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Why is the university of California dropping the SAT?

theatlantic.com

621–630 of 647 posts

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

#621

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He's extreme far right wing, especially compared to other parties in the USA, which tend to be right wing and moderate-right compared to those in Europe, where the terms originated.

So, data-driven, factual research is the domain of the extreme far right wing these days? I mean, I knew the left was illogical, irrational, and irresponsible, but didn't realize leftists were admitting it.

Data is racist. (I guess that triggered a bot. Zero points as soon as it posted. Nice to know somebody cares enough to follow my comments around.)

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

#622

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> I'm not even counted as "diverse" (because I'm not black or hispanic) despite coming from a muslim family and middle eastern background. I can only select "white", though I'm not white white. Should that even matter for admission purposes?

My high-school's college admissions advisors told us, in no uncertain terms, if you are non-white or mixed race, make sure you declare that because it will help your chances.

I have worked at companies where their referral bonus schedule rewards white males at one-quarter the rate of female Asians.

But the application of course states that race and gender are not considered....hmmm.

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

#623
post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what data you're talking about. What I've seen so far: SAT Income are correlated => let's not rely on SAT? That's such a BS argument. Anything related to income will be (statistically speaking) associated with intelligence and other personal traits (perseverance etc). Any of this will be obviously correlated with your kid's SAT --- it's called genetics. Any other, more sensible data to look at?

> Anything related to income will be (statistically speaking) associated with intelligence and other personal traits (perseverance etc). Any of this will be obviously correlated with your kid's SAT --- it's called genetics. No, it's called social darwinism.

tdeck, genetics is a statistical phenomena. Your parents being smart/strong/fast runner/good in music etc doesn't turn you into one of these instantly, but they're statistically correlated with you having similar abilities and traits.

How can you argue against this? Isn't this obvious? Isn't this what genetics is all about --- parents' genes being passed to offspring?

You're either blinded by your ideology... or maybe don't understand biology.

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

#624
post #357

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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.

At a superficial level yes. The actual impact to people and society I think is far greater and will have an overall negative affect on society and interracial relationships. Putting myself in the shoes of someone that was bumped out of something they earned through hard work and dedication because my skin color was not correct would make me bitter to those that implemented the policy as well as (hopefully less so) th…

Not to forget that a when person who fits the criteria get in, they can most likely never be sure whether they deserved it or if it is because of their skin colour.

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

#625
post #50

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In some schools, so I understand, AP and Honors courses come with a "bonus" to GPA—so if you get 100% in the course, it may go down on your transcript as a 110%, that sort of thing.

My school had a pretty good system, where AP grades got a boost proportional to how far from 100 they were, something like 40%, so if you got an 80 raw it would be boosted by 20x.4 = 8 to 88 final score. This effectively means that weaker students aren't penalized for chosing harder classes whilst very strong students don't get rediculously inflated grades.

Oh, at my school it was just a flat addition.

That's how the valedictorian and salutatorian a year or so after me ended up with final grades of something like 103.4 and 103.5.

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

#626

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The equilibrium state in this scenario would be all public schools approaching equivalence, which would be a positive outcome.

Not positive at all; the only possible equivalence is when every school is equally bad

Eh, kids from rich/educated families probably get a much smaller marginal benefit from the quality of the school since they're getting tons of extra stimulation at home (stability, parents reading to them at night, parents encouraging academic pursuits). Meanwhile lower-achieving kids benefit just from having the higher-achieving kids in the same classroom.

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

#627
post #612

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Sorry I meant entirely the same set of individuals. I have no doubt there’s overlap. In short I agree with you: fuck people who gerrymander school districts because they don’t want their kids to experience diversity. My point has more been that opposing college AA is not synonymous with opposing all instances of programs that aim to help the underprivileged. I just think by the time AA is relevant it is simply often…

And I’m telling you, at the actual school board meetings it is entirely the same set of people. The people you are complaining about don’t show up on either side.

I was making two points and saying I also think clueless woke charter school parents are especially harmful and perhaps the real problem lies somewhere between something AA can address and the actual logistics of how schools receive funding and how much. I’m not necessarily sold that strictly AA at earlier stages really solves for these problematic situations either, though it might help and I do think that if AA is going to solve anything it has a much better shot and bigger impact in the early years, yes. I also suspect attacking the problem differently (at the state or city level not school board level) might be more effective at side skirting the stalemate. Ignore all that.

What is the argument from these people that show up across the board to oppose AA programs at younger levels? What are the programs? What is their goal? Just trying to get a profile on the type of people who are frustrating you.

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

#628

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In other words, use subjective criteria that allow them to slip discrimination in under the radar.

When you admit as many students as a UC, you can easily run regressions to determine whether a particular admissions officer is being discriminatory. They should also be able to anonymize applicants pretty well.

They should be able to--that doesn't mean they want to know the answer. It's very obvious they want to discriminate but not be detected doing so. They're not going to run those regressions and they aren't going to anonymize.

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

#629
post #368

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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…

Exactly. From an European perspective America's obsession with race seems absolutely idiotic. Progressive taxation and major help for poor communities and families regardless of skin colour is obviously the only sensible solution.

As an American, I think it's because the treatments for racism are far cheaper and more tolerable than the treatments for poverty. Minorities were kept out of any opportunity to create generational wealth for a long time, due to racism. The problem we need to solve to reverse that is deprivation of generational wealth for decades, not racism from 60 years ago. We don't want to talk about that, though, because most of the solutions end up looking like wealth redistribution. There isn't a way to cheat poverty that I've seen. You either have enough money or you don't, and the only way out is to have enough money.

That's not to say that racism isn't a problem; it is, and we should fix it. It's not going to magically solve problems like graduation rates and income gaps, however.

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

#630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought AA meant that, when given two equally qualified applicants, where one is caucasian and the other is a minority, the seat should go to the minority. In light of that, Sowell's take makes no sense.

> given two equally qualified applicants I wonder if that push toward diminishing the impact of measurable, standardized testing isn't an attempts at generating more "equally qualified applicants"

There are complaints that standardize testing isn't equal. Basically that some portions of the testing reflect white culture, which puts minorities at a disadvantage. I read the article a while back, but one of the examples they gave was the choice of words to test on the SAT. One of the questions was asking for a synonym for "armoire". The article posited that that term was far more likely to be recognized by white students because their family was more likely to actually own one, and further to refer it to as an armoire instead of simply a wardrobe or cabinets. I think there was another question that involved boats that was similar.

I think the article also noted that in many cases, the questions really discriminated more against poverty than race. Race gets dragged in because people of color are drastically overrepresented in poverty, so anything impacted by poverty will also show an effect along racial boundaries (at least when aggregated).

The underlying question is whether the score boost you get from being born into a high enough social class to have wide exposure to things like that actually makes you more qualified or not. It certainly boosts your test scores, but does knowing what an armoire is actually make you more qualified, or does it just keep poor people out?

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