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Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

hechingerreport.org

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Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#71

Post by kenjackson »

tsunamifury wrote: post #37
MichaelCollins wrote: post #22

Who 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.

As a society we got ourselves into a situation where ignoring race now I promotes inequality as it helps those that have benefited from racism in the past. And doing ANYTHING proactive now is racism not.

The question is just — what type of injustice do you prefer?

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#72

Post by MichaelCollins »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #33

It should be easy to make the student body reflect the diversity of applicants: select them at random.

I'd have them selected randomly from those that clear the standardized testing bar. Otherwise, without selecting for academic performance, universities become a continuation of highschool where high achievers are surrounded by riffraff who don't really want to learn but rather spend a few years partying with student loans before hitting the workforce.

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#73

Post by 0x445442 »

petilon wrote: post #51
MichaelCollins wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

At UW they call it "race equity" [1]. Meaning that you can't have more than x% of Asian Americans in the UW if the percentage of Asian Americans in the community is x%. The Supreme Court will soon decide if this practice is legal [2], and it is going to be interesting either way! [1] https://www.washington.edu/raceequity/ [2] https://edsource.org/2022/as-supreme-court-considers-affirma...

And yet somehow they never decry the race inequity of lucrative ventures like the NBA player pool.

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#74

Post by the_third_wave »

petilon wrote: post #51
MichaelCollins wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

At UW they call it "race equity" [1]. Meaning that you can't have more than x% of Asian Americans in the UW if the percentage of Asian Americans in the community is x%. The Supreme Court will soon decide if this practice is legal [2], and it is going to be interesting either way! [1] https://www.washington.edu/raceequity/ [2] https://edsource.org/2022/as-supreme-court-considers-affirma...

Here's a question to those in control of these so-called "equity" rules at UW: do these also go for e.g. sex? In other words, if the percentage of women in the population is 49% there can not be more than 49% female students? If not, why not? The answer is already clear of course given the data but it would be interesting to hear their defence of their untenable position.

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#75

Post by kenjackson »

bradleyjg wrote: post #58
kenjackson wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But at highly competitive schools you still have several times more students with 1500 SATs than you have available spots. So you eventually need to use holistic judgement anyways.

They could just admit at random from among that group. What would be the downside?

So no cutoff, just an SAT score? And then a cutoff based on that? What about GPA? Weighted GPA? AP tests matter? Creating a cure for COVID matter?

I think for the very top schools they care about the intangibles. For mid-tier schools the SAT cutoff lottery is fine. But the cut off is probably like 1150, and these arguments aren’t about those schools.

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#76

Post by rayiner »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #35
petilon wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The idea of a “well rounded student” reflects the WASP roots of these elite institutions. The ideal “Harvard man” was a well bred WASP who didn’t appear to try too hard (which would be unseemly) and balanced academic pursuits with sports and social activities accessible to people who had connections and didn’t work for a living. That’s who you wanted running your Wall Street banks, corporations, etc. Holistic admissions is just the modern incarnation of that.

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#77

Post by LorenPechtel »

kenjackson wrote: post #66
mynameishere wrote: post #27

They are very upfront in terms of rhetoric about wanting more black and Hispanic students, but their policies are a lot of shuck-n-jive, trying to get that result while pretending to be fair. Nothing has worked so far. The pretending-to-be-fair sure hasn't either. So, one thing that will work and keep it all simple: Just establish quotas. "We will admit the highest scoring black students until we hit x%." But I suppo…

A better alternative is to fix the problem upstream. Push much more test taking prep for poor students. And reevaluate the SAT. It’s well known the stories of the SAT not including questions blacks score higher on and using questions that whites score higher on. Try to remove the bias from the test even if that gives surprising results. I’m not a fan of quotas, but I do think taking race into account up until a point…

Cite?

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#78

Post by bradleyjg »

kenjackson wrote: post #75
bradleyjg wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could just admit at random from among that group. What would be the downside?

So no cutoff, just an SAT score? And then a cutoff based on that? What about GPA? Weighted GPA? AP tests matter? Creating a cure for COVID matter? I think for the very top schools they care about the intangibles. For mid-tier schools the SAT cutoff lottery is fine. But the cut off is probably like 1150, and these arguments aren’t about those schools.

Just an SAT cutoff. Maybe cure Covid kid ends up at Vassar instead of Princeton. So what? Will his life be over? Will the US decline into irrelevance?

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#79

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

Spivak wrote: post #60
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is plenty of evidence to doubt the whole "holistic evaluation" line of thought, which is often a tool for subtle discrimination. And pretty much all of these schools already did "holistically evaluate" students; test scores were just one part of that evaluation. Besides, at the end of the day everything boils down to a single number - applicants are ranked and those that make the cutoff get in, those that are b…

Holistic evaluation in practice really means “present your best self in your application whatever that might be.” It allows for a range of impressive feats outside “was good at the arbitrary selection of school subjects and extracurriculars.”

In practice it also often means, "This Asian isn't 'well rounded' enough and they're only into math and chess club."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollme...

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#80

Post by brigandish »

kenjackson wrote: post #71
tsunamifury wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As a society we got ourselves into a situation where ignoring race now I promotes inequality as it helps those that have benefited from racism in the past. And doing ANYTHING proactive now is racism not. The question is just — what type of injustice do you prefer?

> ignoring race now I promotes inequality as it helps those that have benefited from racism in the past

Does it?

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