#178 The New Admissions Reality: Prove Your Academic Preparedness with David Blobaum Transcript

THIS IS AN AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT… PLEASE FORGIVE THE TYPOS & GRAMMAR! xo-Lisa.

Are selective college admissions about to undergo another major shift. The landscape is evolving once again, with prestigious institutions now demanding more proof of academic readiness beyond just GPAs. In an admissions world where grade inflation has made it increasingly difficult for colleges to identify truly prepared students, a new trend is emerging. Top universities are now looking for concrete evidence of academic abilities through AP exam scores and other objective measures. This shift could drastically change how your teen approaches their college prep strategy. Today, I’m joined by David Blobaum, a nationally recognized expert on standardized exams and college admissions. As managing partner at Summit prep and Director of Outreach for the National Test Prep Association, David brings valuable insights from his extensive experience helping families navigate the testing and admissions landscape. In our conversation, we’ll explore how Caltech recently became the first college to require AP exam scores and why other elite institutions are following this trend, as well as how they play a role for competitive majors at less selective schools. We’ll discuss what this means for your team and how to strategically prepare for these changing requirements without adding any unnecessary stress to an already challenging process. If you’re concerned about ensuring your team stands out authentically in their college applications, this episode provides a guidance you need to stay ahead of these emerging trends. I’m Lisa Marker Robbins, and I want to welcome you to College and Career Clarity a flourish coaching production. Let’s dive right into a great conversation. David Blobaum, welcome back to the show number four, I think.

 

David Blobaum  02:51

Thank you. It’s my pleasure every time I feel like you’re going for the world record here, that is my goal.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  02:56

Okay, well, let’s say it already. We’re gonna have you back on again. You’re a fantastic guest always. I’ll hold you to that. Okay, I can’t wait. Well, our topic at hand today is things have changed. Like one of the episodes that you were on with us before was really about, I think what was around the four year anniversary of COVID, not that we’re not something we want to celebrate, but we marked it with a round table discussion about how drastically things have changed in college admissions, really, since 2020 and here we are 2025 and they’re continuing to change. And part of that’s test optional, but you pay close attention to trends, and when we were talking offline, you know, you’re like the colleges are kind of asking kids to prove their academic prowess in ways that they never have before, and it kind of puts a burden on kids, or they might get surprised by it. It affects admissions in ways that they don’t really understand. And as always, we want our listeners to understand the landscape of admissions and be armed with actionable advice that they can do so that they’re making better informed decisions. So how do we kind of, like, nutshell what’s going on, and then I really want to know why in the world is it going on? Yeah,

 

David Blobaum  04:20

yeah. So in a nutshell, it would be that especially the top colleges, are looking for more information to make their admissions decisions about who is prepared to succeed at their institution. And the main way that that is manifesting in college admissions is that if you have an AP class listed on your transcript, there’s the expectation that you will have a corresponding AP exam score for each of those classes listed on your application. So it used to be that AP exam scores were pretty much just used for college credit. So maybe if you get a four or five. Five in you know, AP micro economics, you don’t need to take that AP micro economics course. You get a credit for that. Now, though, when you take an AP micro economics class in high school, an A in that course does not necessarily reflect content mastery anymore, and you know, college admissions officers will even say this, right? I mean, John ladding has said that, you know, students are trying their best, but their grades are just not reflecting what they’re actually, you know, learning Rick Clark, who you’ve had on, has said, you know, he to quote him. He’s used the literal word that grade inflation is rampant. And I think it was him that mentioned there are over like 40 different grading scales ranging from 4.0 to 5.0 to 10.0 to literally, some high schools doing narratives or even emojis for grades, right? What?

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  06:00

Okay, hold on a second. I have never heard that before. Are you serious?

