Yale is not “being honest about the reality of our admissions process” because the university is “denying 98 percent of the students who are applying without test scores,” said Jeremiah Quinlan, dean of undergraduate admissions, on a recent podcast.
Most U.S. colleges remain "test optional," but students who don't submit scores are unlikely to get in to selective colleges, writes David Blobaum in an Inside Higher Ed commentary. He is director of outreach for the National Test Prep Association and co-founder of the tutoring company Summit Prep.
"Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgetown University, Dartmouth College, Yale University, Brown University, Cornell University, Harvard University, California Institute of Technology, Stanford University and others have returned to requiring test scores," he writes. Other elite schools claim applicants won't be disadvantaged if they don't provide scores. But it isn't true.
"Disadvantaged students may have the most to gain from submitting strong test scores," writes Blobaum. At Dartmouth, "a disadvantaged student with an SAT score between 1450 and 1490 is 3.7 times more likely to get admitted if they submit their score than if they withhold it."
Yet, if they don't have good college counseling, disadvantaged students may not realize they should take the SAT or ACT.
Among "Cornell applicants who scored above a 1400 on the SAT, for example, just 62 percent of Black students submitted scores, compared to 74 percent of white students and 79 percent of Asian students," he writes.
"Most students who go to college have A averages," Blobaum writes. High schools are very different standards. Colleges need the information from standardized test scores to figure out who's prepared for high-level academic work.
A particularly valuable contribution for higher education is for colleges, which complete upper secondary education for qualified students, to provide standardized exam points to university admission offices, to qualify students for state-subsidized tuition: this is the reality in many European states, and is facilitated by United World Colleges, which junior colleges One World School has been trying to replicate in the United States for many years now.
Well, first off, let's deal with reality. 99.99% of all students will not get into an "elite" finishing school/Woke seminary. So they really don't need to worry about this and instead should concentrate on real learning, not getting good grades or passing tests.
And all that goes double for white males. They've no future at the elite status universities or in the cube farms of the corporations.
When one gives an elite school a donation, that funds their DEI programs. These departments employ unneeded people doing harmful work while wasting applicants' time and efforts. These colleges' liberal arts classes are woke indoctrination camps rivaling Pol Pot's best efforts. One of my most satisfying days was when I informed my woke alma mater (UNC-CH) that I would never give them a dime. And that was in 1973!
And yes, I give a lot to my favored charities -- we control our rather large CRT (charitable remainder trust) plus a "regular" charity fund. The biggest recipients are libertarian-leaning think tanks -- THAT'S our contribution to education.