Ivy League Bubbles: Dartmouth To Require Standardized Testing, Again
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Welp…that didn’t take long. Dartmouth College will once again require standardized testing for undergraduate admissions, and they are not alone.
Dartmouth College will require applicants to provide standardized test scores for the undergraduate class of 2029, school officials announced Monday, a return to its pre-pandemic policies.
Like many colleges, Dartmouth dropped its standardized-test requirement for applicants when the rapid spread of the coronavirus disrupted testing nationally. Admissions were test-optional for a few years, meaning students could decide whether to submit scores.
But after studying the impact of testing on admissions and as a predictor of student success, Dartmouth officials decided to reinstate the requirement that students provide an SAT or ACT score when they apply.
Sian Leah Beilock, Dartmouth’s president, wrote in an email to students Monday that researchers who analyzed admissions data at the college and elsewhere found that SAT and ACT scores “can be especially helpful in identifying students from less-resourced backgrounds who would succeed at Dartmouth but might otherwise be missed in a test-optional environment.”
It is the first Ivy League college to announce that it will require the tests again. The others remain test-optional — although most say the policy is provisional and being studied.
Also on Monday, Cornell University announced that it would extend its test policy for applicants next fall: Three of its undergraduate colleges don’t use test scores at all, while the other five will consider but don’t require them.
Last year, Columbia University took a more lasting stance, announcing that it would continue to be test-optional for undergraduate admissions, without any timeline for lifting the policy. The school also said it continually examines data and admissions policies to align with institutional goals.
Meanwhile, among public institutions, the University of California system instituted a test-free policy in 2020 and has no plan to end that policy for the foreseeable future, according to a spokesman for the massive university system. “UC remains committed to maintaining a fair admissions process that reviews every applicant in a comprehensive manner and endeavors to combat systemic inequities,” spokesman Ryan King wrote in an email.
The issue of whether to require standardized tests has been closely watched because selective college admissions are perceived by some as a gateway to dramatically improved opportunities, the tests have been criticized by some as unfair to disadvantaged students, and millions of students take — and retake and stress about — the SAT and the ACT.
Nobody has any idea on how to admit kids into college. There are basically three systems and each has their ups and down.
1. The American Holistic Approach of GPA, Standarized Tests, Extraicurricular activities, etc. Advantage: Doesn’t quite have the same pressure cooker environment of the others. Disadvantage: Easily gameable by the wealthy.
2. The European system of the A level, Abitur, Matura, etc. Advantage: Academically rigorous. Disadavantage: Not good for late bloomers and deadly without a welfare state to even out the material results.
3. The East Asian University Entrance Exam: Advantage: Allows for single track education but academically rigorous. Disadvantage: Puts kids through a pressure cooker that can easily result in a high youth suicide rate. I don’t think anybody in the United States wants American kids to have to endure something like the South Korean college entrance exam system.
America’s system is probably best for the United States but still has a lot of issues.Report
Imagine, if you will, a Law School.
They go out of their way to admit students that the other law schools wouldn’t accept.
Time comes to take the bar at the end of the 3 years.
How many of these students pass it? Pass it on the second try? Pass it on the third?
If you have students who cannot pass the bar… is it truly a good thing to admit them into your school? Are you really helping them?
I submit: Sending kids to Dartmouth who can’t break 1300 on the SAT is not a kindness.Report
Well, it’s not always clear that someone who has a middling to low score on the LSAT is going to not pass the bar; it’s less clear that someone with a middling undergraduate GPA is going to either pass or fail it. Nor is bar passage necessarily an indicator of ability to practice law at any particular level of quality. That’s because the bar tests a blend of memorization of selected legal rules and a particular mode of thinking. It doesn’t test for a comprehensive knowledge of the law and the rules that are tested on the bar are not necessarily the rules that one would use in practice. (The particular mode of thinking, however, is actually pretty on point.)
So there are a substantial number of people who have J.D.’s but didn’t pass the bar. I would submit that generally speaking, such a person is better off than someone without the J.D., because the J.D. indicates that the person has studied and understood complex and often arcane principles of law, and those principles have application and utility beyond the courtroom. These people sometimes need to exercise a bit of creativity in applying their knowledge in ways that don’t count as practicing law. I know JD/MBAs who have become corporate executives, real estate brokers (not salespeople, but the supervising brokers who can fix problems the salespeople can’t), insurance adjusters and examiners, and politicians.
Which isn’t to say that these people aren’t disappointed when they take the bar and fail. Failing the bar closes off some pretty obvious and potentially lucrative career options. Plus it can look bad when you’re competing for these sorts of more elite jobs or trying to attract customers. So I’m not suggesting that failing the bar is a good thing — but I am suggesting that more education is better than less, and for those who don’t pass the bar, it’s not like the world is a bleak pit devoid of opportunity.