 

David Blobaum  06:05

I am I look I’m quoting, and I think it was him that literally said the narratives and emojis, right? I would have to look back at it. I don’t want to misquote him, but certainly that is guaranteed a quote from some college admissions officers, I’m

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  06:22

quite sure it was, which is just wild, I mean, because it really puts the admissions office in a place where they can’t do an apples to apples Exactly. And if, even if we’re going as extreme as narratives and that include emojis for our transcript, I still it’s going to take me a while to get over that one. Then it’s like you can’t even recalc that grade. You know, from a 5.0 scale to a 4.0 scale.

 

David Blobaum  06:52

And even if you could, it’s different teachers and different schools, different standards. I mean, you have some schools where the average student is getting an A in their AP classes, and the average student is getting a two on their AP exam.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  07:07

You know, interesting. There’s a school I’m not going to say where they are. I was talking to some people who are in this school, and I don’t even think this is a bad practice, but they encourage all. They’re an underperforming district, and there are some really fantastic leaders there that are trying to write the ship. They’ve gotten some great grant money. They’re doing some really great things. They actually encourage all kids to take AP classes. And their argument is that they it will start to the tide will rise like the kids will rise with that expectation, and the schools like, we’re not worrying about the scores and stuff, but I’m like, but at the admissions office, depending on where they’re going to apply, right? And most of these kids aren’t applying to top schools, but some are, but they really encourage everybody to take AP classes. But I, but I also know that there’s some teachers in this particular district that are not really fantastic. They’re not teaching in the same way that at the school, you know, maybe two towns over are teaching an AP class. So how do you account for that?

 

David Blobaum  08:17

Sure, exactly right. So, you know, most colleges will say that what matters most to them in the college admissions process is GPA and rigor. Well, rigor. What does rigor mean? If you’re taking an AP class, getting an A, but you’re getting a two on the AP exam, then you took a class of rigor, but it doesn’t actually an A in an AP course doesn’t indicate content mastery. So I think, you know, every time colleges come out with, oh, we value this, well, then on the consumer side, they start to game whatever that is, right? Yeah. So that’s why honors these days, really typically doesn’t mean honors, it just means the regular coursework, right? Because on the consumer side, everyone’s like, Okay, well, let me just indicate all this rigor. Well, then it just keeps upping, because

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  09:08

honors today is the college prep of years past, exactly

 

David Blobaum  09:12

yes and so I mean, in grade inflation is just out of control. I mean, if, if we look back 60 years to 1966, it was 21.8% of students going onto a four year ba granting University had an A average. So about 80 20% did. 80% didn’t 2023, so about 60 years later, in the most recent data we have, it was 86% had a averages.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  09:42

You know, we did a we did a deep dive on this topic with a mutual friend of ours, Brian neufinger. He was on episode 42 so anybody who wants to listen to it, flourish, coaching, co.com forward, slash 042, and it was around great inflation. And I. Think we even put something on our YouTube channel and our website, because he had some great graphics with it. But it’s shocking, because parents are proud of their kids a only to find out that it means nothing that the parents. So I always say that parents, you can say like, Hey, I I had better grades than you, even if you had the same GPA,

 

David Blobaum  10:20

yeah. And, you know? And one thing that other people will push back on, and they’ll say, Oh, well, sure, more people are getting kid more kids are getting grades, but you know, they have they’re learning so much more. Sadly, that’s just not the case, right? Then you could justify more A’s, but if you look at the NAEP scores that’s dubbed The Nation’s Report Card. It does these longitudinal, longitudinal studies of the math and reading skills of fourth and eighth graders were at 30 year lows, and especially once we hit COVID, it just dropped precipitously. So based on objective measures of math and reading ability were at 30 year lows, but were at an increasing trend of grade inflation, where basically everyone applying to a four year ba granting University has an A average.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  11:13

Well, I actually I had somebody from a CT on January of probably 23 I think it was 2320 it was 2323 or 24 when the ACE, the 30 year average of a CT, went hit its all time low, it dropped below a 20. And that would be another indicator, because the test hadn’t really changed, right,

 

