001okay it usually takes a couple minutes for folks to roll in um so as folks arrive we're just going to give it a couple minutes at some point i'll start to see a little eyeball icon that tells me how many people are watching and once we have a solid group probably after about um like three minutes i will hand it off to you all so are we all going to go around and like introduce ourselves first and then get into our little spiels and do certain people want to cover certain topics i think that that would be good just so folks know we are live now okay do we want to just go in alpha order since it seems to be separated that way no it's not let's just introduction's enough what i think works
002all right and i can already see seven people have logged in hi everyone we're just taking a couple minutes while things get started to um help a couple other folks log in but we'll get started in just a moment i hope everyone has had a chance to go get outside for at least a couple minutes on this beautiful day i don't know if it's beautiful everywhere but here in amherst it is gorgeous outside it's like a nice like 70 degrees and the sun is shining with like a nice cool fall breeze i was personally jam-packed today but like right before all of this happened i just finished two back-to-back meets with students and i went outside for a total of four minutes sat on the bench outside and did a little meditation and that was
003nice i if we're gonna talk about our little afternoon walks um i live in philadelphia which is near bryn mawr um and m night shyamalan films all his movies and shows like in the philly area and three blocks for me they've turned the entire block into a winter wonderland for his new show servant and so there was snow for like an entire block and like christmas decorations and wreaths and it was really really cool i've lived in the city for a few years since the first time like something like that has happened that's awesome it's gonna give it like 20 more seconds and that the three minute mark we'll we'll get started oh we lost someone all right so um hello to our viewers students and parents i assume um uh i'm miss gary if
004we haven't met yet i'm the guidance office secretary here at the high school those of you who are familiar with the high school can see i'm at the high school you can see by our beautiful windows behind me and yeah so we are hanging out talking about test optional and test blind admissions today with the with all the new um things happening in our world today um that is one of the things more and more colleges are working towards so i'm going to hand it over to these amazing college admission panelists to talk a little bit about the project i will be here i will not be streaming um i'm a room moderator so as questions come up i'll be in the chat and can pop in if needed i'm gonna hand it over to
005these folks awesome well i'm jocelyn i'm an admissions counselor from nc state university um we're located in raleigh north carolina hi everyone thanks so much for tuning in uh my name is jack baer i'm an assistant director of admissions at the university of chicago which to the surprise of no one is in chicago illinois hey everybody my name is hannah brockhart i use she her pronouns i'm an associate director of admission at bryn mawr college which is located in suburban philadelphia in case you were here in time to hear me tell my philly story just a moment ago um i'm excited to chat with everybody today hi everyone my name is courtney sear i am senior associate dean of admission at hofstra university which is located on long island just about half an hour outside
006of new york city but i am actually located up in massachusetts so i'm a regional representative so i am up on the north shore of massachusetts not too far from you guys who are tuning in today good afternoon everyone my name is ray vaughan i'm a senior assistant director of admissions and coordinator of multicultural recruitment at muhlenberg college located in allentown pennsylvania um we are pennsylvania's third largest city we're an hour north of philadelphia an hour and a half south of new york city and exactly four and a half hours away from your high school um so if you ever come to millenberg and you're craving a cheesesteak like i said an hour north of philly if you wanna ever wanna go hang out in new york we're an hour and a half away from
007new york um and if you ever come to campus and you wanna get away from campus for a little bit 15 minutes away from campus is downtown allentown fantastic uh yeah fantastic so um we're all gonna kind of uh take turns kind of presenting on a number of things that will hopefully address this question of you know now that many institutions have adopted test optional or test blind policies what does holistic admissions look like and how can you best position yourself kind of in the admissions process so before we're kind of even going forward it's probably helpful just to kind of define this term holistic admissions um and if anyone has attended probably any type of admissions visit uh admissions session or program you've probably heard this term before um but essentially holistic admissions means
008um that um offices will take everything an admissions reader will take everything that you submit in your application so including you know your actual application your transcript your letters of recommendation your essays any supplemental material you may submit um and really we take everything into account and really kind of create an image of you as both a scholar and as a community member and then based upon those images we really kind of render an admissions decision um that makes the most sense for you as an applicant and also makes the most sense for us as an institution with the many priorities that we're always trying to we're always trying to manage um so it's it's a very intentional process it's a really kind of um rigorous um rigorous process you know oftentimes many admissions officers
