TU #195 US News 2024 rankings.
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This is two classes ago. Last year’s class had an admission rate in the 30’s. Even lower for some majors. It may be in the high 20s this fall before it’s over with. Don’t be surprised if 35-40% of the class has a 35 on the ACT or higher. A friend of the family’s daughter last year got into Tulane, DePaul, SMU, but not Notre Dame and Tulsa. They suddenly thing I’m smarter than I am.
Just say to them you are thinging wrong.
Just found out my son has been accepted to Worcester Polytech (WPI). Now trying to figure out how to pay for these schools 😬
Congrats. Hopefully they give you an aid package that you can make work.
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The SAT Debate Shows We Need To Rethink High School GPA
It’s not that grades and GPA don’t correlate to success in higher education, it’s that, according to Leonhardt’s reporting, standardized test scores predict college su...
www.forbes.com
I'm guessing he was ecstatic. Will be seeing you on the free board from now on? 😁
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He's happy. I think there are 2-3 schools at least that he has a higher preference for and if they admit him then he'd be there. Right now Georgia Tech seems really interested in him as does the University of Illinois. We've had multiple friends who either worked at GaTech or did post-grad degrees there talk glowingly of the school and city so it's a place that has definitely piqued his interest.
I don't know if it's misguided, but pressurized tests rarely tell of a person's true intellect or ability to comprehend and understand. The college board puts a ton of emphasis and importance on the PSAT...not even the actual SAT. For many of these students that is the 1st high pressure standardized test a kid in HS takes. Many take it the end of their sophomore year or beginning of their junior year. Sure, kids can take all the practice exams they want. Rarely are they taken in the same controlled environment and timed the way the actual tests are, and you can get up and walk around any time you want. I think it can be used to supplement a kid's grades and academic performance but not be the sole predictor. And there's a reason why upper echelon schools are telling kids they still need to take the exams.
I use MIT because I've been in the room with admissions and what they tell prospective students (and the soccer coach said it too) is put an emphasis on taking the highest level courses in HS that are available to you (AP, IB, etc.) and getting A's on them. They are not test optional...you have to submit an ACT/SAT test score as part of the application process. To go on top of that, the soccer coach said if you show an extraordinary ability in math or physics, it goes a long way at MIT since all students, regardless of major, have to take calculus and physics the first year.
But yes, GPA's can be misleading because not all 4.0s are equal. In Oklahoma, you have to have 6 classes in a day. You don't get any free periods or study hall periods or that built into the school day. My son's 1st two years in HS, his 1st period class was band and his 6th period class was soccer. You'll find most schools use the last period of a day as an athletics class for those kids who play sports for the school. They do this because of the practice restrictions depending on season. Out of season, coaches get 1 hr per day with the team. BUT the class period doesn't count towards that hour. So in soccer, my son has 6th hour soccer and then the 1 hr afterward until Dec. 1st when they can begin full season prep. Anyway, those extracurricular classes at Union are treated as 4.0 A's. Then there are college prep classes at Union that count as 5.0 A's (and if you take dual enrollment classes from a local college/community college, those count as 5.0 A's). Finally, anything that is an AP class or that level is considered a 6.0 class. So on a weighted 5.0 scale during his junior year, my son had a 5.667 GPA. Soccer dragged his GPA down. This past fall, he took 2 classes at TCC and his weighted GPA was "only" 5.2+. So there are a ton of kids at Union who have 4.0 GPAs, but there's like 8 of them that have weighted GPAs above 5. So when he is asked for his GPA, he always gives the weighted one to show that he is challenging himself. And I think this is where people are taking up on the standardized test scores these days. I will never say getting a 4.0 GPA in HS over the course of 4 years is easy, for any kid, but they are not all equal and don't tell the same story.
I hear people say this a lot but the data consistently says otherwise. There are always outliers
I have no idea where you're coming from on this. Because there is not an option to participate in band or athletics at Union (or most OK HS) as true extra-curricular activities he gets an A and it literally drags the weighted GPA down. So now the issue becomes do you want well-rounded kids are kids who do nothing but academics 24/7.
It won't matter for schools where it could matter. Top end schools will see through it (top GPA depends on a lot of school specific things so colleges know a 5.5 at one schools is not necessarily the same as a 5.5 at another) and at lower schools, it won't matter. The challenge is that smart kids from high quality suburban schools with a top GPAs and 35 ACT and leadership, etc. are a dime a dozen compared to the number of open spots at top schools.
"test optional" is just a way to introduce more error. At the system level, expert judgment will always underpredict compared to an algorithm. Preferably one that is guided by theory and not simply dust bowl empiricism.