David Blobaum  11:38

right, exactly. And this is just an aside, but it’s very strange to me that ECT reports average a CT scores, because average, when you’re talking about populations, is not actually that helpful. What you want to look at as the median. Yep, you know, 50% above 50% below the median is only like an 18.4 or something like that right now, like that’s, it’s dropped off

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  12:02

a cliff. That’s terrible. So okay, so if I see the problem, and what you’re seeing as a trend in admissions is that now colleges are saying, like, Okay, we’ve got this cluster of a problem over here, your A in an AP class doesn’t mean anything to us, your 4.0 or 3.8 or nine GPA on a four point scale really doesn’t mean a whole lot with us. There’s no context for this. And so I get the problem how, and what you’ve seen is they’re trying to solve for this in different ways now that are kind of new, newer trends and admissions and and what are those ways perfect?

 

David Blobaum  12:44

And so the the colleges used to have SAT Subject Tests. So let’s say you took the SAT Subject Test in US history that was kind of like a AP US History exam, but with a more accurate, fine tuned scoring. So instead of being, you know, from one to five in your score on the AP exam, it was out of 800 now that’s really important for admissions purposes, because you could miss a five by one question, and then you have a four, and it looks like this big difference. But on a test that’s out of 800 missing one question, maybe you go from a 700 to a 690 so there’s more understanding exactly you know what the student’s content mastery was. So AP exams really shouldn’t, should never have been used, should not be used for admissions purposes. They’re not precise enough instruments for that. But the College Board discontinued SAT Subject Tests in 2021 so that left a void for these top colleges that were using SAT Subject Tests. So now they’re scrambling to fill that void. They’re going to those AP exam scores. They’re even going to and you had a great episode on about academic competitions. Yeah,

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  14:03

with data, John’s episode 149 Yeah, forge coachingco.com, forward slash, 149 I’ll put it in the show notes. It was fantastic,

 

David Blobaum  14:12

right? And so, you know, again, like the AMC American mathematics competition exam scores, those were never they don’t even want to the organization themselves. They don’t want their scores used for college admissions purposes, but colleges are using it right because they want they’re desperate for that information to provide more context to go back before we go even further forward. According to the latest research, and this is, this is the research that was the foundation of the New York Times article last year, misguided war on the SAT. So according to the latest research used by the New York Times, grades at Ivy plus institutions explain only 5% of a student’s first year GPA, so they’re not very predictive at all. Now, sat. Scores alone explain 19.3% that’s almost four times higher. So that’s great add in grades, though, and you only move from 19.3% to 19.6% so more than 80% of a student’s first year GPA is not explained by their GPA or their s, a T, A C, T scores. So that, you know helps explain why these colleges are so desperate to get more information to help explain that other 80% so they can predict who’s most academically prepared. So they’re going to the AP exams, to the academic competitions, and also to schoolhouse dot world. Now we’ll see if that continues to rise in importance, but

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  15:42

most of my listeners are like what they’ve heard. AP, they know A, C, T, S, A T. Let’s back it up for a second. And I do think for some of you that are listening, this idea of math competitions being a factor and and could be a way that you’re proving your academic prowess, that you belong in the school, could be new news for you. So you want to go listen to episode 149, where we do a deep dive on that. And if you’re not believing us on any of this, go listen to the GPA episode 042, great inflation. But So this idea of school, how school we’re gonna put in the show notes? Schoolhouse? Dot world explain it to us. So

 

David Blobaum  16:27

it’s really new, and what, what it is is students can go get certified for different subjects. So let’s say you go to a school that doesn’t have AP classes. You’re probably not going to be able to take the AP exams. It’s really hard to do that at different schools, or, let’s say you’re a homeschool student, same thing. You’re really not going to get access to AP exams in the same way. But again, then how do you demonstrate your proficiency if grades really are just not cutting it? Well, enter schoolhouse dot world. I would not say that it takes the place of AP exams, but without AP exams, it can help fill the void. So if you do take calculus, and you don’t take the, you know, AP calculus exam, you know, maybe try and go get certified in calculus, so that you can at least demonstrate some verified academic mastery of that content.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  17:26

