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

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

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 235 posts

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

#41

Post by stadium »

WalterBright wrote: post #40

From their criteria page: https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/counselors/fres... "Special talents, achievements and awards in a particular field, such as visual and performing arts, communication or athletic endeavors; special skills, such as demonstrated written and oral proficiency in other languages; special interests, such as intensive study and exploration of other cultures; experiences that demonstrate…

> Notably absent is achievement in any STEM field.

It's covered by the first line of your quoted comment, right? "Special talents, achievements and awards in a particular field."

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

#43

Post by msravi »

stadium wrote: post #41
WalterBright wrote: post #40

From their criteria page: https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/counselors/fres... "Special talents, achievements and awards in a particular field, such as visual and performing arts, communication or athletic endeavors; special skills, such as demonstrated written and oral proficiency in other languages; special interests, such as intensive study and exploration of other cultures; experiences that demonstrate…

> Notably absent is achievement in any STEM field. It's covered by the first line of your quoted comment, right? "Special talents, achievements and awards in a particular field."

...such as visual and performing arts, communication or athletic endeavors. The lack of emphasis on STEM in the examples is apparent.

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

#44

Post by gibbonsrcool »

1cvmask wrote: post #16

These false flag diversity initiatives are there to entrench the privileged white elite who are threatened by the children of often 1st generation immigrants. From the article: UC admissions officers have said they were able to thoroughly evaluate the flood of applications without test scores, using 13 other factors in the system’s review process, such as a student’s high school grade-point average, the rigor of cour…

Let’s separate sports from academics. Sports organizations can exist outside the school. I’m suggesting this for all ages. Players can compete in divisions based on skill without school grouping as a factor. A lot of kids don’t play sports because they’re not competitive enough at their school. With these extra-academic divisions there’s more players for each pool of skill level. Another benefit is connecting people across different socioeconomic backgrounds.

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

#45

Post by SkittyDog »

WalterBright wrote: post #35
xyzzy21 wrote: 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…

> If you want GOOD employees, you never want to hire from UCB, Stanford, Cal Tech, etc. HAhahahahahaaaa (Caltech grad here. BTW, anyone who spells it Cal Tech knows next to nothing about Caltech.)

I have no problem with CalTech. I have several friends who work there. But... your comment does not reflect well on CalTech.

I don't think you're doing a good job of defending your alma mater, here. You may want to reconsider your comment, if that's your intent.

OTOH if you are being sarcastic and trying to insult CalTech, then by all means... Mission accomplished.

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

#46

Post by lokar »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #31
lokar wrote: post #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"

According to the College Board, which administes the SAT, the basic requirements cutoff is 530 for math, and 480 for English, i.e. total SAT score of 1010 out of 1600. The mean score for people attending UC Berkeley is 1415 out of 1600. If the UC admissions office were to use a threshold, it would have to be low enough that they don't get more Asians than they want. That threshold might end up being as low as 1010.

Are you saying the racial demographics of students who score above 1010 are very different from that of all graduating students who intend to go on to post secondary education, and that fact would be politically unacceptable?

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

#47

Post by stadium »

msravi wrote: post #43
stadium wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Notably absent is achievement in any STEM field. It's covered by the first line of your quoted comment, right? "Special talents, achievements and awards in a particular field."

...such as visual and performing arts, communication or athletic endeavors. The lack of emphasis on STEM in the examples is apparent.

As a native English speaker I read "such as" to mean "including but not limited to."

STEM is a field (although still broad) and they are looking for accomplishment in a field.

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

#48

Post by causi »

everybodyknows wrote: post #7

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…

Seems like a great way to completely screw over asian students.

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

#49

Post by Der_Einzige »

xyzzy21 wrote: 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…

[flagged]

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

#50

Post by a-dub »

temp8964 wrote: post #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 U…

previously:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/07/why-univer...

Post reply on HN