009will touch every piece of your application multiple times just because we want to ensure that you know we are once again rendering an emission decision that makes the most sense for all parties involved and what's really nice about holistic admissions is that it is kind of custom built for kind of the times that we're living in it's really context is is king and is paramount in our process and we're always trying to contextualize um the information that students present to us within kind of their environment and within their specific circumstances so um you know even in non-coveted years we're very much kind of um all trained to kind of understand what students what what students can bring to the bring to our campuses and kind of what they've kind of the environment in which they've
010spent their time in high school so we are just quite going to kind of continue to take that into account this year um so you know we do we fully understand that covet has really kind of upended basically every facet of students families lives and certainly even in our lives in admission we've kind of all been forced to kind of critically think about our policies um and so we we fully understand that so many things have been disrupted you know um classes have been moved virtually um you know in some instances greeting has been uh grading scales have been changed um extracurriculars have likely all but stopped um so we are fully aware of kind of the uh the many obstacles that students are are kind of facing and we're fully prepared and ready to
011kind of take all of that into account into the admissions process um the one piece that i didn't mention that we know has certainly been impacted is testing we know many of you have spent uh you know years thinking about tests like the act the sat the sat subject test and you spent kind of probably many hours many weeks preparing for them um and we know the hurdles to taking a test right now are just incredible we know testing sites are being uh closed uh closed down um students are if they've had a test they're having problems taking uh maybe taking an additional time to get a higher score that they think they can get so um we know that um you know students are really kind of struggling to get to get a score
012in the first place for a score that they really think is representative of their their intellectual ability so um i i don't mean to speak on behalf of all colleges or even on behalf of all of my colleagues who are in this panel but i think one of the first things to note is that for those schools that have adopted test blind um and test optional policies which i'll kind of talk about in a little bit um you are not disadvantaged if you choose not to submit testing um and i know you've likely heard that from your guidance counselors your school counselors um maybe other people but we are going to fully support and endorse that message um you know we don't want you to um you know have to drive to another state or
013have you know put yourself in an uncomfortable situation um just to take a test so um that's why many colleges and universities have adopted these policies because we know that um you know a sometimes tests are always a good indication of who you'll be in the classroom um and then beyond that you know once again there's just incredible hurdles to taking tests this year so um please kind of hopefully that can be a helpful lens as we kind of go through this next hour together um before i kind of turn it over i'll just kind of define test optional and test blind policies because they're a little bit different um test optional policies a test optional policy essentially says that a student can choose to submit testing as part of their application to a specific
014institution um but there it is not required so it's not a required piece like a transcript or two teachers a lot of recommendation at uchicago or or two two supplemental essays these things that we need to have in order to render an admissions decision um so it's completely up to you whether you um you know you have a score and you'd like to submit it or not um test blind um policies are a little bit different so those are institutions that um have policies that say um if you choose to even if you choose to submit testing um they will not take it into account so um essentially they've removed it as a as an application uh metric um from all applicants files so um that's it just kind of functions a little bit differently
015than a test optional policy um but many some schools are adopting that as well so um in absence of testing um you know once again you won't be disadvantaged but there are other pieces to your application that will be kind of helpful indicators of who you'll be in the classroom and as a community member and those things just become really important um they were important before and they remain important now so those things include transcripts uh letters of recommendation your essays your extracurriculars as well as supplemental materials so um i'll turn it over to my uh colleagues to kind of um hopefully unpack each one of those and and kind of hopefully give you guys guidance on how you can um kind of position yourself really favorably in those pieces of the application go ahead
016raven i saw you on me thank you for that um and for the students you know i'm happy to have the opportunity to chat with you today and i'd like to thank your high school for organizing this and allowing myself and other members of the admissions world to come and talk to you about the college search process um as my colleague from uchicago mentioned you know test optional um is not something that you should be concerned about or you know not having access to the sat or ict there have been a number of schools who have who have adopted the test optional approach for years now some schools are um joining the party rather recently as a result as a result of kovid uh muellenberg specifically we've been test optional for 25 years now and
017we typically admit uh we have an applicant pool of about a quarter of students that are proud of muhlenberg test optionally and then we actually enroll close to under 30 percent of students who apply to millenberg testosterone as matriculants that information is out there for you so if you have concerns about you know applying to schools that say hey we're test optional we're test blind or um some of the verb is just flying around um look up the schools they're they're required to report these statistics to you so um you know the data's out there the information is out there that's not something that you should be concerned about or anything like that and then um i know for muhlenberg specifically due to some of the restraints that or the restrictions that students have had