So what is it? What are the Do you know, what the steps are to get verified, certified in a subject? I obviously it must be some it must be fairly rigorous, because I just went to their website, and I’m looking at the institutions that they partner with, and I just lost it, because I was going around, go ahead and name some of them. I know you. You have them in your head,

 

David Blobaum  17:53

yeah? So I’m looking at it too. So neither of us

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  17:57

have this memorized. My friend, yeah,

 

David Blobaum  17:59

I will not miss but I know this. So Amherst, brown, Caltech, Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke, Northwestern Georgia, tech, the Ohio State University.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  18:11

Live in Ohio, and that drives me crazy every single time.

 

David Blobaum  18:17

Berkeley, etc, etc, etc. So a lot of big names it,

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  18:20

and I’m looking here too. If you go to the schoolhouse dot world website, they give you the list of what you can get certified in, in math and science. It looks like here’s an interesting So two questions that just came to mind as we’re talking about this. So that’s fantastic, because it does give away for kids who are in districts that maybe, maybe you’re a high performing school, but you’re really teeny, tiny, and they just can’t afford to offer all the APS. And by the way, they keep adding new AP classes and exams every year, my friends, which is crazy. And you know, I’m like, well, college born board owned the SAT Subject Test and they own the AP test. Let’s just switch the AP test at a scale of 800 but that’s for another day, I guess. I’m sure other people have thought about that before, besides me. So here’s a question, what about the CLEP exam I had on? I forget it is. We had an episode, man, it was early on see episode 18, how to get freshman year for free. And we talked on there about CLEP exams being another way to show that you’ve mastered content. So in this case, academic prowess. Have you considered that as part of this equation? Or heard anything about that?

 

David Blobaum  19:41

That’s an excellent point that I will need to look into. So I have only heard kind of, to your point. This just proves

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  19:48

how unscripted we are on this show.

 

David Blobaum  19:53

Yeah. So you know, to your point, I’ve only heard about CLEP exams used for college course credit to essentially, you know. Knock out an entire year of school for free. I know especially a lot of homeschooled students, use them. I’ve never heard about them used to demonstrate content mastery, but I don’t see why they wouldn’t serve that same person. Yeah, I mean,

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  20:14

there’s not, I’m thinking through the common app. There’s not a field for those where there is for the AP scores, but you always have that additional information section that you could put it in. You know, when I had David vice on for that how to get freshman year for free, and we talked through CLEP exams like he even said, take the AP class. Take one of our modern states online classes to supplement it. Kind of view that as your tutoring, and then take your AP exam and immediately take your CLEP exam like you’ve got two shots at getting that credit, but if you do that sophomore, end of junior year that could go in the Additional Information section of your application,

 

David Blobaum  20:57

yeah, I love that, and I love the idea of then you have two shots of it to loop back to one thing you said. This is a couple different things going on with the increasing number of AP exams. And a lot of people roll their eyes at it. And I roll my eyes at it because partly, it’s just driven by money. Most people don’t know that college board about their primary revenue driver, by a large margin, is AP exams. So they get $500 million a year, about from the AP exam registrations. They only, only get $300 million a year from s, a T and P, S A T, so that really we should think of them as an AP exam company. So one lot of money there. That’s why they keep adding AP exams. But honestly, again, because there’s so much great inflation, we almost have to reframe the way we’re thinking about AP exams, because they’re not necessarily just for AP or for college course credit. Now, therefore, did do you actually? Did you master the content? So it almost should be an AP exam for Algebra Two, right? And, yeah, you know, just, just so we have some standardized measure of, did the student learn algebra two? Because an A means almost nothing these days. You know,

