Standardized Tests: The Details

[MUSIC] Hello and welcome back to another episode of Inside the Yale Admissions Office. I'm Hannah and I'm a Yale Admissions Officer. And I'm Mark. I'm also a Yale Admissions Officer. This is part two of our three part series all about standardized tests and Yale's new test flexible policy. We have just announced that for students applying for first year in transfer admission to begin in fall 2025 or later, Yale will have something called a test flexible policy. This episode is going to be all about giving you the details of what in the world test flexible needs. Yeah, we'll give you everything you need to know about how this will work for you as an applicant and we'll also give you our advice for deciding which scores to submit. And go through some of the questions and potentially tricky situations that we anticipate with this. Okay, so if you are a prospective student and you want to understand what to do with test scores in your Yale application, this is the episode for you. But we're also releasing two other episodes at the same time. Part one in our series is subtitled the big picture. We recommend starting there before diving into the details in this episode. That one is all about how admissions officers incorporate standardized test scores into the review process, our general thoughts on what tests do and don't do, and how you should think about them during your college search process. Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Jeremiah Quinlan joins us on that episode and he gives us his thoughts on the value of standardized tests and their role in our process more generally. The next one is going to be titled Yale's text flexible policy, how we got here. That's going to be kind of an oral history of the last four years, how our office moved from requiring the SAT or the ACT from our applicants to then being fully test optional for forward mission cycles, then to ultimately landing on this new policy, which we've just announced. Yeah, in our boss, Jeremiah Quinlan, he's going to join us again for that episode to help with some of that storytelling. This episode is subtitled the details. Let's get into some details. Yeah, okay. So here's the big news. Starting with the next admission cycle, so again, that students applying to begin in fall 2025 or later, all first year and transfer applicants will be required to self-report standardized test scores from one or more of the following exams with their application, the ACT advanced placement or AP tests, international baccalaureate or IB tests or the SAT. All right, so you've got four options and there's no preference for one of these types of exams over another and we just listed those out in alphabetical order. Read anything into that. Those are the four ACT, AP, IB or SAT. Yeah, and two of those types of tests, the AP and the IB are connected to specific subjects. Usually subjects that students have studied in their high school the same year that they take the exam. Yep, and students who want to fulfill the testing requirement with AP or IB exams, they should plan to include all of their scores with their application. We'll talk about how you'll do that in just a minute. That means if you've taken six AP exams, your application should include six AP exam scores. If you've only taken one, you only need to include one. In either scenario, you've fulfilled our requirement. Yeah, and then if you want to fulfill the requirement, the old school way with ACT or SAT scores, you'll need to include all the sub scores. So that's four sections for the ACT, English, math, reading and science. There's an optional writing section that we don't require. And then for the SAT, it's two sections. So evidence-based reading and writing and math. And if you've taken the ACT or the SAT multiple times, you can just report your highest sub scores. This is something called super scoring as a quick side note. People tend to get way too worked up about it. We just made a point now because we just knew if we didn't say this up front, you would immediately be saying, "But what about super scoring?" Right. It's like one of these classic questions that we answer a few thousand times a year. We'll talk more about why it's not worth worrying too much about this in the big picture episode. But yes, we will super score the SAT and the ACT. All right, that's it folks. That's the policy. It's called test flexible because we are giving you some more options to fulfill the requirement besides just the ACT or the SAT. We're doing this in part because we think that AP and Ivy Scores can give us the same kinds of insights that the ACT and the SAT can give. And we'll mention that we have some really helpful internal research that indicates that these exams predict student success at Yale just like the ACT and the SAT do. Test flexible is different from test optional, which is what we've been doing for several years, in which students can opt to apply without any scores at all. It's also different from test required, which typically means you need either an SAT or an ACT, where we've landed kind of somewhere in the middle there. And presuming that you are going to be applying to many different colleges, you're going to see a range of test policies out there. All three of these test required, test optional, and Yale is sort of in the middle test flexible. Okay, you still with us? All right, you might probably now be wondering what types of scores might I want to include with my application? And you might be wondering, okay, how will Yale know which scores I want you to consider? The answer to that question