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

latimes.com

131–140 of 235 posts

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

#131

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…

About 10 years ago in my old university they had no minimum score because back then Computer Science was still considered a fringe field for geek but I digress. Eventually they had to put a minimum because there was too much low score students draining the professors and tutors time both in and outside class. When Computer Science became mainstream and synonymous with making lots of money then they began to limit pla…

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

#132
post #127

The comments on these articles seem to generally come out in favor of standardized testing (specifically the SAT). I find that interesting because college admissions seemingly generalizes to candidate evaluation. And if you were to suggest a standard leetcode test for software engineering job candidates? Man, this place would go up in flames.

I’m not for or against these leetcode style tests, but I think the difference is that they see a correlation between admission test score and how well they’d actually do on the course. Can the companies using “leetcode” tests prove the same?

A common thing I see missed in arguments against like leetcode is that good hiring pipelines would not look at just leetcode scores. You want leetcode + good project + system design. Leetcode is excellent for testing data structures and algorithms, reasoning about code and edge case etc. These are absolutely necessary but not sufficient to build good software.

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

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

#134

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…

I’m curious why we’d expect achievements in STEM at the age of 16/17, when students are applying for college.

To keep this in perspective, kids haven’t even taken Science 101 at this point.

And the exceptional students who have won Olympiad golds or created open source software, etc, would more than be covered by the “special talents, achievements and awards in any field” section.

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

#135
post #77
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, firms will need to do much more leetcode as the signaling value of a degree decreases.

Good luck to those firms that have the fastest b-tree optimizations physically possible, and no customers.

Having an abundance of talented developer labor so even money losing companies can afford to buy it is not a problem that exists in the world.

What usally happens now is that developers leave if there are no customers, but yes, if we ever reach that state where even the companies with the worst products can hire the best developers, then wages will have fallen quite a bit.

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

#136

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…

I’m curious why we’d expect achievements in STEM at the age of 16/17, when students are applying for college. To keep this in perspective, kids haven’t even taken Science 101 at this point. And the exceptional students who have won Olympiad golds or created open source software, etc, would more than be covered by the “special talents, achievements and awards in any field” section.

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

#137

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…

I have a friend that’s a CSU faculty member in science/engineering. The amount of ideological crap coming down the pipeline is shocking to him… and he’s a pretty liberal guy. But he has a mortgage to pay and dealing with protesting students doesn’t really interest him. He became a professor because he liked teaching, not to become a target.

> he has a mortgage to pay and dealing with protesting students doesn’t really interest him

The great irony being it's decisions like this that are undermining support for the University of California. We're not there yet. But a few more of these, and I could see an off-year proposition that dramatically cuts the UC budget.

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

#138
post #88

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…

Three wrongs don't make a right, though.

It's much less wrong than the holistical admission procedure.

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

#139

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…

the gaokao has also equity scores, requesting lower results for minorities, foreign nationals, persons with family origin in Taiwan, and children of military casualties

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

#140
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…

The only way to be color-blind is standardized tests.

It's possible that standardized tests are biased. Then fix them!

I didn't have rich parents. So I had never gone abroad.

A rich parent can send their kids on "charity missions" to poor countries to rack up those "extra curricular points".

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