Attention Chinese families who plan to apply to U.S. universities in the future!
Recently, the New York Times published an article titled "The Misguided War on the SAT," which mentioned that "a growing number of education experts and college admissions officers suspect that standardized optional is a mistake." ”
As soon as this remark came out, one could not help but wonder if American universities should reinstate SAT/ACT requirements, and if so, how should Chinese students respond?
Don't panic yet, Palm Jun combines the article published by the New York Times and American college admissions data to take you to learn more about whether the SAT will make a comeback.
Get to know some education experts and admissions officers first
Reasons why you want to reinstate the normalization requirement
《The Misguided War on the SAT》文章中，明确阐述了原因。
Christina Paxson, president of Brown University, said, "Standardized grades are a better predictor of a student's academic success than high school grades. ”
Stuart Schmill, MIT's Director of Admissions, said, "A GPA is not enough for us to know if a student can do well at MIT. "After studying admissions records over the past 15 years, admissions officers found that students who were admitted with low standardized scores were more likely to experience academic stress or drop out of college at the university level.
According to an academic study released by Opportunity Insights last summer that covered Ivy Plus universities (i.e., the eight Ivy League schools and Duke, MIT, Stanford, and Chiba universities), standardized grades are good predictors of high school grades, while high school grades are much less predictive.
(Normalized and GPA predictions of attending top graduate schools)
(Comparison of standardized and GPA predictions to enter a job in a famous company)
In January, Dartmouth College's Bruce Sacerdote, Michele Tine and Friedman also released the results of a study of Ivy League schools, showing little correlation between high school grades and college grades, in part because many students now earn A's in high school.
There is a high correlation between standardized scores and college grades, and students who do not submit standardized scores and those who submit low standardized scores have difficulty getting high scores at the university level.
And regardless of the race they belong to, whether their families are wealthy or not, the higher the standardized score, the better the academic performance during college.
(Standardized and GPA predicts academic performance during college)
Deming, an economist at Harvard University, said: "When universities allow applicants not to submit standardized scores, the most affected are the top students in the standardized high schools where they are located, and they rarely succeed in climbing the vine." ”
For students from districts or high schools with fewer educational resources, especially those that do not offer a sufficiently challenging curriculum, standardized grades can be an important complementary way to demonstrate their academic ability.
In addition, most white, black, Hispanic, and Asian Americans in the United States support that standardized scores should be a factor in college admissions review.
According to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center, 39 percent of those who participated in the survey believed that standardized grades should be the primary factor in admissions, 46% said they were secondary, and only 14 percent said that standardized scores were irrelevant to admissions.
Case
Are U.S. universities starting to return to standardization?
At present, 6 of the top 50 comprehensive universities require applicants to submit SAT/ACT scores:
- School of Science and Technology, Asa Province
- Georgetown University
- University of Florida
- Georgia Institute of Technology
- Purdue University
- University of Georgia
There are 5 permanent standardization options:
- University of Chicago
- Columbia University
- Rice University
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Wake Forest University
There are 6 schools that do not look at standardized results at all:
- California Institute of Technology
- University of California, Berkeley
- University of California, Los Angeles
- University of California, San Diego
- University of California, Davis
- University of California, Irvine
The remaining Top 50 universities with standardized options are actually the most likely to change their SAT/ACT requirements. Among them, two universities released news at the early application stage this year-
Yale University: The Class of 2028 may be the last class of standardization, and a long-term standardization policy is expected to be announced in the first half of 2024.
Cornell University: With the global implementation of computer-based SAT in 2024, the role of standardized scores in admissions will continue to be reduced.
Yale and Cornell's attitudes towards standardization are diametrically opposed, and the "Misguided War on the SAT" article does not explicitly mention "which wind" other colleges and universities will follow, but it is mentioned that there are two major difficulties in restoring standardization.
1. The standardized test is offensive because it puts pressure on millions of teenagers;
2. American college admissions pay attention to "political correctness", and some people believe that standardized tests are unfair, and there are large score gaps between different races and classes. For example, the average score of middle-income, Black, and Hispanic students is lower than the average score of high-income, white, and Asian students. Therefore, it is worried that after the resumption of standardization, the diversity of campus enrollment will be reduced.
In this way, American universities should not "collectively" revert to standardized requirements in the short term, but individual schools are likely to re-require students to submit SAT/ACT scores for the sake of student quality.
This makes many students fall into the entanglement of "preparing for the exam or not preparing for the exam", in Palm Jun's view, instead of wasting time thinking about the question of whether to take the test or not, it is better to take out the real questions now and start brushing up, after all-
考出高分SAT/ACT对申请名校
There is no harm in all the benefits
Although many American universities adopt a standardized optional policy, looking at the data of freshmen admitted in previous years, it can still be seen that some colleges and universities are particularly fond of "standardized high-scoring students".
According to the CDS dataset officially released by the Top 30 comprehensive universities, Palm Jun summarized and sorted out the percentage of freshmen who submitted standardized scores in the total number of admitted freshmen in the 2022 Fall, as well as the SAT/ACT score range of admitted freshmen. As shown below:
(Click on the image to enlarge it)
, admits a large number of students who submit SAT scores, accounting for more than 50% of the total admitted freshmen.
A higher number of students who submitted ACT scores were admitted. UNC, in particular, admits 60 percent of new students who submit the ACT.
In fact, standardized scores can not only reflect students' academic ability, but also reflect critical thinking and problem-solving skills, which is one of the "magic weapons" to build admission trust with admissions officers.
Therefore, Palm Jun suggested that students, especially those who are not in the top well-known high schools, try their best to get standardized high scores, which will help realize their dreams a lot.
If you plan to submit a standardized score in the future
These details must be known
1. Understand the standardized test arrangement, brush the questions and improve the score
From February to June 2024, the SAT/ACT test areas in the United States and the international test area will usher in test days one after another. Students who want to take the test must know the registration deadline and the specific test date in advance to prepare for the exam.
According to PalmJun's years of experience, brushing the real questions before the exam can help students quickly check and fill in the gaps in the knowledge points and improve their scores.
To this end, we have compiled the SAT/ACT test calendar for the first half of 2024, real test questions and practice questions, etc., welcome to receive them at the end of the article~
2. Find out if the dream school allows standardized spelling
美国大学接受三大拼分政策：Superscore（超级分数）、Highest Single Sitting（最高单次分数）、All Scores（全部送分）。
Regarding the differences between the three scoring policies, Palm Jun has detailed the SAT/ACT policy in the United States for the 2023-2024 application season, so I will not repeat it here, in short, it can show the best standardized scores in students' history to admissions officers.
Palm Jun suggested that students can take the standardized test several times in order to submit the most competitive score when applying for the United States. However, students must not take the exam without the slightest preparation, it is difficult to get a high score, not to mention, and it is a waste of time.