Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion How selective colleges view homeschoolers

I'm thinking that the answer from Pomona wasn't much better:


Yeah, well-- beyond common sense that is almost the worst advice EVER.

There's an entire professional INDUSTRY built around that very thing, in case Poch hasn't noticed... and even the pros who make this their profession have enough trouble accomplishing that task over the long haul. Sheesh.

The entire purpose in homeschooling for most people is to garner a superior education, and to worry LESS about rubrics and benchmarks.

I thought that the second of those questions was, truthfully, a lot more thoughtful than any of the answers-- barring perhaps TX.

You want to be a little careful about this if you are aiming for top colleges. A few colleges require EVERY score to be sent if the test was taken. And the curve is quite steep on the subject tests, I think (so you might think that 700 on Math II is just fine, but in fact it would be 52nd percentile in 2012). So you want to be careful that your kid has not just taken the class, but studied for the test and taken some practice tests with decent scores before they take a SAT II. You don't want your kid showing a bunch of retakes on the tests and some low scores that are never retaken for those schools that require all scores.

Just as an aside, for whatever reason my kid always had trouble scoring well on the Biology test. Maybe because there is so darned much material in Bio...

... and DD scores VERY well on that one (both E and M) and on SAT Lit, but struggles with all of CB's math tests. The ACT math, she's golden with...

Anyway. I think what that demonstrates, actually, is that those tests don't always measure what they supposedly measure. I'm pretty sure that there aren't really major differences in the level of subject competence for my DD and intparent's DD in Biology, for example. I'm assuming that both young women have excellent mastery of that material. It's just that for whatever reason, my DD can get "inside" the subject test on that one, and her DD finds that challenging. That isn't necessarily about the subject itself.

Same with math. My DD has a lot of trouble with the CB format and style of questions.

That raises a lot of concerns in my mind, though-- kids with conventional schooling have a way to demonstrate "kid who doesn't test as well as s/he should" but homeschooled students may not. That really doesn't seem right.

ooh, that's really tricky. The whole meta-skill package of dealing with idiopathic testing and teaching. Additionally is test taking savvy. Those both kind of have some real implications of skill transition from home school to college success.

Yes, but testing isn't the SOLE means of evaluation in many situations in college settings, and even so, college assessments are so UNLIKE anything ACT or CB put together.

I'm astonished that they have any predictive value whatsoever. CB jealously guards some of their own statistics-- they are particularly hard to nail down re: the subject tests. Big surprise.

LOL.

Their predictive value lies in that they are essentially intelligence tests. In the vast scheme of things (and I'm not talking about individual students here), higher scores equate with higher intelligence. Higher intelligence is correlated with success in college.

Maybe we don't mean the same thing by "statistics", but I actually find them to be pretty open about the subject tests, at least the curve on them. Here is a link to the average scores last year:

http://professionals.collegeboard.com/testing/sat-subject/scores/average

And if you search for "sat subject test percentages 2012", you get a link to a .pdf with all the subject tests and the percentile of each score. I can't put the link in, my Adobe is acting up and won't open the file unless I reboot my computer.

Like HowlerKarma's D, my D2 was very, very good at Lit. She was also able to ace Math II on her second try (first one wasn't so hot). I think kids who read a lot can do well on Lit with minimal amount of studying on various literature forms. I think my D spent maybe an hour with a prep book for Lit. So if your kid is a reader, go for Lit. It isn't about which books they have read at all, so don't worry if they aren't well tutored in all the classics. It is more the ability to read and analyze, as long as they understand the different types of poetry meter and things like that.

Not all of their predictive value results from their g-loading, although much of it does, according to a recent paper:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289608000603
SAT and ACT predict college GPA after removing g
Thomas R. Coyle and David R. Pillow
University of Texas at San Antonio, USA
Intelligence
Volume 36, Issue 6, November–December 2008, Pages 719–729
Abstract
This research examined whether the SAT and ACT would predict college grade point average (GPA) after removing g from the tests. SAT and ACT scores and freshman GPAs were obtained from a university sample (N = 161) and the 1997 National Longitudinal Study of Youth (N = 8984). Structural equation modeling was used to examine relationships among g, GPA, and the SAT and ACT. The g factor was estimated from commercial cognitive tests (e.g., Wonderlic and Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale) and the computer-adaptive Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. The unique variances of the SAT and ACT, obtained after removing g, were used to predict GPA. Results from both samples converged: While the SAT and ACT were highly g loaded, both tests generally predicted GPA after removing g. These results suggest that the SAT and ACT are strongly related to g, which is related to IQ and intelligence tests. They also suggest that the SAT and ACT predict GPA from non-g factors. Further research is needed to identify the non-g factors that contribute to the predictive validity of the SAT and ACT.

Keywords
g factor; SAT; ACT; Grade point average; GPA; Intelligence; IQ; Structural equation modeling; SEM; National Longitudinal Study of Youth; NLSY; Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery; ASVAB

The predictive and outcome-based statistics is what I'm referring to-- CB is quite open (moreso than ACT) about the statistics of each sample population of test-takers, actually.


It's the deeper analysis that is sometimes problematic; the kinds of things like the study Bostonian helpfully provides above.

Because if such tests are valid predictive tools, then such data ought to be robust enough that there would be good transparency. But there isn't. It's hard to find, and it is definitely not because nobody questions the value of standardized tests in terms of predictive value. A great many colleges themselves even acknowledge that their predictive value is distinctly limited-- and among individual subject tests, that is even more true, evidently.

There is what CB has to say,

and then there is what other research has to say. Not to mention opinion/observation from the academy itself.


Well-- THERE's a huge surprise... how many students in CA high schools? Hmmmm.. let's see... that value, times $50 per subject test fee... Oh, yes, I SEE the predictive value!

This study from UC-Berkeley is a great examination of the very factors that we're discussing here.


The conclusion is that in spite of apparent differences in curriculum and grading practices, GPA is VERY much better as a predictive measure when compared to either SAT or ACT scores, and that further, the two things aren't even comparable as measures of predictive value once you look beyond the freshman year.

This one is completely worth the read.