is simply, we're going to ask you. Yeah, we'll ask you. So whichever application platform you use to apply, you'll answer some Yale specific questions. You know, those questions include things like the majors you're considering, and what about Yale that you to apply? And starting this fall, there will be a Yale specific question asking you to tell us which scores you'd like considered with your application. Yeah, we haven't finalized the wording of this just yet. The question's going to be something along the lines of select one or more of the tests from the list below to indicate which exams you would like included with your application review. After that, you'll see a checklist with those four types of exams we just mentioned and you'll need to check at least one. And that's how we'll know how you've chosen to fulfill the requirements. If you check an exam, we'll consider your scores and you can select one or more than one. Yep. Okay, and if you check that box for a type of test that you want considered and you've already self-reported the scores that you want considered in another part of the application, or of course, if you've already sent official scores in the test agency, you're all set. That's it. Your scores are in the application. You've told us that that's how you're fulfilling your requirement. You're all done. Yes, this requirement can be fulfilled with a self-reported scores or officially reported scores. But if the scores you want considered aren't somewhere else in your application, you'll have some space to self-report those scores in another Yale specific question on the application. So let's say you want to apply with AP scores. You've taken four exams. If your common application only has two of those scores listed, you'll use that space that we give you in the Yale specific questions to self-report the other two. This is all designed so that you can give Yale the scores you want to give Yale, but still submit the same core application to other colleges that might have different testing policies. There's one final question that's totally optional if, and we truly mean if, you want to include some additional context or insights about the tests you're sharing with Yale, we're going to give you some space to do that too. Right. If you feel good about the scores you're sending, and if you had a pretty ordinary experience taking the test, just leave that question blank. But if you're concerned that your scores aren't a reflection of your strength, or if there were some relevant circumstances associated with your testing experience, like examples of this would be, "I ran over a squirrel while I was driving to the testing center, and I was just so beat up about it the whole time." Or let's say it was the first year that your school had ever offered AP biology, and everyone enrolled in the class scored pretty poorly on the exam, or let's say your school had everyone take the ACT on one day, and that was the day after there was a death in your family. This would be the space that you can tell us about that in that optional question. Yeah, and this is a good place for us to remind you that a real person is always going to be the one looking at your scores. We aren't going to feed these scores into some kind of algorithm, so we want to make sure we incorporate as much context into our holistic review as possible. We know that testing generally can fill people with a lot of dread, and just generally be very scary when you are putting these numbers down on your application. And so we're giving you this space if you are feeling anxious about that exercise to tell us what you think we might want to know, because remember there's a real person not a computer who's going to be looking at those scores. Yeah, so all of these details are now live on our website. It's probably a little easier to digest the policy by reading it there than just listening to us, but we do want to give you some advice. First piece of advice is simply take a deep breath. It's our experience that prospective students and the general public tend to place too much emphasis on standardized tests. We go in more depth about this, and why it's the case, and how you should maybe have a healthy approach to testing in our big picture episode. But let's just go ahead and say it here, you're so much more than your test score. Yes, and that is true, whether you've got amazing scores, not some amazing scores, a mix of the two, don't let those scores define you, don't let them completely dictate your college search, certainly, and don't think that they define your worth or your value as a person. Amen. Similarly, our jobs as admissions officers are so much more interesting than just pushing around test scores. Thank goodness. Yes, we don't outsource our work to the college board, or the folks who create IB exams or anything like that. Hannah and I will say it again, we really like our jobs. We like our jobs because they involve real people, not just numbers, and our new policy is not changing that at all. One of the things I'm really fond of saying, and I'll say again here, is not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. That's a good mantra to keep in mind with all of this. Yeah, all right, so let's get into some of the specifics. here. We are expecting that one of the first questions that most people will have is which scores should I submit? And the answer, as many of our answers tend to be, is it depends. All right, I think I can hear people groaning from here. And I see some rotten tomatoes that were just hurled in the direction of New Haven, Connecticut when you said