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Why is the university of California dropping the SAT?

theatlantic.com

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

#521

Post by BeFlatXIII »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #513
rayiner wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That kid working 25 hours a week to help their family make rent is going to have an easier time buckling down for one test than keeping up their GPA over four years. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2021/03/23/sta...

How does that work? You’re saying a child being literally homeless can focus on keeping GPA up?

You got the point of the parent comment backward. It’s specifically easier for a bright child in poverty to ace one test than to maintain a GPA for four years.

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

#522

Post by BeFlatXIII »

scottLobster wrote: post #338
hellbannedguy wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a girlfriend at U C Davis, and I found the opposite. The best students were called 4clickers. They sat in the front row, with four color pens in hand. They never helped, and one on occasion turned her in for cheating. She used to talk about how competitive thstudrnts were. They all wanted a spot in a graduate program. It was the most depressing school I ever visited. Couldn't wait to leave on Sunday. (I was sup…

Yeah it really depends on the students' objectives/options. For Electrical/Computer Engineering majors at my University we all knew we were all going to at least get decent jobs at graduation, those going to Grad school were the minority. So it was a very collegial atmosphere for the most part. But if you're in one of those programs where the Undergrad is fairly worthless by itself and are competing for a limited num…

Sometimes the _professors_ would get sick of the shit the competitive students spread over the class. Nothing quite as satisfactory as watching the lights go out when a pre-med’s career prospects get ranked over a B in organic chemistry. Leave the professor’s attention for those of us who are here to learn, not for those who merely want to collect As.

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

#523

Post by hedora »

cmh89 wrote: post #386
starchild_3001 wrote: post #333

Cancelling SAT (especially subject exams) is the stupidest decision I've seen anywhere. Make access more fair? Sure. Cancel it? Plain wrong! How do I know? I'm one of those students who didn't have stellar high school grades, but I excelled in subject exams --- those subjects were genuinely interesting to me (math, science). I didn't find the rest of high school interesting, and I wasn't a nerd nerd studying anything…

Deciding whether or not the SAT is equitable, fair, or valuable shouldn't have any anecdotal component. For every one person with a story like yours, there is someone who had a bad experience with it for reasons outside of their control. I did exceptionally well in take home or book assignments because I understand the subject matter, but never was a good test taker. I took the ACT and did 'fine' but I could have don…

The article presents a lot of relevant data. In particular, about half the people that got in with high test scores but low grades were from under privileged groups. I’d wager that such groups are less than half the population of admitted students.

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

#524

Post by BeFlatXIII »

akomtu wrote: post #36
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…

The top 10 percent policy is a merit based system and the most recent flavor of "progressivism" says that merit based systems are racist and should be abolished. Lottery and quota based admissions is what considered progressive today.

Lottery systems with an initial cutoff make sense if you have a large surplus of applicants who surpass your lower quality threshold. Rather than make asinine minuscule decisions over who exactly the top 1,526 out of 10,000 are, cull the 7,234 that don’t make the cut and randomly select from the survivors.

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

#525

Post by username90 »

UncleMeat wrote: post #506
dcow wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The means at which we arrive upon AA is even suspect: A: We want equality, why are white people successful? B: Clearly because they went to a good college. C: Okay easy, let’s put the underprivileged into good colleges, that should fix ‘er right up. It doesn't seem like anybody is interested in solving the hard problem of why underprivileged communities aren’t producing good high school graduates. Maybe it has someth…

> It doesn't seem like anybody is interested in solving the hard problem of why underprivileged communities aren’t producing good high school graduates. The same people who are seeking equity in college are seeking it in high school and elementary school and preschool. The same opponents and arguments come out against them at all of these phases. I have personal experience with this work in both the elementary school…

So why is affirmative action still needed at college level if they get so much help in all the years before?

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

#526

Post by datad »

dragonwriter wrote: post #451
temp8964 wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read somewhere says "Asian American/Pacific Islander" is a totally made up term by the federal government and basically has no root in reality.

All human “races” are social constructs with no basis in reality other than the social perceptions of the group delineating them. So, yeah, that's true of API, but its just as true of, say, White.

It’s a self label though, so social perceptions aren’t involved. I am whatever race I identify as, not whatever race other people think of me as. I can tell people that I’m Mexican and who are they to say otherwise?

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

#527

Post by thereare5lights »

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…

> Maybe we need randomized admissions when kids qualify above a threshold...

That won't work.

The whole point is this is social engineering to ensure that demographics at universities match demographics at large.

Truly random admissions won't guarantee that especially when the applicant pool doesn't match the demographics at large to begin with.

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

#528

Post by setr »

chillwaves wrote: post #503
livinginfear wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " How do you define success?" Surely you jest. It really doesn't matter how you define success, IQ is a valid predictor of pretty much any definition of success you can think of. Income, academic achievement, you name it.

Defining IQ is tricky to begin with. So is defining success. Do you really not see the issue?

Under GP’s terms, success is trivial to define — pick a reasonable metric. IQ is also well defined — general intelligence is not, and whether IQ maps to general intelligence is questionable (because the latter is hard to define). But for this argument, you don’t need to define general intelligence, and really even IQ’s definition doesn’t matter as long it’s stable (define IQ as simply the outcome of an IQ test). Regardless of IQ’s definition, or the precise questions posed, it simply needs to (consistently) correlate with your selected definition of success to be useful.

He’s also served the counter argument on a plate: pick a reasonable definition of success, and find little or no correlation to IQ. You only need to agree the definition is “reasonable”, and the study is not flawed.

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

#529

Post by nonethewiser »

Spivak wrote: post #357
paulpauper wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. when we hear about 'promoting opportunity' , what they mean is is we need more of groups X and Y and less Z. Motte and bailey at its finest.

Any change to the college admissions process will positively affect some groups and negatively affect others. There will always be some controversy over whether any change actually makes it fairer or whether the changes were made to achieve a specific outcome.

Which is why chosing by merit is the only fair way

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

#530

Post by nonethewiser »

cmh89 wrote: post #386
starchild_3001 wrote: post #333

Cancelling SAT (especially subject exams) is the stupidest decision I've seen anywhere. Make access more fair? Sure. Cancel it? Plain wrong! How do I know? I'm one of those students who didn't have stellar high school grades, but I excelled in subject exams --- those subjects were genuinely interesting to me (math, science). I didn't find the rest of high school interesting, and I wasn't a nerd nerd studying anything…

Deciding whether or not the SAT is equitable, fair, or valuable shouldn't have any anecdotal component. For every one person with a story like yours, there is someone who had a bad experience with it for reasons outside of their control. I did exceptionally well in take home or book assignments because I understand the subject matter, but never was a good test taker. I took the ACT and did 'fine' but I could have don…

Even if all of that is true it's not an SAT problem.
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