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UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

latimes.com

21–30 of 235 posts

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#21

This is a positive development. We need to minimize the extent to which people are exposed to math (which quite obviously reeks of white supremacy, according to like everyone I know including the Gates Foundation) [1] https://www.newsweek.com/math-suffers-white-supremacy-accord... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29273406

"Statistically speaking, you are probably taking up room that should go to someone else. If you are a white cis man (meaning you identify as male and you were assigned male at birth) you almost certainly should resign from your position of power. That’s right, please quit. Too difficult? Well, as a first step, at least get off your hiring committee, your curriculum committee, and make sure you’re replaced by a woman of color or trans person."

https://blogs.ams.org/inclusionexclusion/2017/05/11/get-out-...

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#22

Wonderfully empowering for the admissions administrators! Schools will be needing to keep on a lot of low-level staff: >record-breaking number of freshman applications for fall 2021 — more than 200,000 >evaluate the flood of applications without test scores, using 13 other factors And will be able to produce whatever demographics are demanded by the politics of the moment: https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu…

What's the play? College prep K-8, then move to Fresno for 9-12 so you can be in top 9%?

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#24
post #4

As a Cal grad this is an easy reason to point to the next time I reject an alumni donation call. If the goal is to accept more students on merit, this is a big failure in my opinion: rich kids can just game the “holistic” admissions with opportunities not available to middle/lower class students (“volunteer” trips, extracurriculars, etc.).

Can they “game” themselves into being designated as African American?

Aka "Does anyone else think black people have it too easy and are the real racists?"

Refreshingly honest, I suppose.

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#25
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can they “game” themselves into being designated as African American?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Dolezal And more do Native American. That's an easier one to check on the checkboxes for whites. That's why there has been an exponential increase of the self-identified "Native American" population since the 1960s. Elizabeth Warren is one of the more famous self-identified Native Americans (her siblings never knew they were). In the last census their increase has been the most in…

To be fair to her siblings, they didn't know they were Native American because they were not in fact Native American.

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#26

>a student’s high school grade-point average, the rigor of courses taken, special talents, essays and extracurricular activities. All of these metrics seem MUCH more gameable than the SAT. Sure, buying an SAT practice test book might bump your score up by 20 points. But if you look at the rigor of courses available, that is going to vary DRASTICALLY from school to school. At least when I was in high school, poorer sc…

That's the point. UC wants to implement affirmative action but can't because voters rejected Prop 16. So they do this to make it easier to justify that their target demographics are "qualified" because now there's no objective measurement metric to judge people by.

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#27
I feel like a good middle ground would be to use the SAT or alternative as a threshold for consideration, but not for ranking. I could believe that there could be a good evidence based cut off (perhaps with other quantitative measures) to answer "does this student meet the basic requirements" much more so then "will a student who scored 50 points higher do well after 4 years of study"

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can they “game” themselves into being designated as African American?

California public universities are not allowed to look at race in admissions, so gaming racial designation wouldn't help.

Sometimes names, surnames and neighborhood are sufficient in some cases, I'd imagine.

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#29
I found what is funny / pathetic about this is that there are tons of psychology / education / especially educational measurement top experts in the UC system, and they know how wrong it is, while they just keep mouth shut.

The whole anti-standard-testing movement is pushed by ideology leftists and corrupted bureaucrats, but the supposed experts just quietly watch the world burn. Lol.

Update: I found experts in the UCLA were tasked to make the suggestion. They suggested a new admission assessment. So the bureaucrats just totally disregarded their recommendation . See https://50.cresst.org/2020/05/20/cresst-recommendation-for-n...

Also quote: The Task Force in its review found—to some surprise—that tests such as the SAT provide a useful tool to support admissions leading to a more diverse pool of admitted students than UC otherwise would have had. The Task Force found that approximately 25% of low-income, first-generation, and underrepresented minor students earned their guaranteed admission into UC because of test scores. The Task Force’s report showed that test scores are better predictors of success for underrepresented minority students, first-generation students, and those whose families are low- income. Using recent UC-specific data, the Task Force found that test scores remain predictive of success even after student demographics are taken into account. That is especially true when compared to high school grades, whose predictive power has gone down due, in part, to grade inflation. These findings tell us that there is value in the evidence that educational assessments provide, but they can be improved—and so can the UC admissions process as a result. In a vote of confidence in its veracity, the Task Force report was unanimously endorsed by faculty members of the UC’s Academic Senate, 51–0.

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#30
post #2

UC schools have already become dubious - the entitlement of grads, the actual LACK of skills, not remotely "hungry" enough to have any grit or motivation, etc. My father (an engineering manager) always said: "If you want GOOD employees, you never want to hire from UCB, Stanford, Cal Tech, etc. The best engineers in California come from Cal Poly SLO and Cal Poly Pomona. They are actually trained as engineers". This is…

How many Cal Poly SLO grads at Stripe (or choose any stratospheric make-you-rich company you like) compared to Stanford grads?

Show me how many GED students who had to fight certificate bias with get hired out of sheer skill.
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