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

latimes.com

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

#101

Post by keeganpoppen »

abhiyerra wrote: post #64

I was on the UC Berkeley campus on Tuesday. So many more black and latino students than when I was on campus. It was nice. I had many black friends in high school and none when I went to Berkeley in 2005-2010. I can say the SAT, ACT, etc. are biased against anyone who doesn't have the money to get the prep for them.

where are all these people spending hours getting "prepped" for the SAT, exactly? not at my high school... and where are all these test prep gods that are somehow getting enormous scores for "undeserving" students? does anyone actually know anyone who "prepped" their way to more than, what, 100-200 points of improvement max? and honestly that's pretty generous. surely less than the advantage from taking the test multiple times (which is a huge advantage for people with money, surely). unless we are talking very low score -> moderate score improvement... but i don't think that's gonna get anyone into Berkeley... setting hard admissions criteria on scores was already WAYY out of fashion by the time i went to college... i can't imagine it is somehow more in vogue these days.

i have a hard time understanding how affirmative action + SAT scores is somehow worse than affirmative action w/o SAT scores. the former seems like a clear win?

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

#102

Post by jimbob45 »

toast0 wrote: post #22
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…

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

Why not fuck around in high school and then go get a 4.0 at a semi-prestigious community college?

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

#103

Post by keeganpoppen »

abhiyerra wrote: post #100
zzt123 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know about the ACT, but the SAT in that time period was trivial to study for. I had one Barrons book, and the rest was accomplished by being a student in a public school. There were no surprises come test day. I genuinely don’t understand when people say the SAT is so biased, because it seemed quite fair to me compared to alternative metrics. Unless asking someone to spend a lot of time studying is too much t…

The SAT isn't hard to study for, but the question is, if your dad is in jail (which many of my black friend's dads were), you are feeling uncertain about the world because of the color of your skin, would you put in the effort? I think people look at tests like the one and all, but many kids have other stuff to work out.

what part of this is fixed by getting rid of the SATs, exactly? do all the other problems that are making it hard to get on top of school suddenly disappear? do they magically disappear in college? how is it even beneficial to remove one possible avenue for demonstrating aptitude beyond the ability to succeed in a classroom environment, which is profoundly tilted toward rich families who can help kids with homework, bitch at teachers about bad grades, etc.?

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

#104

Post by b9a2cab5 »

nitrogen wrote: post #94
WalterBright wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many dropouts have successfully designed a jet engine? any of the critical parts on a rocket? a suspension bridge? a building more than 10 stories high? a submarine hull? a utility powerplant?

How many have been given the opportunity to do so? Could a pure apprenticeship model without universities (but still with lots of theory) work for engineering professions?

Lambda School shows it doesn't work for software engineering. A so-called "apprenticeship" model for something like mechanical engineering would basically be the exact same set of (difficult) math and physics courses but without the garbage breadth requirements, which doesn't exactly sound attractive to dropouts.

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

#105

Post by ngc248 »

lokar wrote: post #46
rahimnathwani wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No, what he is saying is that preparing for the SAT (or any competitive exam) is like an arms race. Immigrants from asia (where it is already hyper-competitive and the population is more) will be determined and over-prepare and clear the SAT with high scores. It is like "knowing is half the battle". This will fill all the classes with asians, that is why you read about all of the ivy league's etc having a different cutoff for asians.

If determined immigrants start getting in more than your local populace, how do you make sure that admissions are balanced. That is the problem.

But yeah some "administrator" evaluating subjective criteria like courses taken, rigor etc is also not good and a pure objective test is also not good. I feel a balance needs to be struck, it is a hard problem

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

#106

Post by hn_go_brrrrr »

jimbob45 wrote: post #102
toast0 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why not fuck around in high school and then go get a 4.0 at a semi-prestigious community college?

Except "prestigious" (even "semi-prestigious") and "community college" are mutually exclusive. You may be able to get a satisfactory education at one, depending on the college and the field of study...but prestigious? No way.

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

#107

Post by abhiyerra »

keeganpoppen wrote: post #103
abhiyerra wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The SAT isn't hard to study for, but the question is, if your dad is in jail (which many of my black friend's dads were), you are feeling uncertain about the world because of the color of your skin, would you put in the effort? I think people look at tests like the one and all, but many kids have other stuff to work out.

what part of this is fixed by getting rid of the SATs, exactly? do all the other problems that are making it hard to get on top of school suddenly disappear? do they magically disappear in college? how is it even beneficial to remove one possible avenue for demonstrating aptitude beyond the ability to succeed in a classroom environment, which is profoundly tilted toward rich families who can help kids with homework,…

Strength leads to strength. If you can get to a place of prestige and that place continues to have high standards, then the people who are bound for the streets or no purpose have a means to a higher goal. Maybe I believe that if you give people a little bit of chance, they end up better?

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

#108

Post by ngc248 »

WalterBright wrote: post #75

"UC admissions officers have said they were able to thoroughly evaluate the flood of applications without test scores" Of course, there's no way to determine if they were thorough or not.

hahah .... who will evaluate the evaluator's evaluations? Seems to be extremely subjective. May be they should go with a 50/50 split for SAT and the subjective criteria. This won't be perfect but both camps would be covered.

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

#109

Post by b9a2cab5 »

abhiyerra wrote: post #100
zzt123 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know about the ACT, but the SAT in that time period was trivial to study for. I had one Barrons book, and the rest was accomplished by being a student in a public school. There were no surprises come test day. I genuinely don’t understand when people say the SAT is so biased, because it seemed quite fair to me compared to alternative metrics. Unless asking someone to spend a lot of time studying is too much t…

The SAT isn't hard to study for, but the question is, if your dad is in jail (which many of my black friend's dads were), you are feeling uncertain about the world because of the color of your skin, would you put in the effort? I think people look at tests like the one and all, but many kids have other stuff to work out.

If you aren't willing to put in the effort for a multiple choice (easy) exam, you are failing any STEM college degree (the only ones that give you a chance at making it out of the poorhouse), straight up. Compared to the SAT intro calculus at any top university is magnitudes harder.

If you admit the kids you're talking about under affirmative action they'd just be weeded out in intro courses and get relegated to some social sciences degree with negative return on tuition. That is objectively worse than rejecting them.

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

#110

Post by youeseh »

TeeMassive wrote: post #80
rackjack wrote: post #76

In China there is 1 exam, the Gaokao. This exam in no small part decides your future. In the past, you had one attempt, and if you failed, tough luck. Now they let kids retake it a couple times. One exam. One billion people. One standardized metric to determine who goes where. There are flaws to this of course. The rich, with better access to tutoring and such, naturally have an advantage over the poor. But herein li…

It has been my impression from people who lived in China that guanxi (connections) is far more important than the Gaokao and the main difference between the have and the have-nots is whether you and or your parents have a permit to live in a city. When I bring the point of the standard exam as a great equalizer they immediately laughed and told me that the US is a egalitarian paradise compared to what goes on there.

My ex-boss is Chinese and this is what she had to say: The best universities in China are public universities. Performing competitively in the single standardized exam is the only ticket into the most competitive university programs.

Everyone's results are posted publicly. The government works very hard to prevent cheating, or loss of trust in the exam or its results.

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