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  22:18

it’s interesting as an IEC and I’m in some groups with other IECs, where a common debate every fall will be an IEC. This is an IEC Facebook group, and everybody collaborates and helps weigh in or talks about trends and admissions, breaking news, all that, every fall, somebody will like do a post, and they’ll say, Here’s my student there. They want to major in this. Here are their schools. Here’s their GPA, but they got a three or a two on this AP exam, but the AP class shows on their transcript, and they, quote, underperformed on the test, especially as it relates to the college that they particularly are are aiming for, or maybe they’re in my favorite topic, a very competitive major because of the career that they want to get into. And so there’s just, there’s capped admissions to these programs because of capacity is just that simple, right? So that spot on the test section of the common app, you know, is your option to put down your AP test scores. And I’ve seen over the years great debate on like, yeah, I wouldn’t put that one, or I’d put that one, or put them all, but keep that one off, and hopefully they’ll read it so fast they won’t notice. We’ve talked in the past to application readers who say, you know, yeah, six to nine minutes on an entire application that could get missed. What’s your advice in light of this topic of the day?

 

David Blobaum  23:54

So it does depend on what caliber of schools they’re applying to, so it is really just the top schools, the most highly selective schools, that are using AP exam scores for those college admissions decisions. If we go, you know, down the list where, you know, I would say if they’re accepting 50% of students, for instance, at that point, they’re probably not looking at AP exam scores for college admissions, because they’re not as selective. They’re not particularly selective. So if we’re talking about those selective schools, there is now the expectation that every AP class will have an AP score. Now, I still wouldn’t submit a three to a highly selective school because they can’t unsee it, but not submitting it definitely hurts you as well. And finally, co creates

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  24:47

doubt, right? Like any time. And I say this with, you know, around like the the career coaching I do, and we’re looking at people’s wiring human nature is, you. To create a narrative for anything that we don’t have the information for. So as soon as you don’t have that point, that data point, then you’re creating, whether you know it or not, you’re creating an internal bias, a narrative of what really is going on here. And sometimes it’s way worse than actually what happened and

 

David Blobaum  25:19

to that point to eliminate doubt. So sometimes a student will have gotten really ill, or they were out of the country on the day of the AP exam. And I have a student who she was studying abroad, there was no possible way she could take it, right? Well, that’s when you need to use the additional information portion and say, I You’re missing my you know, AP US History exam, I couldn’t take it, right? Yeah, exactly. So, um. And finally, schools are actually being transparent about it. So the most transparent is Caltech. This year, they just came out and said, You know what, we’re going to require your AP exam scores. If you took an AP class, you are required to submit that AP exam score again if you actually took it. Other schools are becoming more transparent, so I mean MIT also this year, this is a quote from them, not off the top of my head. I’m reading it. Students should self report scores for standardized exams such as AP placement or international baccalaureate. IB exams. Yale, if you completed an AP designated course in high school and completed the exam, we recommend including your score. And then, you know, on a podcast, Jeremiah Quinlan, the dean of admissions there, said he used the word expect. We expect to see that AP score, but not going to read all of them, but Dartmouth, Emory, Princeton, UC Berkeley, Georgetown, Notre Dame Duke Johns, Hopkins, etc. They have all now publicly said they use AP exam scores in their admissions process. So

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  26:57

I’m sure some of the listeners are thinking, okay, Lisa and David, you work in this area, right? What is a top school? You guys are saying like this is happening at the top schools, or the selective schools, the most selective schools, and they want that defined for them, so they can figure out if this counts. So hey, you could just email admissions and ask the question. People are always so afraid to just email or call and ask these questions, which seems silly to me, because you’re a consumer. Let’s be a wise consumer. Ask questions. But how would you cut it off? Would you say like, Oh, if they’re admitting this, percent were fewer students, or how can we provide context for top schools.