that, Hannah. Yeah, okay, fine. We know it's not a satisfying answer, but it's true. The right scores to submit are going to be different for different students in different circumstances. So let's get into that. Okay, let's try to be a little bit more concrete about it. It helps, I think, to think about the way that a test score helps an application from our vantage point as an admissions officer. Test scores are always reviewed in conjunction with a student's high school transcript. Keep that combination in mind. And ask yourself, does this score help to complement or supplement the courses and grades that are on my high school transcript? For example, maybe your school doesn't offer an advanced math class, but you did really well on the SAT math section that's going to be helpful. Or maybe you received a lower grade in a particular class, but then you did really well on an AP or an IB exam in that subject that's also going to be helpful. The other way that scores can be helpful is when they reflect areas of academic strength and academic range. So some of our applicants are clearly passionate about pursuing one particular field like engineering, for example. Seeing a strong test score in a related subject, like physics, can help make the case that the student is well prepared for that particular field. At the same time, remember, Yale's Liberal Arts College, all students have to take writing intensive courses, quantitative courses, humanities courses, science courses, no matter what they major in. So strong scores across a range of subjects, even if it's just subscores of the ACT and the SAT, give us some confidence that the student can perform well in all the courses they'll need to complete to graduate. This next point is important, but it's also a little tricky. You want to ask yourself if the scores you are considering sharing stand out in your high school context. Our mantra is that we review applications holistically and contextually. That means that we are trying to understand you as a whole person. You're not just a collection of numbers and accolades and things, and we are also trying to understand the environment in which you've grown up and gone to school. If you just look across America, there are tens of thousands of high schools all with different curricula, different resources, different college going cultures, and different access to the types of academic opportunities that help students prepare for tests and do well on them. Yeah, and we know that. We're aware of that. And we also have access to some really helpful data from the college board that gives us some quantitative insights into all of those kinds of things when we are reviewing your individual application. We can access those data for every applicant from a US high school. Okay, so even though standardized tests are on their surface standardized, it's our experience that the same score on the same test can mean two very different things in two different high school contexts. This is especially true when a student score is significantly higher than others from the same school, or the student is one of the only ones in their high school to even sit for that exam. Now, this is probably something you don't know instinctively, and we don't really recommend going around and kind of asking all your classmates how they did on their tests. Right. But maybe a good place to start is with your teachers or your counselor. Let's say you did very well in an AP or IB class, maybe ask your teacher if your score on that national exam was among the best in the class. Or if you know that your transcript puts you among the top students in your high school, ask your counselor if they think your SAT or ACT scores reflect your preparation for college level work. Yeah, and then it's going to be our job to do the kind of hard work of trying to balance lots of different factors and contexts across tens of thousands of applicants. So you should think about where you've gone to high school and ask yourself if your scores stand out in that context. And if you do, you should submit them even if you think they will be weaker than average among Yale's admitted students. Yeah, this is a key point, and it's one that we discuss in more detail and other episodes in this series. So be sure to check out parts one and three. Okay, last piece of advice is just how do you feel? Do you feel proud of your score? Did you work hard to prepare for the exam? And did you feel like your score is a good reflection of the effort that you put in? And this is going to be like the easiest one of all of these for you to judge. Yes, also, you know, try thinking ahead to the kinds of academic challenges that you expect to face in college. Ask yourself, does your score give you some confidence that you're well positioned to succeed in the kinds of classes that you hope to take? We know it's hard to answer those questions for these things for certain, but your gut feelings about them can help guide you to making the right decision. Don't discount that. And remember, we're giving you some extra space to tell us if there's something important we should know when we're reviewing your score. Yep, if there's something we should know, tell us. We won't know if you don't tell us. Another piece of advice that we wanted to share is to avoid trying to make equivalences among different exams. This is going to be your natural tendency, especially if you've taken multiple exams and you've had mixed results. You're going to wonder, is a four on AP English language better or worse than a 32 on the ACT English section? Yeah, we don't know. Neither should