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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

#101

Post by tjs8rj »

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?

The answer is really simple: discrimination not on race, but on inequalities. Don’t discriminate because someone is black or white, but give due consideration to factors like family situation/income/legacy/etc

This seems like the most reasonable solution. If you believe that systemic racism exists in the background, then this corrects for its real effects. If you don’t, I’m sure you at least accept that all else equal, a smart poor person will have accomplished less than a smart rich person due to lack of resources, so if you can correct for that in admissions you better identify smart people.

Need-oriented discrimination, with no accounting for race, is the answer

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

#102

Post by 0x445442 »

rainsford wrote: post #20
CharlieDigital wrote: post #5

Alternate headline: "Colleges that ditched admissions tests have to actually holistically evaluate applicants rather than reduce them to two numbers" No doubt that it's more subjective and more difficult; human beings are complex, multi-dimensional entities and I find it sad that in many of these selection processes, they are reduced to a few numbers for the sake of low effort filtering.

Exactly. Of course having numerical values you can directly compare is going to be the easiest way to select students, but it's only "fair" to the degree those numbers accurately reflect the relative academic performance and potential of the students. I think the reason people so vigorously defend the use of standardized test scores in admissions is that we all have a built in bias towards viewing quantifiable compar…

> Sure, an SAT score is just a simple number. But how the test is constructed to arrive at that number is much more complicated.

But you’re ignoring the other side of that number. That test score provides a hell of a lot of information about the individual beyond just doing well on a single test.

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

#103

Post by tjs8rj »

hhmc wrote: post #89
brigandish wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think the argument goes something like: if racial groups and socioeconomic outcomes are correlated due to previous inequalities, and social mobility is limited, then doing nothing further entrenches the inequalities.

Then discriminate on the socioeconomic inequalities. A poor white person and a poor black person should get aid. Obama’s daughter (black, but rich and powerful) doesn’t need any aid or discrimination in her favor.

Discriminating on the basis of race for these programs is so stupid. Ask why and people say “because socioeconomic status”, but then why don’t you discriminate on that? I think people know this but it’s a political move (black people vote for democrats for the vast majority, so making it means tested instead wouldn’t be popular with them).

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

#104

Post by JadeNB »

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.

> 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.

I can completely believe that this is the result, but I find it very hard to believe that it is (at least in all cases) the point. At my university, the decision to stop considering some standardized tests came from the department and college level, where we don't even make the decisions, not from the admissions department. While it is easy for me to believe that there were unintended consequences, I can say for sure that what you describe was not our goal.

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

#105

Post by bradleyjg »

kenjackson wrote: post #96
bradleyjg wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That’s an interesting race to the bottom for those schools. They’d end up with kids who basically ditched studying advanced math, physics, research, etc and just a lot of kids who prepped for the SAT for four years.

The “advanced math, physics, research, etc” in high school is all just college admissions prep too. When you major in math you have to take an analysis sequence starting at the beginning because AP calculus isn’t actually math. It’s just memorizing and learning to execute some math related algorithms.

It’s all just signaling. Let’s be open about that instead of hiding the ball.

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

#106

Post by ethbr0 »

the_third_wave wrote: post #74
petilon wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think that's why the idea of a protected class has typically been central to US legal definitions of equality: application to every individual characteristic is untenable, but blindness to all impinges on justice too.

Or in essence, how to address the historical inequities of racism and sexism, without also ushering in something ridiculous like "mentalism" that attempts to help people who are "bad at tests and grades."

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

#107

Post by JadeNB »

FredPret wrote: post #92
nerdponx wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately I feel convinced that it's a passing fad. I just hope that the pendulum does not swing too far the other way.

Maybe I'm in a bubble, but every anecdote I read online in the past year or two is someone royally fed up with liberal politics. On Twitter, Reddit, and real life, the majority of people keep complaining about crime, drugs, homelessness. Sounds like a perfect environment for a generation of conservatives to get elected. Hopefully they stay close to the center for a long time.

> Sounds like a perfect environment for a generation of conservatives to get elected. Hopefully they stay close to the center for a long time.

The conservative groundswell is because generations of conservatives have already been getting elected, especially in less flashy positions that wield influence. Conservatives have really played the long game, at least since the New Deal.

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

#108

Post by defterGoose »

FredPret wrote: post #92
nerdponx wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately I feel convinced that it's a passing fad. I just hope that the pendulum does not swing too far the other way.

Maybe I'm in a bubble, but every anecdote I read online in the past year or two is someone royally fed up with liberal politics. On Twitter, Reddit, and real life, the majority of people keep complaining about crime, drugs, homelessness. Sounds like a perfect environment for a generation of conservatives to get elected. Hopefully they stay close to the center for a long time.

Maybe those with countervailing opinions are too busy working for a living instead of commenting on the internet.

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

#109

Post by paulpauper »

Even very high scorers sometimes find it impossible to get into top schools. Part of the problem is supply of slots has not kept up with population growth. It's not like Harvard's enrollment has kept up with population growth. Another problem is that the ceiling of standardized tests has been lowered, so top scores more more common.

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

#110

Post by Spivak »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #79
Spivak wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I don’t really know what you do to combat this kind of thing because what would you do as an admissions officer trying to create a student body with a wide range of skills and experiences but you have thousands of applicants who are “focused on having perfect grades to the detriment of everything else and participated in the ‘look how smart I am clubs’.”

And I say this with full self-awareness that this was me. It’s probably the thing I regret most about my high school experience because of how unnecessary it was and how much it set me back on all the things that mattered.

I consider myself extremely lucky that any university took a chance on me because my application was 100% “I have no real interests except playing the game of school and winning by min-maxing the point system” which looking back is so obviously the worst applicant. I for sure lost out on my dream school because of it.

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