 

David Blobaum  27:41

Yeah. So I’m going to give a generalization, and of course, there’s going to be exceptions to it, but my generalization would be, if they’re at a 20% admit rate or below, they’re quite selective. When you’re more selective, students have to compete more for those spots. I would say, likely around that range, they’re going to start looking at AP exam scores. Now, there are some exceptions. I mean, like Georgetown, for instance, 13% acceptance rate, but they make it almost impossible to apply. So, you know, like their their admit rate, if they join the common app, actually, when they do, I think it’s they do, right? They are, yeah, they’ve announced, right? I think their admit rate is going to plummet to 5% 6% once students are actually able to apply. And then, of course, you make it easier to apply, likely more students will apply. So you do have to take some of these things with a grain of salt, but generally speaking, you know, I would put the cut off around 20% of my rate. So

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  28:41

what’s interesting to me is, you know, we were over on that schoolhouse dot world, and listed was the Ohio State University. I have to mock it every time. Yes, don’t send me hate mail, everybody. And it’s a great institution. But it is, it is, I think it’s funny that they make that their name. So for the Ohio State University, they’re listed as a partner of schoolhouse dot world, right? I would not, and they do not, if they admit more than 20% of their applicants. This my state flagship. So I know I work with students all the time who are applying. I see the outcomes for sure. They are going back to requiring a CT and SC T scores this fall, but they’ve always favored AP data rigor. They like to see AP classes. They’re pretty out there with that. They they want to see three years of a world language. So it’s interesting that I agree with you, like that highly selective would start at the 20% and below. And by the way, a school that admitted 30% three years ago may be down below 20% now, my friend, so check your data. Don’t make any assumptions listeners, but it’s interesting that they’re on that schoolhouse world. And they admit far more what? What do you think’s behind partnerships like that?

 

David Blobaum  30:06

So this is an excellent point. I, and I would have been remiss to not mention it, so I’m glad that you asked the question, we don’t just have to look at the selectivity, just of the school, to your point, also talking about majors, we have to look at the selectivity of the major. So that’s one thing, but also there is a difference in a lot of the public flagship universities are more numbers driven, yeah, simply just because of the fact that they get so many applicants, right? So, I mean, University of Tennessee, I don’t know what their admit rate is. You don’t think of University of Tennessee as a particularly selective institution, but they’re very numbers driven so, and that’s just more generally true of these public flagship flagships. So I would to your point, the college admissions officers first have to answer the question, Can the student do the work? So they’re looking for evidence to prove that they can, that the student can do the work, and more information that helps support that and give that evidence is to their benefit, you know, especially to highly selective schools, public flagships, or just to highly selective majors. So my favorite example is University of Illinois in Champaign Urbana. I was just

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  31:19

gonna bring them up. Were you really? Yeah, I, I literally just pulled up my podcast episode on my other screen because we had Andy Borst when he was director of admissions at ui UC and he was on episode 57 and we talked about this, go ahead, and then I’ll, I’ll chime in so

 

David Blobaum  31:40

I’m not reading it, so this the numbers might be slightly off, but I bet they’re correct or close. So University of Illinois overall, for the whole school, it was 59% of students who enrolled submitted test scores. Now that means that University of Illinois is actually quite test preferred. That’s also for a public flagship, not that rare that these public flagships, again, would be more test preferred, lots of applicants. They’re more numbers driven. But when you actually dig into the details of the different schools there, it varies greatly. So I think school social work, I want to say, was about 28% of enrolled students submitted test scores, so 72% did not. So you can, you know, legitimately get into the school social work without test scores. But engineering was 81% so if you’re going to again, selectivity matters, not just the selectivity of the school, but the selectivity of that major. Specifically,

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  32:42

that was so when Andy was on, you know, we talked about how admission by major works, and we actually have a free resource for our listeners on this, at flourish, coachingco.com forward slash majors, but he made the point at the time and again, he has moved on to the University of Georgia at this point. But at the time, he said, and think this was we had him on in 22 that overall, they were admitting about 50% of all the students who applied their admit rate for computer science, 6%

 

David Blobaum  33:16

amazing. Crazy. So,

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  33:19

and I know you don’t necessarily have the percentage of test submitters, but if that was it for engineering, like we can, you know, basically assume it was that or higher. And and he really said, this is another thing with the state schools. Many of these states give a preference for their residents, right? So Andy’s like, Hey, if you want to apply to computer if you want to major in computer science, and you’re not an Illinois resident like you should, you probably should just go somewhere else.