you. We want to stop you right there. These are different tests. They measure different things. They're affected by different factors and we consider them separately. The fact that they happen to fulfill the same requirement doesn't mean that they are equal to each other. Right, keep in mind, we don't have any sort of waiting algorithm or correspondence rubric. The only destination for these scores is the brains of the people who are reviewing your application. And on a related note, don't assume that more is better, but also don't leave conspicuous absences on your application. Here's what we mean by that. First, we aren't translating test scores into some sort of point system. So it's not the case that if you submit the ACT and the SAT and 15 AP scores and six IB exams that you're going to get some sort of leg up in the process. You know, put another way, you don't need to run out and take more tests just because Yale is accepting more types of tests now. Right. And then on the other hand, if your transcript shows that you have been enrolled in several AP courses before senior year, and your application doesn't include any AP scores, we're going to wonder what's up. We know there could be lots of reasons for this. You may have just not taken the exams, but you may think that another type of exam you've submitted is a better reflection of your strength. And if that's the case, our advice is to just tell us about it. It's not that you're going to be penalized for not having those scores, but the fewer unanswered questions in an application, the better. I think that's a good segue to our next topic, which is frequently asked questions. And you know, truthfully, we don't know exactly what the most frequently asked questions are going to be because this policy is brand new. Right. We haven't gotten questions about it yet. We've got some guesses. Yeah. Yeah. And we'll have these on our website. We'll add to those questions as we start hearing new ones, you know, over and over again. All right. So Hannah, here's the first question we expect. What constitutes a good score? Are there certain scores that help an application and certain scores that hurt? Your favorite answer, of course, is it's not as simple as that. We don't necessarily spell these things out, not because we're trying to be difficult and obnoxious, believe it or not, but it's because scores are always understood contextually and in conjunction with other pieces of information in the file. It's also safe to say that Yale's applicant pool is very large and always contains many applicants whose scores are in the top ranges on these tests. Yeah, we should be honest about that. But if your scores aren't tippy top, that doesn't mean that you aren't well prepared. And it certainly doesn't mean that your application won't potentially be as compelling as others with high scores. We know that students with a very wide range of scores can succeed academically at Yale. This was true even before 2020 when we went test optional. When we admit students with scores that are lower than our typical range, it's always because we have other indicators in the application that demonstrate their academic preparedness. So we can't give you a break point on these exams at which point you should include them or exclude them. The advice we just gave you is how you should make that decision. All right, question two. My school doesn't offer AP or IV or I opted not to take AP or IV exams. What do I do? Am I doomed? Here's what you do. You apply with an ACT or an SAT score and no, you aren't doomed. Yeah. All right. You should rest assured of two things. First, the person reviewing your application is going to see and know what courses are offered in your school. So if your school doesn't offer AP or IV courses, we won't be surprised if there are no AP or IV exam scores with your application. Second, your ACT or SAT score that you submit is going to be reviewed in context. Even if that ACT or SAT score is lower than most incoming Yale students, we can still get a lot of helpful data from that score that's going to give the admissions committee confidence in your preparation. And remember, we don't have a preference of one type of exam and almost nobody will have completed all four types of tests by the time they apply, I hope. Just give us what you've got. Okay, next question. I have taken several AP exams and received mixed results. Do I have to submit all my scores? So if you are choosing to fulfill this requirement with AP scores, so you've selected AP from the list of options in Yale's testing question, then yes, otherwise no. So if you select something else on that question, like the ACT, the SAT or the IB or some combination of those, you aren't required to submit all of your AP scores. But generally speaking, our advice is to to submit scores from all the AP exams you've taken. Especially if your transcript shows that you were enrolled in classes with the AP title. Otherwise, you're just kind of begging the question, how did they do in that AP exam? Remember, you will have the chance to give us any details you want about your testing experience. That would include, I didn't sit for this exam and you should know that. Or I took this exam but didn't feel prepared for this reason. Use that space, that's gonna be more helpful than just kind of leaving that out of your application entirely. - Okay, question four. Do I need a certain number of AP or IB exams or certain types of AP or IB exams to use those instead of the ACT or SAT? - Nope. If you have only taken one AP exam or one IB exam, you can use that score to fulfill Yale's