018um for the sat or act um starting this year um some of the different merit opportunities that we've had that required to submit test scores we've removed that requirement and now um for some of the more competitive opportunities by simply submitting an application those are going to be the things that you're going to be able to do to make yourself eligible for merit scholarships or some of our more competitive merit opportunities i know a number of schools are also moving to policies like that um just because again students haven't had the opportunity to look at the sat or act or rather take the essay to your act a number of times to either improve your score have a score flat out some of the ways that colleges are kind of finding ways to work around
019students not having their test scores is through the demonstrated interest piece we're having an opportunity to chat with you so at muhlenberg specifically we offer an opportunity and we encourage students through each application cycle to come and meet with us uh interview with us everything is obviously gonna be virtual this year so unfortunately you're going to be on zoom for another 45 minutes or so um but you know really get to know the colleges that you're applying to just as much as we as you want to get to know us through the virtual information sessions you've been sitting in on the pamphlets that you get in the mail probably every other day at this point um we eager we just as eagerly want to get to know you um especially at a place like mielenberg
020where you know we strive off having a strong community on our campus and the only way we can do that is by getting a sense of the students that we're admitting to our class each year so um whether you don't have test scores or you want to have supplemental pieces added to your application those are going to be all the things that we consider as we're looking at your application holistically so each year i have students who send me youtube links to their youtube channels or ebay stores or things like that um that's part of the holistic review we're going to look at anything and everything that you want us to consider as part of your application so then that way we're able to get a better sense of who you are um and a
021better understanding of some of the different things that you're going to bring to our campus um that we typically wouldn't get how we just said we're going to look at the transcript we're going to look at test scores and recommendations and make an admissions decision based off that um part of the holistic approach is looking at everything that the student has to bring to the table and you know if you had a dip in your sophomore year maybe those are some of the things that you want to discuss in your interview with somebody on our business staff or um just simply send us an email and say hey do the covet i had to pick up another job because i had to pick up a job because unfortunately mom got laid off her dad got
022laid off we understand that these are experiences that you know our students are dealing with then it would be it wouldn't be in our favor to not be understanding of these different circumstances so by you letting us know and making us aware of these different things are ways that you can not only help yourself as you're going through the admissions process but also notify us of some of the different things that you maybe have experienced and why we might see peaks and flows um in your your transcript as we're looking at your your transcript to review your your academic credentials and things like that i want to echo what rayvon and jack have both said about not only holistic admissions but you know testing and dealing with covet i think the most important thing to
023remember is that colleges are in this with you you know we're dealing with the same struggles it's just kind of the opposite side of the coin and i think that again i don't want to speak on behalf of everyone but i'm assuming everyone at least at this panel um their institutions are incredibly understanding um and are using this holistic process to not only get to know the students but to really understand where you're coming from um bryn mawr has been testosterone we've been test optional for about four or five years um and it's something that has worked really well for us and for our students um you know even before coronavirus there's a lot of research out there that shows that testing isn't always a great indicator of your ability ability to succeed at the
024college level there are a lot of other variables that are linked to high sat and act scores that don't necessarily measure aptitude or intelligence and so by using a holistic review process we really are able to get a better sense of who you are as a student and i know that all of our schools are very concerned with community and building community and making sure that you are a good fit for our institutions i want to take a little bit of a deeper dive into some of these um other application components that we've all mentioned i want to start with the transcript because again this is speaking from bryn mawr's perspective the transcript is the biggest part of our application review regardless of whether or not you're submitting testing anyway so if you do submit
025testing that's fine it's the last thing that we review and it really holds the lowest amount of weight in our review process because like i've said research shows it's not the most reliable form for us to figure out what whether or not you're going to do well at bryn mawr and so when we look at a transcript bryn mawr specifically you know we're looking for a few things um we want to see students who have engaged in rigor so if your school offers ap classes or honors track or anything like that taking advantage of those classes engaging in a well-rounded curriculum you know i know senior year can be hard because you're done with all your main requirements and you want to take a lot of fun electives which is great um but at higher