The problem is that colleges exist to advance 1,000 different ends. If selection was nothing but "who will have the highest college gpa" then it would be pretty easy. But colleges do a lot of things other than producing good test takers, which is all that GPA is. Even if you expand your algo to include "who will stay 4 years", it's still woefully incomplete. Some of the DVs are orthogonal, some are probably negatively related. Maybe you want to admit kids who are fun, or are interesting, or will contribute to the community (a reasonable goal for a college), etc. Is it a selection error to prioritize a kid who's willing to be a nurse in Guymon over someone with a better test score who wants to be a nurse in Dallas? That's an important societal need that test score doesn't help with.
These could in theory be part of an algo, though it's too complicated for now and data sets are too small. But the problem is that so many people think they have a God given right to college admission based on GPA and test score. A human can consider factors that would get a school sued if they were put into an algo.
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Test optional was introduced to help people from low income and underrepresented groups, which historically perform relatively poorly on standardized tests, in large part because of lack of access to high quality SAT and ACT prep resources.
Just add SES as a dependent variable and personality as a predictor.
You could even band scores to allow for selecting for unusual majors within your top band.
It depends on what you mean by "didn't work". Research seems to be mixed with most showing small gains for underrepresented groups. In any event, standardized testing isn't the answer to expand opportunity, we know that. Even if the first iteration of alternatives didn't work, it doesn't mean to go back to a system that we know doesn't work. Hopefully more explicit focus on other factors in light of recent court rulings will have better outcomes.
Test-optional colleges get more Pell Grant students, minority students and women
Major study finds that colleges gain Pell Grant recipients, minority students and women.
Women comprise 60% of those currently attending undergrad colleges. How are they an underrepresented group? Is a system which inflates that number a good thing ? Just food for thought if equity and expanding opportunities are the goal?It depends on what you mean by "didn't work". Research seems to be mixed with most showing small gains for underrepresented groups. In any event, standardized testing isn't the answer to expand opportunity, we know that. Even if the first iteration of alternatives didn't work, it doesn't mean to go back to a system that we know doesn't work. Hopefully more explicit focus on other factors in light of recent court rulings will have better outcomes.
Test-optional colleges get more Pell Grant students, minority students and women
Major study finds that colleges gain Pell Grant recipients, minority students and women.www.insidehighered.com
I think they are underrepresented at some schools and in some areas of study. Getting more men in, eg, nursing also would be good given the looming shortage.
It's interesting that the increase in enrollment seems to be driven by an increase in applicants - standardized tests are causing certain categories of applicants not to apply to college. It's not saying that Sally gets in over Bob but rather that Sally wouldn't have applied otherwise. I don't know why that would be but it seems to undermine the argument of letting in less qualified applicants.
You don't continue to utilize an inferior method of entrance differentiation if it doesn't do what it was designed to do, and is still inferior. Scrap it until you have something else to test. Two decades is plenty long enough to realize it doesn't work. Regardless of 'small gains' for underrepresented groups, it is pointless and counter-productive to continue to avoid using tests, 20+ years after the experiment started.
Give me a new idea, or go away until you have one that makes some sense. No reason to hurt the the majority of students for something that hardly serves anybody. Keep it in focused studies with universities that are social justice oriented, and make small changes there. If that begins to serve the purpose it was designed for, and is fair to all students, then implement the changes.
Give me a new idea, or go away until you have one that makes some sense. No reason to hurt the the majority of students for something that hardly serves anybody. Keep it in focused studies with universities that are social justice oriented, and make small changes there. If that begins to serve the purpose it was designed for, and is fair to all students, then implement the changes.
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There are certainly some outliers where males outnumber female at a few colleges. Particularly smaller Stem and Engineering focused schools. However, overall female enrollment outpaced male by 20 percent. If the article you quoted is correct, doing away with standardized tests across academia would likely increase that disparity by another 4-8 percentage points. Doesn’t seem like a positive outcome if equity and underrepresented groups are our focus
We really disagree here. I think standardized tests such as SAT really SHOULD be a universal element of assessing potential students, at least at competitive universities. You can add elements like GPA, personality assessment (particularly Conscientiousness and Openness to Experience) and other predictors. Perhaps a well constructed structured interview would be an effective and prominent element. If you are not using SES on the criterion side, you can include it to help address economic and family disadvantages to a degree.It depends on what you mean by "didn't work". Research seems to be mixed with most showing small gains for underrepresented groups. In any event, standardized testing isn't the answer to expand opportunity, we know that. Even if the first iteration of alternatives didn't work, it doesn't mean to go back to a system that we know doesn't work. Hopefully more explicit focus on other factors in light of recent court rulings will have better outcomes.
