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Why is the university of California dropping the SAT?

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

#261

Post by Aunche »

ethbr0 wrote: post #71
usaar333 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's top 7% now and it has a holistic system to handle students outside that cohort. The reason this exists is that it's effectively an affirmative action program for both urban segregated schools and rural schools, which combined have enough political power to pull this off. I believe political dynamics in CA wouldn't allow for this to be constructed - note that suburbs in general fight against such policies. UT its…

> reducing its rank Do universities exist for students? Or do students exist for universities? I'm sure university administration believe the latter, but given that they're supported by the state (in UT's case, ~25% of their budget?) there's a pretty strong argument that they owe the people of the state education.

High calibre students not only help the university's rankings, but also other students. A few of my courses had absolutely terrible lecturers, but we managed to more or less learn the material from each other.

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

#262

Post by ajsnigrutin »

jacobolus wrote: post #256
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #250

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 y…

> IMHO, using grades is worse than testing Empirically, grades are more predictive of college outcomes than test scores. Both are pretty artificial though, and cause various kinds of perverse incentives.

Grades are very subjective, especially with oral exams.

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

#263

Post by iammisc »

b9a2cab5 wrote: post #131
usaar333 wrote: post #80

This is not a particularly strong article. Here's a much more data-backed one arguing similar points (though still with some bias): https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/you-arent-actually-mad-... Issues with this particular article (addressed by above): * It's ignoring the racial gap in SAT scores (and other standardized tests) that exists even after controlling for family income. A large part of the political narrat…

The idea that the SAT is somehow racist is quite laughable. If you controlled for both family income and hours spent per day on academics you'd probably get an equal result. Culture differences mean that Asians are forced by their parents to study longer and harder. As people have pointed out in this thread, parental involvement is the biggest contributing factor to student success, even more than income and school f…

> Could it be because black culture highly values sports and black kids tend to spend more time than the average kid playing sports due to parental or cultural influence?

Americans love meritocracy and hard work when it comes to sports, and can't stand it when it comes to academics and the resulting income.

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

#264

Post by fridif »

endisneigh wrote: post #238
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.

I don't understand this comment lol. You say you don't understand the hate for SAT, but then proceed with an example of how you did better than your ex-gf in college despite doing presumably worse on the SAT then her?

My high school GPA was very bad, my SAT was "good enough to get in", and my university GPA was excellent, showing that I was now an adult and taking things seriously.

No SAT, no admission, I think would have been the case for me.

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

#265

Post by rejectedandsad »

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…

> All the best colleagues I've worked with aced the SAT and/or other standardized tests

I did not do well on my SATs (1500/1600) - do you think there's any way to make up for this? Or am I supposed to be as unimpressive as I was at 17 forever?

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

#266

Post by iammisc »

zzt123 wrote: post #84
seriousquestion wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thomas Sowell is easily in the top 5 intellectuals alive, and yet most people are barely aware of him and his work. Why? I genuinely don't understand why he is so ignored.

Whether he is ignored or not depends on the thought circle of discourse and how that circle sets, or does not set, expectations based on skin color. He’s ignored for the same reason Clarence Thomas is ignored - the juxtaposition between the color of his skin and his words.

Thomas isn't just ignored, he is actively campaigned against (As a person, rather than his views) and 'unpersoned'. For example, there is a wonderful PBS documentary, Clarence Thomas in his own words, that was removed from Amazon Prime TV during Black History month at a time the company chose to 'center' black voices.

Apparently only black voices with the correct political leanings.

Love him or hate him, I highly recommend the documentary. It's very humanizing.

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

#267

Post by whoaisme »

rejectedandsad wrote: post #240
Causality1 wrote: post #74

Aligning enrollment with state demographics would require cutting the share of those students by almost two-thirds. My best friend growing up was Korean. I saw firsthand the amount of effort he put into his studies. Why should we allow any institution to invalidate his work because our culture produces lazier, dumber students? Why should we artificially prop up patterns of thought and behavior that have negative effe…

I worked really hard in high school and got basically nothing for it (went to an average college, and now have an average job). My message to your friend would be "tough".

Basic people like you shouldn't be giving messages. You failed so I guess that means you'd prefer if everyone else fails too. I don't know why you're so bitter about your average life because you seem average in general.

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

#268

Post by ajsnigrutin »

ldiracdelta wrote: post #255
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #250

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 y…

Some people in America don't like SAT's because of "disparate impact" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact

But this is a thing that needs to be fixed in earlier education (basically the schooling/schools before college need to be fixed), and not later, where you basically accept an objectively worse applicant, because they happen to be some specific race.

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

#269

Post by endisneigh »

iammisc wrote: post #251
endisneigh wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this comment lol. You say you don't understand the hate for SAT, but then proceed with an example of how you did better than your ex-gf in college despite doing presumably worse on the SAT then her?

No. He's saying that the GPA in college doesn't matter, because he just asked his teacher to raise his grades, and that worked. Whereas his girlfriend was more intelligent by the SAT, but didn't realize this one simple trick.

what? I don't think that's what he's saying lol

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

#270

Post by SuoDuanDao »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #250

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 y…

There's a decent argument to be made that standardized tests distort the education system by making good test results the goal of teaching and attending class, rather than learning whatever the class is supposed to teach. To put it differently, it's not comparing students on the basis of tests that's the problem, it's what those tests cause the students and teachers to do in the year leading up to them.

I used to be quite strongly anti-test because in my opinion, testing well is a skill like any other that can be learned largely independently of what the test is on, and it doesn't transfer outside of a school environment. I've softened that opinion a little because testing well seems to require performing abstract thought under stress, which is probably useful in more situations than I originally thought. Still, while it's useful for categorizing students, I still suspect it has a net negative effect on learning outcomes.

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