Score Optional Consideration

Qualifying for score optional review does NOT guarantee admission to Mason.

Score optional review provides an opportunity for applicants to be considered for admission without submitting or in disregard of standardized test scores. Admission to Mason remains a very competitive process, and score optional candidates will each be considered on their own merits.

Applicants may opt for score optional review at the time of making their application to Mason.

The following Criteria and Requirements must be met by an applicant in order for the applicant to be considered without test scores:

Student must have achieved a minimum cumulative high school grade point average of 3.50 on a 4.00 scale (grades 9-11)
Student must have pursued a challenging academic curriculum as demonstrated, where available, by having taken a number of IB and/or AP courses (or the most challenging courses available at school).
Student must be ranked, or estimated, in the top 20 percent of the high school class.

Additional Admission Requirements
Applicants must submit all documents required for regular admission and:

Submit two additional letters of recommendation from teachers in academic subjects who can attest to the student?s academic abilities.
Submit an essay which addresses one of the questions listed under the Scholarship Consideration section.
Ensure that the high school guidance counselor completes the "rank in class" or the "alternative rank in class" section of the Secondary School Report.

Students Who Cannot Be Considered Under Score Optional Review Process

Applicants who wish to be considered for the Honors Program in General Education
Applicants who wish to be considered for the University Scholars and Scholarship Program (Note: Score optional students are eligible to be considered for all other scholarships)
Applicants who are applying to the following majors: Civil and Infrastructure Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Systems Engineering
Home-schooled students
Applicants who are seeking to become a member of one of Mason's NCAA intercollegiate athletic teams

Non-native English-speaking students may still be asked to provide TOEFL scores.

Background Information
Statistical analysis of admission and enrollment data at George Mason University demonstrates that the SAT is a very weak predictor of student performance when applicants have demonstrated strong academic achievements in high school. The chart below provides an overview of this concern. This analysis includes students who entered Mason with a high school grade point average above a 3.4. For those students, their SAT was compared with the grade point average they achieved at Mason in their freshman year.

Entering Students Number in analysis Correlation between SAT score and Freshman year Grade point average

> 3.4 high school GPA 821 0.19

While this shows a very weak relationship between SAT score and level of academic achievement at Mason, the question remained if incongruous scores might be better indicators. Incongruous scores occur when a student has a high school grade point average above that of other incoming Mason students, but an SAT score below the average of other incoming Mason students. That relationship is highlighted in the following chart.

> 3.4 high school GPA AND SAT < 1100 373 0.14

In the cases where SAT scores could have been used as a factor in denying students with strong grade point averages the correlation between those scores and academic achievements at Mason are even weaker. To verify these statistics, the Office of Institutional Assessment worked with the Office of Admissions to conduct a regression analysis on the impact of High School GPA and SAT score on Mason students? GPA at the conclusion of their freshman year. The study included entering freshmen with high school grade point averages above a 3.4.

Regression Model I. Dependent Variable = First-Year GPA

Predictors Estimates Significance

High School GPA 0.78 <0.0001

SAT 0.0007 <0.0001

Overall R² = 0.10

This confirmed that, for students with high school GPA above a 3.4, high school GPA is a much more powerful predictor of freshman grades, and that SAT scores add minimal value to any predictive model. A second regression model was conducted to determine if controlling for college, gender, or ethnicity had any impact on these outcomes.

Regression Model II. Dependent Variable = First-Year GPA

Predictors Estimates Significance

High School GPA 0.73 <0.0001

Females 0.15 0.002

SAT 0.0008 <0.0001

Race -- Not significant

College Enrolled at Mason -- Not significant

Overall R² = 0.11

These very weak correlations illustrate little reason to rely on SAT scores for predicting success at Mason as long as there is evidence of strong academic talent in the secondary school record. This is supported by recent studies by Nobles and Sawyer that demonstrated that standardized tests, in this case the ACT, are weak predictors of poor performance ? in other words, low test scores from a student with a strong high school record are not an indicator of poor college performance, although high scores in students with weak high school records have some potential to indicate success.

Bearing the national research in mind in reviewing internal data, the office of admissions is implementing a modified and limited score optional model for admission to George Mason University. In an effort to make sure that the new policy is implemented cautiously, and that it is accurately perceived as admitting only the most competitive applicants, the threshold for score optional review is a 3.5 cumulative high school grade point average, a point above the 3.4 used in the analysis above, while students to be admitted are likely to demonstrate significantly higher averages.