026selective schools it's really important to see students that are engaging in math science and foreign language for all four years um it's not a requirement like those aren't minimums but it's a preference that we like to see um and then raven kind of alluded to this but you know being able to see students succeed across four years or if you do have dips or challenges finding ways to address them so whether that's through an interview the additional information section on the common app or coalition application or even through a teacher recommendation or guidance counselor recommendation you know things happen in life um we don't it's really hard to be a straight a student for all four years and that's obviously not the norm especially during times like this i also know of lots of schools
027that are going past fail for a semester or uh they're letting students you know rearrange their schedules later into the semester again that's totally fine the more information you give us the better it is so we can get a full picture of uh the circumstances you're in or the specific environment you're in um so i don't want to take up all ever all the time so i would say transcripts are a huge part of the review but definitely not the only part of the review and i'll leave it to my colleagues to kind of fill in the blanks oh i can go all right so um i will say just kind of to add on to what everybody is saying um we're not expecting you to submit scores we definitely don't want you to go
028out of your way and put yourself in an uncomfortable situation and if you don't already have those test scores but like if you already have them you can submit them if you choose to it's kind of what we're all trying to say but um for nc state specifically um i know i i kind of as everybody's talking and realizing sometimes holistic can mean different things for different universities so i would definitely encourage you to look on the university's website to see what holistic means to them and what um exactly they're looking for um because some things might be different just for example with nc state we're not looking for letters of recommendation that's not something we consider so just keep that in mind not all schools are requiring the same things but one thing that
029is different with nc state is that we are looking for interest in the major that you're applying to so not all schools are like this but nc state does admit students directly into the major that they are applying to and so you start right right into those classes right during your freshman year here at nc state so that's one of the many factors that's just i'm throwing out an example of course we're looking at your academics and your extracurriculars your essay and all of that but just wanted to throw that out there that some might have some schools might have something additional like your interest in the major or they might have letters of recommendation or demonstrated interest in the school so definitely i encourage you to look on the university website to make sure
030and see what it is that the university that you're applying to is looking for in the applicant um but yeah that's all i wanted to add and i echo everything that everybody said so far hofstra uh we've been test optional for five years as well so i thought we had longevity until i heard from rayvon which is awesome so we're really happy that that more schools are coming on board and seeing that this is a really good thing for students even outside of code i think this is going to be a lasting kind of thing in our realm so we're hoping we're hoping for that we also take a holistic review on applications of course i know we all do but something that i really wanted to delve into that i think bravon and jocelyn
031you both mentioned is demonstrated interest in the age of covid usually the way that you show demonstrated interest is by coming on a tour you know coming to meet me at your high school and this year you can't do those things so i have a lot of students reaching out to me and saying okay i want to show you that i'm interested but how do i do that this year so i think that's important to talk about as well kind of what we're looking at on our end you know for a student showing that they're interested in our in our institutions again every school does this very differently so you're going to want to reach out and ask but at least at hofstra any little touch point that you make with us counts as demonstrated
032interest on our end so that could be that you email me to ask some questions about campus you may want to set up a phone call right um it could be that you come to one of my zoom visits at your high school or you're attending this event right now this could count right um it could be that you're coming on a virtual tour or something like that as well so make sure that you're searching everybody's website seeing what they have to offer take advantage of those virtual tours fill out those inquiry forms it all counts toward that demonstrated interest in the same way that it would have if you were visiting campus in the past uh this year is definitely different when it comes to demonstrated interest at least on our end uh so
033we are looking more so at you know what students are reaching out to me do they care to talk to me about hofstra rather than are they making the drive to come see campus you know so it's a little bit different this year than it used to be um and i think the same thing goes for extracurriculars i know your resumes probably look a little bit weird for this year for lack of a better word a lot of students have their their soccer schedules being cancelled because of covid and they're not able to be in the school production because of it um so this year i'm seeing i'm seeing some kind of fun things on student resumes you know like during quarantine i learned how to bake cupcakes and i'm the best cupcake baker in
