I worked in Admissions at a large state school from 2005-2007. Our method for determining admissibility reminded me of the heat map chart in this article - ie GPA on one axis, SAT/ACT score on the another axis, trace your finger along both paths to see if the applicant was in or out.
I probably reviewed 20-30 applications a day. If high school transcripts were universally formatted, decisions could have been instantaneous but alas, we live in the real world and some human-in-the-loop normalizing had to be done over-and-over.
With all that reviewing, patterns emerged, namely that SAT and ACT scores strongly correlate to GPA. Now, I’m the kind of person that roots for the genius to overcome his grades and emerge a genius on the SAT/ACT. But in two years, it probably happened only twice. Before calculating a normalized GPA, I could look at the test scores and predict “admit” or “deny”.
While the author is correct to say “the irrelevance of test scores is greatly exaggerated”, in my experience, whether or not something is irrelevant has very little to do with what universities do.
I’d recommend only using test scores. Or, only go with GPAs. Only test scores is more efficient. Only GPAs looks better on press releases.
I probably reviewed 20-30 applications a day. If high school transcripts were universally formatted, decisions could have been instantaneous but alas, we live in the real world and some human-in-the-loop normalizing had to be done over-and-over.
With all that reviewing, patterns emerged, namely that SAT and ACT scores strongly correlate to GPA. Now, I’m the kind of person that roots for the genius to overcome his grades and emerge a genius on the SAT/ACT. But in two years, it probably happened only twice. Before calculating a normalized GPA, I could look at the test scores and predict “admit” or “deny”.
While the author is correct to say “the irrelevance of test scores is greatly exaggerated”, in my experience, whether or not something is irrelevant has very little to do with what universities do.
I’d recommend only using test scores. Or, only go with GPAs. Only test scores is more efficient. Only GPAs looks better on press releases.