A similar dynamic, I suspect, applies to an undergraduate degree from Dartmouth, even if you’re in the 90th percentile. Low GPA B.A. from Dartmouth > no B.A. from Dartmouth; “some college” at Dartmouth > “some college” at Compass Point State. The quantum of differential may not be so great, but it does exist.
Maybe the question this poses is, is a low GPA B.A. from Dartmouth > high GPA B.A. from Compass Point State? And the answer is presently unclear. (To me; maybe you have a more definitive opinion.)Report
I dunno, man. I sat for the bar at the height of the great recession and did a bunch of temp legal work while I was waiting for my results. During that time and for a while after I encountered a number of people who for whatever reason couldn’t pass that had been stuck on the doc review circuit for years with no prospects of getting out. Those that tried reported the JD as being a stain on their resume because hiring managers just couldn’t understand why they weren’t out being a rich lawyer. I myself got denied a part time job moving furniture which I needed to finance my loans because I stupidly reported my full education.
This was well more than a decade ago now but I think it would be insane to go to law school without a strong chance of passing the bar. Law schools have a duty to be very careful with admissions.Report
I remember reading an article at that time that looked at the bar passing rate for various tiers of law schools. Those at the bottom had a miserable pass rate and were mostly good at saddling people who never had a prayer of becoming a practicing attorney with astronomical student loan balances.Report
I’ve never been foolish enough to try to convince anyone that lawyers or near lawyers deserve any particular sympathy. But a lot of people got put in really bad circumstances through no fault of their own, and with the encouragement of their elders and the schools themselves.
In an unexpected display of true honor and decency the dean of my law school actually resigned because he could not in good conscience support a tuition hike while so many graduates weren’t getting jobs. I believe he wrote a letter about it that was published in the Baltimore Sun. Of course they raised tuition anyway.Report
Whatever your admission system, roughly 50 percent of all students will be in the bottom half of the class. Is someone in the bottom third at Dartmouth worse off than someone in the middle third of UNH? And is that a decision for the student or for Admissions?Report
Admissions. Students are inexperienced and Admissions has a marketing dept.
RE: Is someone in the bottom third at Dartmouth worse off
If that bottom third shouldn’t be in college at all and they drop out, then they have student loans in addition to no degree. If they could have become an engineer at UNH and at Dartmouth they have to transfer into a less well paid degree, then that’s also a problem.
Admissions is under a lot of pressure to admit people by percentage of population. This leads to mismatching, which leads to all sorts of problems.
Those problems will be inflicted on the students.Report
If that bottom third shouldn’t be in college at all
How likely is that at Dartmouth?Report
An excellent point made by Trumwill ages ago was that we compare “no college” to “university” and we shouldn’t.
We should compare “no college” to “community college”, “community college” to “compass directional state”, “compass directional state” to “state university”, “state university” to “University of State”, and “University of State” to “SLAC”, and maybe make distinctions between “SLAC” and “Ivy League”.
I think it’s probably more likely that the bottom tenth would be happier in state university or University of State (and the bottom oneth probably at compass directional).Report
Where do big mid-tier private universities at varying levels of eliteness like NYU, George Washington, Duke, and Emory fall under this comparison sheet? They are too big to be SLACs and offer graduate programs but are not at the level of HYPS. Some are really tough and prestigious but others are not.Report
If you say we need another category between “University of State” and “Ivy League” to appear next to “SLAC” (with some of the members being a little bit ahead or a little bit behind some of the SLACs), I won’t argue with ya. Sure. Let’s put that one in there.Report
There will be a “bottom tenth” everywhere, no matter what your admissions system is. Students are adults. Maybe we should let them determine where they will be happiest.Report
Oh, yeah. But if you’ve got 1600 scores mixing in with 1480s, you’re going to have a different “bottom tenth” than if you’ve got 1600s mixing in with 1120s.
Getting rid of standardized tests makes it more likely that you’d find the latter than the former.
This is why I think it’s good that they’re bringing back standardized tests.
Make it so that the bottom tenth is a statistical artifact rather than an unkindness.Report
Why do you believe it’s an unkindness?Report
To go back to my Law School example, is putting someone through 3 years of Law School who cannot pass the bar an unkindness?
If it is, and I think that it is, then putting people through an intellectual wringer where they would flourish elsewhere is an unkindness.
But maybe I’m giving the Ivy League too much credit.Report
Okay, but then we get to a much more rigid distinction between “community college,” “compass directional state,” “geographical area state university,” and “University of State.”
As it is, someone who graduates in the 50th percentile at University of State could seem kind of fuzzily equal to someone who graduates in the 10th percentile at Compass Directional State University. Those two people can compete for the same post-graduate job. But if we stratify University of State more definitively above Compass Point State then a higher GPA at Compass Point State won’t really count for anything, and employers and graduate schools will begin to assemble lists of acceptable degrees and unacceptable degrees. I don’t think we want that result, because it will lead to class stratification: getting in to University of State in the first place will matter more than how one gets out of it.