034massachusetts right now you know so you can brag about those hobbies those fun things as well just bring your personality to the application you know we want to learn more about you how your student leader if you care about your community what you're going to bring to our community that's what really really matters as part of that holistic review so yes your high school stuff is the most important but outside of that show us who you are as a person and what you're going to bring to our institution and bring to our campus as well it looks like it looks like we just have one question and i don't know if anyone here can actually it says for schools that are recently test optional how has your admissions process changed again brynner's been doing this
035for five years so nothing has changed for us really this year but i don't know if anybody else wants to add their experience sure so it seems like everyone has some a number of years under their belt it seems here which is fantastic um chicago this is our third admission cycle being test optional so we're not entirely new to it um though we're newish i guess you could say um but to kind of echo what hannah said and you'll probably get a similar response from other schools um our admissions process hasn't really changed um so um you know if students choose to not submit testing um just as they could have done in years past they won't be disadvantaged um in our process so um things will things won't really change i can touch on
036that a little bit because actually nc state this is our first year being test optional so we are definitely new to it um but like everyone is saying it's not going to change our like admissions process at all or review process at all um because it is holistic so we have in the year years past always looked at many different factors like we've been talking about so we are looking at the academics major interests extracurriculars your background your essay all of that and so if you have scores or if you don't it doesn't really make a difference on our end because we are looking at all the other factors um so yeah it's new to us just like it is new to all of you students um but we're all going to learn together and
037just really quick i'm going to chime in for the students literally and i don't know what other what's what uh crms you what the other schools are using but at mueller we use slate i don't know what you all use um but for the students literally when you when we're reading the application we take maybe all of two seconds to look at the test scores and it's literally just to add this the reading and the math section and it spits out a number for us in some cases in other cases we have to manually okay this is this this is that and added together on our own um you know that's not something that most schools spend a tremendous amount of time on um and i just really quickly want to dispel the notion that
038you know by you applying testosterone or by school being test optional that does not you know make it any less rigorous or anything like that colleges are understanding of the fact that you know covid is is impacting you all is the ability to take exams so um i'm the regional representative or rather i travel travel uh to new england for my recruitment travel each year and in conversations with counselors um i had a conversation with a counselor in early september this was back when we were under the mandatory 14-day quarantine period uh he has a test taken side up in vermont and he had students that were driving up from new jersey pennsylvania new york to take the s.a.t and he ultimately had to shut the shut the test taking site down and you know
039that that's a to college is just like that's ridiculous like there there's there's no need for you to drive five or six hours to take an exam on a random saturday morning so you know i i say that to just let you know that again just because you're applying to a school that's test optional or you know a school has a test optional policy that does not make it any less rigorous than some of the schools that aren't um test option or anything like that um given kovit everyone is understanding um of the different circumstances that you all are dealing with um and that's again just not something that i want to be in the front work of your your college search process so this school's test options so they're less rigorous you'll be afforded
040some of the same opportunities if not the same opportunities at any school that you're going to be applying to whether they're test lapses or not to echo that i can take that one step further as well we've we've studied our test optional applicants over the past five years to see kind of how they do on our campus and we've actually found that our test optional students retain so retention means they come back year after year they retain at a better rate than our test sending students and many of them are performing even better in their classes than our test sending students did so it's to the point where we know that test optional students are just as hardworking if not harder working than our test sending students um so it's certainly not an indicator of
041rigor or anything like that feel free to put questions in the in the comments section uh it seems that uh there's there uh it seems like a great place if you have questions for you to pose them to us uh and i think it's really nice that we're all kind of representative of many different types of institutions um so i'm hopefully comforting that you're kind of hearing the same language and the same kind of perspectives um uh looks like we have a question um uh i'm uh i uh so uh looks like it's coming from sylvia i'm a junior and i don't know what testing will be like next year if all the schools i apply to are test optional should i still take the sat i don't know if i actually have a right
042answer i don't think there's a right or wrong answer to this um you know if you have a an entire list of just test optional institutions which if um institutions kind of continue on with the policies that they've adopted this year to next year which could be probable um uh you know it's it's completely up to you um you know if you if you want to give it a go and you have the ability to take a test um you know you can certainly do that um you know and i think what's really nice is that you know for those students who choose not to submit and this is specific to chicago but for those students who choose to not submit testing you know once again you're not disadvantaged in our process but if you