requirement. Remember, we just went through four years of evaluating tens of thousands of applications that didn't have any scores at all. We are comfortable operating with different types of limited information. But keep a few things in mind. First, as we said, if you've taken more than one AP or IB exam, you can't just off to submit one score and omit the others. Also, bear in mind, different subject exams are gonna tell us different information about an applicant. For example, if you are a native Italian speaker and you fulfill Yale's testing requirement with a five that you got on the AP Italian exam that you just took on your own, yes, you've technically met a requirement, but practically you haven't added a whole lot of information to your file. - Right, and then similarly, if your whole application focuses on how you want to major in applied mathematics and your application only includes an IB literature score, I think you may have missed an opportunity to bolster your case that you're well prepared for applied math. - Right, with both those examples, there may very well be lots of other information in your application that helps the admissions committee get what they need to understand your strengths. We're not gonna be dependent on those other scores per se. And that's one of the reasons why we're providing flexibility, but you want to use that flexibility to your advantage to try to advance your case, not just meet a minimum requirement. - So question five, which is sort of related is are certain types of subject exams better or more valuable than others? - Yeah, nuanced answer here. - Categorically, no, but for individual applicants, yes. Okay, so first, remember that rule, if you've taken an APR IB exam, you should include the result. We don't expect though that most students have had a ton of choice when it comes to their APR IB classes or exams. So you shouldn't spend a bunch of energy trying to devise a strategy starting in ninth grade for engineering and application with the perfect range of scores on these subject exams. - Yeah, in our experience, most applicants to Yale from most high schools have a relatively narrow set of options for courses when they are pursuing that school's most rigorous curriculum, right? And that's gonna mean that the APR IB courses and exams you've taken before senior year will probably say more about your high school than about your own personal interests or strengths. - And remember, we are going to review your transcript and your testing together. And we're hoping to get the confidence that you are well prepared for any of the majors you are considering and that you're going to be comfortable in Yale's distributional requirements we talked about earlier. So testing can help to fill in some gaps in a transcript and a transcript and help fill in details where we don't have testing. - And exams in subjects that aren't related to any field of study offered at Yale for undergraduates like IB Business Management or exams and languages that you've spoken since birth, those just aren't gonna do much to add something new to the conversation. - Hannah, we did it. - Yay. - That was a lot. We just talked through the details of our brand new test flexible policy. This is a policy we've never had before but we're excited about it. - One of the reasons we're most excited is we think it's the best way to help applicants put their best foot forward in the application process without inadvertently withholding evidence that could help the admissions committee. - Yeah, we also think it's going to help admissions officers like Hannah and me identify talented and promising students from all kinds of different backgrounds and high school contexts. - Remember, and this is why it's so hard for us to spend so much time talking about standardized tests because you are so much more interesting than your test scores and your application is going to include many, many, many ways other than test scores to showcase your strengths, your interests, your personality, while you'd add to the Yale community, we've recorded 37 other podcast episodes about all of those things. - Right, and remember, we admissions officers, we like our jobs because they involve a lot more critical thinking and interesting work than just lining up students by their test scores. - So if you've listened to all of this and you're still thinking, what? You should check out admissions.jl.edu/standardizedtests to learn more about the policy and see additional FAQs. - And if you've listened to all of this and you're wondering either, wow, how did those wise people come up with such an innovative policy? - Wishful thinking. - Or you're maybe wondering, how did those dummies cook up this nonsense? We're gonna tell you all about it in our next episode, part three, how we got here. - Yeah, and if you have been a listener and a fan from the beginning and you've been waiting for an episode where we talk about what test scores mean in our process, we've finally recorded that episode that was part one of our series, The Big Picture. And remember, you can hear us go down a crazy rabbit hole explaining how to pick a star, major league baseball pitcher and how that sort of likes standardized testing in our bonus episode. - Thanks as always to former admissions officer, Andrew Brick Johnson, who composes our music. You should check them out at gingerbrickjonson.com. - If you have comments or an idea for an episode, drop us a line at Yale [email protected]. And finally, remember that the views expressed in this podcast are ours and don't necessarily represent those of Yale University.