized tests, SAT I, ACT, TOEFL or IELTS as appropriate.

Smith, the largest women’s college in the United States, is currently ranked number 17 in the US News rankings of top liberal arts colleges in the US. They have a policy of meeting the full financial aid of all of its students and historically have had a large number of Pell grant recipients, an indication that they take seriously their obligation to educate those with more limited financial resources.

I am excited that a college of Smith’s quality has decided to go test optional.