043do submit testing and it is kind of within range of what typically admitted students um well we'll have submitted in years past it does have the opera it does have the kind of ability to in some ways significantly impact your admissions decision favorably um so you know it's really kind of up to you um you won't be disadvantaged but if you feel as though you perhaps could uh you know uh get a score that you think is really strong and reflective of your ability in the classroom um it can really kind of be so supportive of you and your candidacy so um i don't think there's once again there's not a right or wrong answer but definitely something to think about and also enter into conversation with about um with you know with your with
044your school counselors and your family yeah just just to kind of piggyback off that sylvia i don't know where you are in your college search process if you have a list or your kind of have a skeleton list um the school that you're considering look to see what their test taking policies are so if you find that you know there are schools that you're looking at that still require you to submit test scores maybe it might be your benefit to take the sat if it's possible um no one knows at this point in time you know next spring or hopefully in january everything might be back to normal hopefully so we might be able to return to a normal life but in the event that we're crossing our fingers in the event that we're not
045able to do that you could predict that some colleges will continue on the test option route um but then there are other col there are some colleges that also tie merit decisions to access to the sat or act and having those test scores made available so if you find that you're looking at a school that still requires you to submit an sat or an act in order to be eligible for merit scholarships maybe it might be to your benefit to take the sat again if it's available um like i said with muellberg we made adjustments to our honors programs since students don't have opportunities to take the sat or act but that's not something that all schools may be in the position to do so um again you just want to look at the different
046schools that you're applying to and get a sense of what their test taking policies and approaches before making any decision on whether or not you should take the sat or you shouldn't take the sat and then it looks like we have another question in the chat they're actually flown in right now um well other parts of the application have more weight um you may have already spoken to this um we all i think just in listening everybody talk uh we all agree that we look at applications holistically um so for starters your transcript is going to be something that we all look at rather heavily just because we want to make sure that we're admitting you to our institutions and you're able to do the work and your transcript is going to give us some
047insight into your ability to do the work out each of our academically reverse institutions so you we want to make sure that that's something that we're paying attention to and then we're also going to look at uh in most of our cases i think nc states that they don't require recommendations um but we're going to look at recommendations activities so on and so forth um youtube links if you want to send it to us part of the holistic approach is looking at anything the student has to bring to the table and if anybody wants to chime in that was so eloquently put i don't know if we can even add to that it looks like we have another question from grant uh do your schools have a formula that you use to weigh different parts
048of the application or does it vary from application application um i think this is school specific um for muhlenberg we do recalculate the gpa and as my colleague hannah said we do look to see that over the course of your four-year college trajectory that you are taking uh five course subjects each academic year so math the science english history and a foreign language um if you get to your senior year and you're like ray bonnie you just don't like math you can totally drop a math class and our hope and expectations that you're then going to pick up a fifth course that is going to kind of tie into whatever it is you're thinking about majoring in we don't want to see you in your senior year picking up another gym class or um knitting
049or whatever it is the the different classes you all might be taking but um part of our process that we look at differently is just the the gpa because because we do recalculate it and that should just allow us to get a core uh view of your your transcript taking out the classes that aren't going to give us real insight into how you're going to perform academically at our institution yeah and also you know i can speak from the chicago perspective and i know this is probably the case at other institutions as well but um you know everything is you know the transcript is most important certainly um you know in our in our applicant pool um you know typically you chicago receives around 35 000 applications each year and we're typically admitting around 2000
050students um and you know in that applicant pool about 80 of our students are perfectly academically admissible so they have testing within range of what we would typically admit we have no doubt that they could be very successful in our core curriculum at uchicago and kind of you know um you know thrive intellectually on in the college um so in in that kind of context um everything else does become really important because it really does help us to suss out those students who are really who have knowledge of us who are excited about us and then also who are really great fits for us um so in kind of in in that pool um you know then things become really important things like letters of recommendation which we do require um things like our supplemental
051our our essays um chicago has one we we require students to complete the personal essay in the common application of the coalition application and then in addition to that we have two supplemental essays that we ask students to complete so those um those pieces are really helpful in helping the admissions officers um or help the candidate rather kind of elevate themselves above just other seemingly really competitive strong strong applicants i think oh sorry go go for courtney i always like to remind students too that we at least at hofstra we're looking at your application on its own we're never looking at you know student x's essay versus student wise essaying comparing the two of them next to each other we're looking at your application on its own meaning that some things on your app may
