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Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
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Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
#32I’m looking at this and thinking: Did the colleges have no forsight, at all? Why did they think admission tests existed? Did they honestly think, “wow, the tests are flawed, so get rid of them, problem solved?”
Because people like taking down fences without knowing why they are there, because they are of course smarter than everyone who came before them.
Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
#33It should be easy to make the student body reflect the diversity of applicants: select them at random.
Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are absolutely missing one of the primary points of US universities, which is to maintain a social hierarchy. I mean, if you just want to learn stuff and get a good education, there are loads of resources where you can do that, often for free or near free. College is about much more than just learning new things, and if that's the only framework through which you value a college education, you'll be doomed to mis…
Nonsense. Education is not about taking a course or reading bunch of books. The big part of education is being able to directly ask a knowledgeable person once you're stuck. You can ask the community of course but the quality of community answers is more than often just trash.
I think you’ve defined a tutor. Tutors cost less than college tuition. And top professors answer emails from non-students, sometimes they teach for free on MOOCs. Perhaps you’re on a very narrow field where knowledge is extremely scarce, but that’s atypical.
Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
#35Who could have seen that coming? The whole point of ditching quantitative tests is to empower the bureaucrats who want to make qualitative judgements based on their personal whims and biases. "Holistic" my ass.
Absolutely agree. In the US, "holistic" admissions were introduced to deny admission to students suspected of being Jewish [1]. [1] https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/06/23/a-lawsuit...
Shaping the ethnic demographic of the school is a big component of the modern intent as well. Particularly, these "holistic" admission standards are designed to facilitate discrimination against Asian Americans. This is justified with transparently racist bullshit claims about Asian American students being too focused on academic performance, not "well rounded" whatever the hell that is supposed to mean. They reduce Asian American students to the stereotype of dull people with no personality because they spent too much time doing homework and learning piano, and use this stereotype to justify discriminating against them. Flagrantly racist.
Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
#36The "avalanche" of applications isn't just from the lack of standardized test scores, but the rise of the Common application platform. It's incredibly easy to fill it out once and then fire off a dozen applications in an afternoon.
common app is over 20 years old.
Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
#37Who could have seen that coming? The whole point of ditching quantitative tests is to empower the bureaucrats who want to make qualitative judgements based on their personal whims and biases. "Holistic" my ass.
It’s really disappointing that many recent attempts of progressivism have just turned into new sexism and racism but defended as “the correct” versions of those. It erodes the intellectual validity of these institutions.
Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
#38Who could have seen that coming? The whole point of ditching quantitative tests is to empower the bureaucrats who want to make qualitative judgements based on their personal whims and biases. "Holistic" my ass.
It’s really disappointing that many recent attempts of progressivism have just turned into new sexism and racism but defended as “the correct” versions of those. It erodes the intellectual validity of these institutions.
Fortunately I feel convinced that it's a passing fad. I just hope that the pendulum does not swing too far the other way.
Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
#39The "avalanche" of applications isn't just from the lack of standardized test scores, but the rise of the Common application platform. It's incredibly easy to fill it out once and then fire off a dozen applications in an afternoon.
This is why, in the UK system, you're only allowed to apply to five or fewer universities in the same academic cycle. (It's possible to enforce this because all applications go through the same centralised system.)
You're also not allowed to apply to both Oxford and Cambridge in the same year - otherwise both universities would get twice as many applicants.
Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are absolutely missing one of the primary points of US universities, which is to maintain a social hierarchy. I mean, if you just want to learn stuff and get a good education, there are loads of resources where you can do that, often for free or near free. College is about much more than just learning new things, and if that's the only framework through which you value a college education, you'll be doomed to mis…
Nonsense. Education is not about taking a course or reading bunch of books. The big part of education is being able to directly ask a knowledgeable person once you're stuck. You can ask the community of course but the quality of community answers is more than often just trash.
> The big part of education is being able to directly ask a knowledgeable person once you're stuck.
Stuck on what? For an undergrad, those problems can easily be solved by going online or to a tutor for a fraction of the cost. And that's for STEM based problems, humanities is all about flattering whatever opinions the professor personally holds.
The best piece of advice I got was from one of my english highschool teachers who told me a story about how when he was in university he was getting graded really poorly on essays until he basically regurgitated what he thought the the professor wanted to hear.
It's been a while since I've been to university, but I think it probably still holds.