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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

#171

Post by zzt123 »

abhiyerra wrote: post #122
keeganpoppen wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ah, so you just find a way to continue to have high standards while continuously lowering the standard for admission but that's not even the point... the post was about how students who don't care about school will somehow be better served by getting into a good school anyway. sure, some people will have an "oh shit i cant screw this up" moment, but... many will just fail. right? and in the meantime, the student who…

I don't think you have to worry here. The people who take the SAT are a minority. We need to stop thinking everyone takes the SAT. It is not valid. This policy benefits the people who take the SAT, which is likely a minority of students.

Hardly a minority of students. The year before the pandemic, 77% of college applicants took the SAT or ACT.

That was 2019-20, after colleges had starting going whatever you want to call not requiring standardized tests.

https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2021/09/13...

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

#172

Post by angelzen »

derbOac wrote: post #167
eunos wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

FWIW, I've been on graduate admissions committees for many years. Standardized tests work both ways; it really depends on the admissions committee and how they use the test scores. To borrow a phrase, "test scores don't prejudice, people do." I've seen both sorts of problems. When test scores are used well, they function the way that some people here see them. They provide another bit of evidence of potential, and ca…

Everything has flaws. Everything is game-able. The question is to find the least game-able system. Where is the line between "tests can be gamed" and "one can prepare for tests by educating themselves"?

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

#173

Post by angelzen »

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.

Growing up in a communist country, the further removed from the standardized college entrance exam you are, the more connections matter. Standardized college entrance exam will get you into a good university, but connections decide your first job after graduation. It only gets worse from there.

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

#174

Post by pnutjam »

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…

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/734/the-campus-tour-has-bee...

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

#175

Post by dang »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #49
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]

Would you please stop posting flamewar comments? You've been doing it a lot lately and we ban such accounts. Regardless of how wrong others are or you feel they are, it's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

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

#176

Post by angelzen »

throwaway34241 wrote: post #130
rsj_hn wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great if your only requirement is to train software developers to write CRUD apps - you can learn to do that by watching youtube videos, reading self-study materials, and taking MOOC classes - but if you want mechanical engineers, chemical engineers, electrical engineers, and be a leader in materials science or chip manufacturing, then you still need universities. So the price of this "equity" movement is goin…

> So the price of this "equity" movement is going to be (and always was) mass de-industrialization and transforming the economy to third world status I also disagree with these sort of decisions but this seems a bit hyperbolic. Certain institutions will probably admit fewer students who are able to excel in those fields, and if the change is large enough it will affect the quality of those degree programs (although i…

"It's hard for me to imagine every single university getting on board with this"

Think for a bit how many things that were hard to imagine 10 years ago are now common place in the corporate world. Social conformity pressure is a real b*tch. The best we can hope is that the occasional larger-than-life professor will be left alone to teach his craft the way he sees fit. Pray that your kids have a chance to meet one of them and the wisdom to subject themselves to the gauntlet.

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

#177

Post by lokar »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #61
lokar wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, I'm not saying that, and had not considered that question. But FWIW my guess is that the two groups you list have similar demographics (racial, socioeconomic etc.). What I was saying: GP suggested having a threshold used for qualification, and then selecting from qualified candidates using other criteria. If you support this proposal, there's an upper limit to the threshold you choose. If you choose too high a th…

I actually had in mind selecting at random from the pool that meet the minimum criteria.

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

#178

Post by everybodyknows »

causi wrote: post #48
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.

Well, America is still more or less a democracy -- the locally-ruling parties don't seem to have entirely corrupted election systems, yet. So getting involved in politics might make a difference. Best hurry up, while you can.

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

#179

Post by spoonjim »

protomyth wrote: post #149
Auracle wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 1/8th. Is that enough? 1/4th? Where's the line? My state gave out grants to small businesses during the pandemic and directly said on the application that preference would be given to minorities. I didn't check both white and native only because a local organization would be dispersing the funds and I live in a rural area. Quite frankly, I'm sick of "reverse" racism. That was my state government all but telling m…

Well, the US government has 1/4 but some tribes go down to 1/8. If the position / scholarship says decent the tribes have that documentation too. You can get a document that says you are not enrolled but are a descendent of the tribe. If you are talking about the COVID funding, I think some documentation from the tribe that you are 1/8 in would suffice. Also check the tribal constitution and minority business rules o…

Well the blood thing is just a complete nonsense way of assessing oppression/opportunities. Someone who is the child of a full blood Native American who was working as a bartender when she met a white corporate lawyer that she later married and moved to Bethesda lives a completely different life to a child growing up on the reservation. That’s why you’ll find that income-based affirmative action has vastly more support than race. I personally would have no problems with my kid losing a spot in something to a kid who got similar scores to him with a tenth of the family income, because I know that the latter is a strictly tougher thing to do.

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

#180

Post by sjg007 »

Fascinating. I hope they are running a controlled study where at least some non trivial, say 10%, of the kids are randomly selected on the basis of just applying. That you can track the outcomes and see if your selection criteria is better than random.

We know you can take "underachieving" students and put them in high achieving programs (such as law school) and that the students will rise to the occasion and do well.

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