Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why is the university of California dropping the SAT?

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 647 posts

Re: Why is the university of California dropping the SAT?

#241

Post by Aunche »

sjg007 wrote: post #198
fridif wrote: post #192

Don't understand the hate for the SAT. Where I went to school, students would just beg their teachers for better grades and it literally worked. I did average on my SAT compared to my ex-gf in college (top 30 US school) but I ran a 3.8 in college compared to her being a C student. Doesn't matter anyway because none of the stuff I learned in college is used in my daily job as a java developer.

The SAT is basically institutionalized racism. I think this has been well studied, from its origins until today. If you have the means and money you can get tutored test prep and do significantly better than you would otherwise. Next on this list will be scholarships and admissions for elite sports. Rowing and gymnastics all favor the wealthy. https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/views/2020/08/17/h... Maybe we n…

You can also just hire tutors to help you with coursework. How is the SAT different in that aspect?

Re: Why is the university of California dropping the SAT?

#242

Post by namdnay »

pfisherman wrote: post #15

I think the University of Texas has one of simplest and most egalitarian admissions policies that I have seen. If you graduate in the top 10 percent of your class, then you are guaranteed admission to all state funded universities. As a Californian I find it quite ironic that many policies in “conservative” Texas (ex. university admissions, property tax, income tax) are more much more progressive than what we have in…

So basically stack ranking?

Re: Why is the university of California dropping the SAT?

#243

Post by kcatskcolbdi »

briefcomment wrote: post #228
908B64B197 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replacing the SAT by a "Holistic" process is a convenient way to impose a quota on some groups judged problematic. To directly quote the article: "There is only one group of students who are “overrepresented,” to use the chilling language of social engineering, at the university: Asian Americans. Twelve percent of K–12 students are Asian or Pacific Islander, compared with 34 percent of UC undergraduates. Aligning enr…

All the best colleagues I've worked with aced the SAT and/or other standardized tests. I would hate to not be able to refer to them while interviewing job candidates. Honestly, standardized test scores and some case study type questions would be sufficient to make a decision (along with 1 on 1 convos). I hope a decision like this opens a channel for smart people to get to employment without having to go to school or…

You......ask what people got on the SATs in your job interview?

Re: Why is the university of California dropping the SAT?

#244

Post by crackercrews »

> There is only one group of students who are “overrepresented,” to use the chilling language of social engineering, at the university: Asian Americans.

This is partly because of the yield rate of Asian students. This refers to the rate that admitted students choose to attend UC.

White, Black, and Hispanic students all choose to attend UCs at less than 40%. The yield rate for Asian students is 48%.

If Asians had the same yield rate as the other racial groups, their share of UC enrollment would drop from 37% to 31%. This is pretty close to their share of the UC applicant pool, 28%.

This comes from the most recent data available, from 2020. [1]

1: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/admissions...

Re: Why is the university of California dropping the SAT?

#245

Post by panda88888 »

I personally feel that colleges are dropping the SAT and ACT because those scores show correlation between race and higher/lower admission criteria in the admitted student body. See the Harvard lawsuit. Without the scores it is easier for colleges to shape the incoming student population to better approximate the desired demographic distribution.

Re: Why is the university of California dropping the SAT?

#246

Post by gotoeleven »

honkycat wrote: post #220

I went to a RURAL school. My graduating class was 20 people. We didn't really do SAT prep, basically all time was eaten up triaging students who were struggling, and dealing with poorly behaved students. Or the teachers were sometimes completely lazy. I didn't even know AP classes EXISTED. I got to go home for a work study after my first class senior year because I had taken all of the classes available to me. A lot…

The SAT is one of the few ways that smart, poor kids have to move up in the world. It not very study-able. Removing the SAT is just going to take the one semi-objective measurement of ability that exists out of the application process. This is great for university officials because then they can make their student rainbow have all the desired hues but it sucks for kids with real potential.

Not very study-able: https://slate.com/technology/2019/04/sat-prep-courses-do-the...

Re: Why is the university of California dropping the SAT?