Kind of like what has already happened with the Ivy League. Getting in to Harvard means more than how you get out of it (with exceptions for the very top of the class). I suppose you can say that’s good, but I think that’s the fundamental problem with the Ivies — not questioning that the school does teach the things higher ed schools should teach, but unless you’re the valedictorian, you’re kind of a homogenous “Harvard grad” — a likely smart person who comes from at least some money — as opposed to the more graduated spectrum of ability that seems to prevail at University of State (plus an examination of GPA).
(I say it leads to class stratification because to a significant degree, any grade point average at any university reflects not just the academic rigor but the student’s aptitude and preparedness to meet whatever level of rigor is there. Lots of students come in to higher education at all levels unprepared for the academic challenge that meets them and acquire those skills on the way. Hopefully the year-by-year GPA is continually increasing, but you’re much likelier to start out higher on that curve and therefore get a higher multi-year GPA if you come from resources that can prepare you.)Report
I suppose if one cared about what is so, we could look at what actually happens to people who, say, finished in the bottom 20% at the Ivies and comparably qualified students (so far as standardized tests are concerned) who finish in the middle of the class at State U, and how happy they were.
Or we could just spitball it.Report
RE: we could look at what actually happens to people who, say, finished in the bottom 20% at the Ivies
That’s “mismatching research” and it’s a thing.
https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2022/08/the-truth-about-student-mismatch/Report
Not quite the same thing, but an interesting read nevertheless. Basically, the argument there is that preparatory academic experience is a good predictor of higher-level academic performance. Implied, standardized tests do a pretty good job of quantifying the quality of that preparatory academic experience.
We got the story of the kid who graduated high in his class at an inner-city L.A. school but struggled at Berkeley. It was a little heartbreaking, but it wasn’t what I was looking for. Top-tier student from low-tier high school probably ought to go to CC before going to Flagship U. — no one here is arguing against a proposition like that.
The question was low-tier student from high-tier college. Graduates, but with mediocre at best grades. What happens to that person? I suspect they wind up doing alright in life. I suspect they wind up using the skills and knowledge they got in college in some way, even if their grades weren’t great.
But no, I’ve not done any sort of research to verify that suspicion, particularly not at a statistical level as opposed to an anecdotal one. I’m just taking it as an article of faith that more education > less education.
Elsewhere Jay suggests that more education + more debt < less education + no (or less) debt. I can't say that's wrong in the abstract, but I couldn't say it's right in the abstract, either. I'd substitute the indeterminacy symbol (which I don't know how to make on my keyboard).Report
Hello! I had all over the map grades at a college considered most selective for admissions.
I ended up at a regional law school in a major US city and am doing okay.Report
There doesn’t have to be a rigid distinction. We can say that there’s a lot of squish between Compass Directional State and State U.
And some people want to be a big fish in a small pond while others would be more content being a small fish in a large pond.
That’s all well and good and, lemme tell ya, having gone to what we used to call a “commuter college” didn’t do anything to negatively impact my ability to get a data entry job back in 1997.
Remember when people said “just get the piece of paper”? Well, I just got the piece of paper and it worked out fairly well. I mean, I don’t have a High Powered Job In A High Powered City but I do have a mid-powered job in a mid-powered city.
But when we’re playing slice and dice with stuff like The Ivy League, I don’t think that getting rid of standardized tests will benefit the kids for whom they would be outliers.
If you’re yet another dork who got 1520? Okay, sure. Maybe we should see if they ran an African orphanage for a year or two while in high school.
There is one thing worse than graduating with too much college/university debt and that is *NOT* graduating with too much college/university debt and sending people to big name schools that they can’t handle is not a kindness.Report
RE: How likely is that at Dartmouth?
When University of Michigan was forced to translate Admissions Holisticism into English, we found minorities got a +2 on their GPA. So the Black “D” was the White “B”.
After the lawsuit was over, UofM redid their Admissions to be much less understandable and their admissions rates for the underserved didn’t change at all.
Dartmouth’s median GPA is 4.11 (weighted). The 2.1 students they’re admitting maybe aren’t “shouldn’t be in college at all” but they should be in Community College.
There are other side effects from this sort of thing as well. Engineers get paid by their degree, not by the name of their U. So if you learn to code in a community college you are going to earn more than if you got a low value degree at Dartmouth, and that’s before adding in the ton of debt.Report
Dartmouth is of course doing the right thing by its students and prospective students with this. I think that the case against college has gotten more than a bit overstated online, but in addition to the well known financial costs/indebtedness, young people need to consider the opportunity cost. Early adulthood is a very special time where we’ve got something resembling adult capacities (and definitely adult responsibilities) while retaining a level of energy and stamina that wanes faster than any of us would like. It needs to be spent wisely, and if it isn’t the resulting delay in adult milestones can create serious burdens later in life.
Which isn’t to say people shouldn’t be ambitious, just that there really are trade offs and if college or a particular college doesn’t work out the price is calculated in years as much as dollars.Report
The NYT is reporting that Yale has also realized the folly of its war on multiple-choice messengers.Report