FAQ

Most people apply ED to hyper-competitive colleges like Harvard and Yale. Then they end up in the regular pool everywhere else once they get rejected. So at the  most elite colleges ED might not increase your odds of admissions much. However, for schools one tier down, ED might significantly increase your odds, because fewer people are willing to commit to attending if accepted there.

SuperTutor explains:

Because you can’t use SAT/ACT at all, and admissions demographics have become highly politicized, it’s getting harder. You have to do great in school, describe a host of meaningful pursuits in your Activities List, and write four 350-word essays that provide articulate and thoughtful expression of your character and passions.

The UCLA and UC Berkeley Engineering programs, in addition to being extremely competitive, are all-or-nothing, meaning that if you aren’t accepted to engineering then you won’t be accepted to the campus at all. Choice of major matters, including choosing campus-by-campus for UCs. Most UCs make it nearly impossible to switch majors into STEM. This prevents people from gaming the admissions system by declaring a less rigorous major and then changing it. However, you can declare a different major within STEM, such as Civil Engineering rather than Mechanical Engineering, and then transfer (within the school) later.

The UC doesn’t publish its admissions statistics for each regular undergraduate major, but it does publish them for transfers. This provides some guidance:

https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/about-us/information-center/transfers-major

Also see SuperTutor on this:

Most applicants still submit their scores. Test-optional colleges don’t get any less competitive. Their representatives, when parents and students come to visit and inquire as to whether they should submit their scores, say things like “submit them if you’re proud of them”. This implies a cutoff point below which you shouldn’t be proud and above which a score would seem to make you shine. For those students who choose not to submit scores, the burden of judgment shifts instead to their essays, transcripts, and extracurricular activities. Only if you’ve done fantastically in all other areas can you realistically compete as a test-optional applicant.

The UC system has, for now, but this hasn’t made it any easier to get in. If history is any guide, standardized tests will evolve—in name, format, timing, content, and being computer-based rather than paper-and-pencil. But considering that competition for university admission continues to rise, they seem unlikely to go away. Coming out of the pandemic, many colleges are tending back toward requiring exams. See 5:24 from this discussion at Ilumin Education:

Successful college admissions will now require even more legwork on the part of the applicant. This includes a roster of activities and personal interests, articulated through essays that clearly state your goals. Applicants will need to research universities and connect the majors and tracks offered with their own academic and intellectual interests.

Many students will likely try to stand out by pursuing advanced projects on their own—such as authoring a published paper, working in the founding of a non-profit or company, or some other impressive undertaking beyond the scope of school. For example, applicants intending to study design, architecture, fine arts, or performance are expected to have a portfolio that shows what they’ve done thus far. Here are a couple helpful YouTube videos on the subject:

It depends on a variety of factors and it’s generally hard to say without trying both exams. Since the contents largely overlap, many highly-motivated students take both. It’s most common for students to take the SAT first and then also take the ACT. When you come in for a consultation, I will show you in detail how the tests compare. SAT/ACT Chart: https://blog.prepscholar.com/act-to-sat-conversion . Since you have to take the PSAT in 10th grade, most of my students begin with the SAT in mind, most likely for the December test in the middle of junior year. After that, if they want to pursue the ACT, they may do that exam as well. Math makes up about half of the SAT but only about a quarter of the ACT. Since Math is more teachable, this generally makes the SAT more likely to improve through fundamental academic instruction—that is, explaining and drilling specific and discrete types of problems.

Timing tends to be tougher on the ACT—especially the Reading and Science sections. So if you are granted extra time on both the SAT and ACT, then you should probably focus on the ACT. (Note that the application process for extended time is separate.) You can get a feel for the timing by trying one of the timed computer-based tests for free here: https://pages.act.org/cbt-for-international.html .

The new policy of ACT section retakes has been postponed.

The College Board considered implementing, in 2019, a single number attached to every test taker’s score reports that would approximate his or level of privilege. This was to be based on a suite of factors that included, among other things, the percent of students receiving free lunch at the student’s high school, the percentage vacancy of real estate in the local area, and the median family income of local residents. The system, originally called “Adversity Index”, was changed in name to “Environmental Context Dashboard”, and then changed again to “Landscape”. It still has obvious problems. For example, the child of a single parent barely scraping by and living in a small apartment would receive a high “privilege score” if he or she happened to live in a wealthy town. Conversely, well-off parents could theoretically send their children to less competitive high schools, or even move to less affluent areas, in hopes of gaming the Landscape to their advantage. According to the College Board, the Landscape is not an adversity score, but rather “simply helps admissions officers better understand the high schools and neighborhoods applicants come from”. The information will be broadly available to colleges later in 2020, with the added promise that students and families will soon be able to see their own Landscape data. For more information see: https://pages.collegeboard.org/landscape