052carry more weight on yours than student-wise carries on theirs you know maybe you're stronger in leadership kind of realms whereas the other student might be more strong in academics right so we're looking at you within the realm of your application not necessarily comparing students against each other in that way i was going to say something very similar so i think we can just move on to the next uh question which says the uc system has explicitly said that the sat and act is biased our college admissions office is making statements about how they view standardized tests or is covet primarily driving this change um i would say bryn mawr has not made any sort of official statement about how we feel about the s.a.t and ect a few years ago when we did make the
053move to be test optional i think a lot of that was grounded in the research that shows that the s8 and act aren't necessarily a good indicator of student success and that there is a lot of other variables especially around socioeconomic status of the student you know a lot of factors that are out of the students control when it comes to testing i think that's where our decision was really grounded again we did not make a statement similar to what you see did but um we definitely had this push before covid and i think covet has really just amplified the disparities in our country and you know internationally for folks not only access to testing but you know ability to do well on these tests yeah i wasn't alive when mielenberg all right i wasn't
054going through the college search process rather excuse me when muhlenberg was going through their transition to being test optional like i said earlier we've been test option for 25 years now so i think by our recognition of the you know being test option for that long while we haven't recently made a statement or anything like that i think just our approach with test optional kind of says for itself that we understand the discrepancies that waking up on a random saturday morning um to take a an exam at a random high school probably i know when i took my s.a.t i'm from the bronx new york originally and the school that i had to go to was actually on the opposite side of the bronx um so we we understand that there are a number of
055different things that factor into a student's ability to score um in a certain percentile on the sat so that's one of the reasons why we've had the approach that we've had um as far as being test optional for as long as we've been test optional so while we haven't made an official statement what's kind of implied doesn't always need to be said i guess yeah and i can say for nc state since this is kind of a little bit newer for us we have not made an official statement either i do believe a lot of the reason that we have gone test optional is because of covid and because we know so many students haven't been able to go out and take those exams um so we just wanted to be more accessible for students
056this also is a decision that's made by the unc system and so we are a public school in north carolina so we don't get to make all of our own decisions since we're kind of a part of a greater organization within the unc system and so they decided that we were gonna go test optional um maybe a little bit later than we wanted them to um but you know that's ultimately up to them um and so they made the decision to go test optional for this upcoming application cycle and that's all that they've given us so far they haven't told us if we're going to continue being test optional in the future so like they were mentioning before definitely look into the university website and see if they are going to resume requiring test scores
057or if they're going to stay test optional because i can say for nc state i don't know i know that we're test optional for 2021 um applicants but i don't know any further than that so definitely check in with the university to see if they are going to continue with that test optional policy put those questions in the chat everyone out there any other questions just to be clear the questions don't have to be specific to the sat or act you can ask us questions about what are the perks of doing an interview um what are the perks or what are some ways we can engage with your school you have five wonderful admissions experts here that you know can give you information specific to their institutions but also some of the institutions that you
058might be thinking about applying to um i'm pretty sure i know i didn't go to mueller as an undergrad so you not only have the employment experience but you also have the undergraduate experience that each of us can bring to the table so no questions are off the table feel free to ask i'll just kind of i i think kind of this um well while while you're all kind of brainstorming those fantastic questions um i know i think kind of also opportunity while we've talked about you know many different types of things that you can you can and you should be submitting as part of your application um i think um also and i think rayvon kind of talked about this nicely but i'd just like to emphasize that it can be really helpful um
059is kind of all of these supplemental materials that you can be submitting as part of your application um so you know when we think about supplemental materials important from the outset really kind of emphasize that these are almost all optional almost all always they're optional so and you know most of the time as especially in covid um you know when schools when institutions say something is optional it is really truly optional so um you know please always you know uh take that into account but supplemental materials um can there's there's kind of a beautiful variety of what you can submit um you know at uchicago we encourage students to submit things like uh business proposals or abstracts or research that they've engaged with or any number of things music supplements art supplements um uchicago offers