Test-optional colleges get more Pell Grant students, minority students and women
Major study finds that colleges gain Pell Grant recipients, minority students and women.
And here sir, you can see why I am not a Democrat. And why I was registered as a Republican most of my life. Universities are not the place to remediate effectively educational deficits. That needs to start at age 0.
I am also strongly against race-based admissions. Race based selection decisions in employment were outlawed in 1991 thank goodness. Glad that education has finally caught up.
If more qualified girls are applying to college, that's a good thing and should be promoted. The issue with boys opting out of college is a different problem and a serious one given the shocking trends on the increasingly poorer life outcomes for non college educated Americans. Your suggestion is akin to saying that we should impose barriers on white kids applying as a way to increase non-white admissions. We're already giving boys affirmative action. I'm not sure there's anything colleges can do about fewer boys applying but it would be interesting to see if there are barriers that colleges could remove and they definitely should.
Seeking gender balance, selective colleges are giving men an advantage in admission
As more women than men continue to apply to colleges, it’s gotten easier for male applicants at some private colleges to get in — and harder for female applicants. Despite this, women make up the majority of students on U.S. college campuses
hechingerreport.org
I just think that I have a broader idea of what universities exist for. It's like the nurses in Guymon point above. Colleges should help address societal problems. And they should be able to pick people to create the culture that they desire. If they want to admit kids they think are fun and interesting to create a lively and engaging culture, they should be able to. I just don't agree that colleges should be forced to pick people who are likely to graduate with the highest GPA if the college has other goals.
I also don't understand the love affair with the ACT and SAT. They're not even that good. It's not like they're the Sorting Hat.
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All I know is we went test optional and retention plunged to 70% into the second year. Far lower than that for some degrees. We strongly suggest you take the test, especially for financial aid, and we are back at over 95%.
If Guymon needs nurses, they will raise the rate of pay to attract them. That has nothing to do with TU. We shouldn’t be enticing people to enroll who can’t succeed. We shouldn’t be admitting people who borrow money and can’t pay it back once they fail out because our admissions methodology is so poor we miscalculated 1 out of every 3 times we made a decision. You can and should meet diversity goals, not just in terms of race, but sex, geography, academic interest and location choice after graduation. But also retention goals. Standardized testing at the level of TU plays a role in that, especially in predicting outcomes beneficial to the student before they make a decision. Especially at a smaller school, with fewer people to read applications, and a tiny margin of error that is measured in hard currency, not supplementary budget requests.
If Guymon needs nurses, they will raise the rate of pay to attract them. That has nothing to do with TU. We shouldn’t be enticing people to enroll who can’t succeed. We shouldn’t be admitting people who borrow money and can’t pay it back once they fail out because our admissions methodology is so poor we miscalculated 1 out of every 3 times we made a decision. You can and should meet diversity goals, not just in terms of race, but sex, geography, academic interest and location choice after graduation. But also retention goals. Standardized testing at the level of TU plays a role in that, especially in predicting outcomes beneficial to the student before they make a decision. Especially at a smaller school, with fewer people to read applications, and a tiny margin of error that is measured in hard currency, not supplementary budget requests.
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Just because a system doesn't work well for minorities doesn't mean it should be completely abandoned if the only alternate plan doesn't really work well for minorities either, and is negative for the overall health of universities. There are plenty of universities out there that will stick with experimental policies, even ones that don't show immediate promise.
What I am suggesting is aggregation effective predictors of important criteria in a structured manner to make selection decisions. But that's my life. I have to believe in it or I may as well open a sandwich shop or something.
Since moving from a test optional policy, TU’s
Since moving away from test optional, the number of students from underrepresented groups has grown substantially at TU. With test scores, we know which kids have a high probability to succeed and we go recruit them. All of them. TU may be a majority minority campus in less than ten years if growth rates continue.
You're confounding 2 different things - we could recruit whoever we want regardless of whether we take test scores. Broader based recruiting is the winner here, not the test scores.
LOL, I believe in it, too, for some things. But some things are, at least for now, too complicated to predict effectively, or require data sets that are larger than we have. Job performance is vastly easier to predict than the 1000 different goals of universities. Companies have a fairly small number of independent variables, universities have a lot.
So the argument is that we have to take test scores because our admission staff is incompetent? That's compelling, I mean what other choice is there then? That sounds a lot like Janet Levitt logic.
No. There is no argument. Money doesn’t grow on trees. There simply isn’t staff to go through 10,000 applications except at the few huge schools. You have a lot of aspirational ideas that use conclusory arguments but very little appreciation for how things actually work and how they are paid for.
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