#247

Post by rejectedandsad »

flowerlad wrote: post #180

In most countries students apply to just 1 or 2 colleges. Because college admissions are predictable in other countries. In the US students apply to a dozen or more colleges, and each college requires custom essays. Then these applications go through "holistic reviews". In reality, because of the huge volume of applications, colleges spend 6 to 8 minutes reviewing each application, and the reviewer is often an inexpe…

It's literally the same in America. What you're seeing is the "dream hoarder class" lashing out. These are elites that seem to have nothing but contempt for normal folks like me and I'm tired of it.

At my high school most people didn't apply to more than 3 schools (1 or 2 less selective state schools + 1 flagship). I only applied to 4 and only actually had a chance at the two I got into. The undergrad I graduated from didn't require an essay or anything, just SAT scores and GPA. Even my flagship university - a public Ivy - effectively just judges in-state applicants using a GPA/SAT grid system.

I'm not alone in this, my university has about 40,000 students enrolled today.

Re: Why is the university of California dropping the SAT?

#248

Post by iammisc »

kcatskcolbdi wrote: post #243
briefcomment wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the best colleagues I've worked with aced the SAT and/or other standardized tests. I would hate to not be able to refer to them while interviewing job candidates. Honestly, standardized test scores and some case study type questions would be sufficient to make a decision (along with 1 on 1 convos). I hope a decision like this opens a channel for smart people to get to employment without having to go to school or…

You......ask what people got on the SATs in your job interview?

For my first jobs out of college, I listed my SAT scores.

EDIT: Don't understand the downvotes. I went to a top liberal arts college and they told us to, if it was over a certain number. It worked broadly speaking.

Re: Why is the university of California dropping the SAT?

#249

Post by Y_Y »

1980phipsi wrote: post #203
charlesju wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given 2 equally smart people. The one that has the opportunity to take more AP/Honors will have more opportunity to get a higher GPA.

If you have a weighted GPA... Also, GPA is not a great measure of student quality. IRT [1,2] is better. [1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/1434976 [2] https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...

Is student quality a well-defined and measurable value? Is it a scalar?

Re: Why is the university of California dropping the SAT?

#250

Post by ajsnigrutin »

I was born in yugoslavia (later slovenia), under the red star, communism, brotherhood, unity, equality, and all other communist bullshit back then.

...and even then we had standardized testing, and it worked.

You went to elementary school, usually the closest to your house (from about 6/7yo to 14/15, =8 years), and at the end of that, you'd apply to a highschool of your choice (either general "gymnasium", or 3 or 4 year technical, trades, economic etc. school), and then you'd have standardized tests. Your grades in last three years and your test scores would be calculated into points (i think it was 120 points max), high schools would sort the applicants by points, and however many spots were available, that many top students would get accepted and a cuttoff point value was published (everybody above X points got accepted).

In high school it was a bit more complicated, because standardized testing had three core subjects (slovene, math and usually english (1st foreign language)) plus two subjects chosen by the students. Colleges would post requirements in advance - most had just 40% grades, 60% standardized testing, some (i think medicine) required one of the two chosen subjects to be either biology or chemistry (and it was 20% that subject, 40% grades, 40% other subjects), and only a few (art, acting, music) had entrance exams. And the process was the same as before... everybody did the tests, results got calculated into points (i think 0-100), top X got accepted.

The exams included knowledge from all the years of schooling, and tutors were a thing for "bad" students, who couldn't learn enough from the teacher (or didn't listen, did other stuff, failed, and had to get a higher grade, not to fail the whole year). With math, you had to know math... there was a lot of practice in school with every part of math, and tutoring was no better than just doing the work from regular workbooks. With history, well.. you had to memorize a lot of stuff, but you knew that when you chose the subject. There was no way to game the system, because everybody did the same programme.

I have no idea why only america has issues with standardized tests... IMHO, using grades is worse than testing, because an average students with shitty classmates will in general get better grades, than in a class with mostly "geniouses".

Post reply on HN