060its students the opportunity to submit a two-minute optional video which is actually in lieu of admission interviews which we stopped offering around two years ago largely from from from an access standpoint it was just interviews are not incredibly uh accessible for many students so that's why we kind of give students the opportunity to kind of submit a two-minute optional video um but that can be a great way that students can kind of show us in real time something that we might already know um something that you know the the uh something that we don't know yet that the student thinks is really important in their application and i've had students you know submit really kind of interesting interesting videos um you know i've had students you know submit full-fledged uh music videos which have been
061both incredibly uh impressive and overwhelming in their enthusiasm for the university of chicago i've had a student who was one of eight siblings and he had in his two minute video he invited he uh introduced me to all seven of his siblings which was delightful um so um you know get creative in this year where perhaps you are anxious about not submitting a test think about those other things that you know we don't explicitly ask for but we all really kind of give you most institutions give you the opportunity to kind of to kind of submit um uh in your application um there was uh specific question you should congratulate i can just answer really quickly um how does you chicago attract demonstrated interest good question um we do we don't unfortunately track demonstrated interest
062so any touch point you have with the university um whether that be attending an information session taking a campus tour um coming here today it's really kind of for your own exploration of the college so um we don't we don't take it into consideration um but please take advantage of them hopefully taking advantage of both in person and when we offer in-person and virtual opportunities um will give you a better sense of the university um of chicago as well as every other school you're probably interested in um there's a question um anyone anyone want to add to that i don't know if anyone has anything to add no cool uh question um is a passing ap score going to give me direct credit for the equivalent class so this is a great question this is
063largely very institution specific um so every university college has a different kind of equivalency or conversion chart for ap classes or ib classes um so i would just encourage you to look at the specific schools to which you're applying um and they'll they tend to be pretty kind of clear with what classes will transfer um you know what score you need on the ap um ap exam for those classes or for you to get course credit for it um but at us chicago typically we we award credit um we we do give uh course credit for ap classes um and typically um with some small exception students will typically need a five on the exam but once again depends upon the institution i would like to add to this because i know that the original
064theme of this presentation was about being test optional or test blind um i don't know if this is the case for everybody else here but at bryn mawr being test optional means that you can also be test flexible so if you don't want to submit your sat or at act scores but you do want to submit ap scores because you're proud of them or you feel like they really represent you as a student you can submit ap scores instead of an sat score or in addition to an sat score it's totally up to you i always say that i see applications where a student submits literally every standardized test they've ever taken and then i see students who have like here's my a push score like just the one um and that's fine you know
065i will look at it and i'll review it but it's totally up to you so regardless of how we award credit you might still want to submit it just as a test score in general all right so we are we just have about two minutes left so i just want to thank our panelists for being here and giving us such great insight into the college admissions process especially in this age of so much test optional test blind newness i think we had a great range of folks here from you know test optional for 25 years to test optional for the first time um i think you know you all have been fantastic and i want to reach out to the students and the parents and say if you have further questions about sats test scores
066anything at arhs feel free to reach out to me miss garrity or to mscuffygray if you have questions for our panelists if you're interested in learning more about their college more about their expectations for test scores um or just are interested in doing demonstrated interests definitely reach out to me i have everyone's contact info i definitely keep an eye out on those like college visits in naviance and attend ones that you are interested in any last thoughts from any of our panelists just wanted oh god you beat me today um just want to share with the the students and the families that are on the call um don't let the call search process stress you out i can speak for all my colleagues on the call we're not here to stress you out you know
067enjoy your senior year enjoy you know everything that being a high school student uh entails and enjoy the college search process while it's a little unusual this year there are ways that you can still engage with the different colleges that you're looking at um i know i knew it feels like we're doing a virtual session every night right now um and i'm sure my colleagues on the call as well are doing virtual sessions and finding ways to you know meet you where you are so engage with us interact with us as frequently as you'd like um and we're here to help you know so if there's anything that we can do to be of service to you all um since you all keep the food on our table and our lights on in our apartments
068and food in our cats and dogs bellies um feel free to reach out to us let us know we can do to help all right well i'm going to end our broadcast but um it was great to see you all and have a great lovely rest of your day