 

David Blobaum  33:48

Yeah, yeah, and it’s okay. And just one more piece of information to help listeners understand enroll, because there’s, there’s, there’s a different numbers going on. So there’s the percentage of students who submit test scores when applying. Yes, there’s the percentage of admitted students who submitted test scores, and there’s the percentage of enrolled students who submitted test scores. And so one important thing to note, and this first became really clear to me when I had a conversation with the dean of admissions at Boston College. He was nice enough to, again, just from an email to then jump on the phone with me, right? And so Boston College, about 50% of enrolled students that year had submitted test scores. I actually used to think that that was pretty, you know, up in the air. You could get in without test scores. And he corrected me, and he was like, no, but when you actually look at our admitted students, it’s 66% of our admitted students submitted test scores. The reason it’s 50% enrolled is that those students who have test scores that we admitted, they have good test scores, they’re getting. Into a lot of other schools, they have more options, so we yield them at a lower rate, meaning, even though we were more likely to admit them, they’re less less likely to enroll with us. Yeah, and so that’s why, like University of Illinois, for instance, at a you know, whatever it is, 59% of enrolled students submitted test scores to get to 59% enrolled, you’re probably more looking at like 70% 75% of admitted students submitted test scores. So just to keep that in mind for listeners, that whatever the Enrolled percentage is, the admitted percentage of submitters is much higher, and there’s a much larger preference that we see in the admissions rates Well,

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  35:39

and that’s the harder, the more difficult data to find, right? Everybody’s out there, like not everybody those who want to be a little bit transparent around test optionals, not a lot of them do our posts. If they do share the information, it’s of students who applied, what percentage did. It’s very difficult to get someone to go on the record or to see fine dig up for us, who we work in this area, to find the percentage of admitted so super challenging. This has been fantastic. Like, I like that. It’s a totally new topic. It’s something that I think is really important. And like you said, if it’s a below 20% admit, then this probably is going to be playing. Just assume it’s going to play a role. But then we have examples like a UIUC in Ohio State. And the reality is, that’s why we did our study that we did last year on state flagship admission by major to show which majors are restricted, where it’s easier to change your major where it’s not. And we found that 84% of the state flagships are admitting directly to major, either for all majors or some or most of their majors. And so there were very few schools that that wasn’t playing a role. So, you know, 71% of kids go to a research university, a public research university, not a liberal arts college. So what we’re saying today, in large part, hits the majority of families.

 

David Blobaum  37:14

That’s a great could not have said it as well as you just said it so well.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  37:19

Thank you. We’re see. That’s why. Okay, you’re definitely coming back on so David as always, so fantastic. David was on episode 072142, and 100 I guess I just put those out of order, didn’t I? And we will link to all of those in the show notes, because he’s always a great guest and gives you wonderful advice. David, thank you.

 

David Blobaum  37:43

Thank you so much. Lisa.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  37:50

I want to thank David for discussing how colleges are increasingly looking for objective measures of academic readiness, and knowing these trends early gives your teen a significant advantage after listening to today’s episode, I encourage you to have an intentional family conversation this very week about what objective evidence of academic preparedness your teen will have when applying. Discuss which AP exams align with their intended major and future career, what graded work they might include in applications and how they can authentically demonstrate their academic abilities beyond just GPA, this conversation is especially important if your team is eyeing institutions admitting fewer than 20% of applicants, or if they’re applying to competitive majors that are placing greater emphasis on these objective measures, and if you’re looking for additional support navigating the college journey, visit flourish coaching co.com forward slash video for my free on demand, video that will help your family move from overwhelmed to clear and confident about your teen’s future path. Remember, the college journey isn’t just about getting in, it’s about setting your teen up for success, both during and after their education. You.