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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

#231

Kind of a big assumption that admission was fair before. Having test scores to fall back on is more useful as a CYA exercise than anything meaningful. "Nobody ever got fired for hiring McKinsey” indeed.

Nobody thinks admission was completely fair before, but it was without a doubt more fair with objective test scores than without.

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

#232
post #41
post #2

USA is rich in universities. I wish people would focus less on the rankings and looking good credential aspect of college, and more on using it as an opportunity to learn / actually getting good at something. If we did the latter, we’d realize that people could go to pretty much any university (or coursera!) and get a high quality education here.

Malcolm Gladwell explains why it's statistically FAR better to be among the smartest kids at a 2nd or 3rd tier school than struggling to get into some elite institution where you will be below average among your peers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UEwbRWFZVc&t=220s If you're borrowing money to pay for a degree, going to a school where you are not at the very top of the class is really taking a big risk.

I thoroughly enjoyed being around students a lot smarter than me in college. I also enjoy working with people smarter and better educated than me.

It's just more fun, and it also puts me on my best game.

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

#233
Just take a look at kids of all Harvard faculty, top administrators. These kids get admitted to Harvard. I know of some MIT faculty, who jumped to Harvard, only to have his kids get admitted there.

Sure, any testing, any measurement would have problems. Replace that with a better one. Instead, these people hide behind "well-rounded" admit pool. Since SCOTUS is going to put an end to affirmative action, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, etc will get rid of SAT/ACT requirement. Also admission committees will implement a secret system for admissions, where all comments about applicants are recorded and then get deleted after three months.

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

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/22/nypd-fewer-a... The ‘clearances paradox’: could less policing actually reduce gun violence in New York? Your over simplifying the complex reasons behind crime.

I think you're oversimplifying the complex nature of policing. If we want peaceful, stable, societies we should model our policing systems on the places that most effectively deliver peace and stability. Two notable examples being Israel and Japan. Both places give police wide latitude to accomplish their goals and punish criminals harshly . Is Israeli policing discriminatory against Arabs? Yes. Is it effective? Also…

What if we model it after nordic countries which seems to be the complete opposite

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

#235
> Admissions officers at selective colleges were also “overwhelmed” by the volume of applicants that test-optional policies had unleashed.

Given that acceptance rates are used as a ranking metric, and given what we have learnt about the lengths that even elite colleges like Columbia will go to to game those rankings, how sure can we be that the increased volume of applications wasn't the actual reason why they adopted test-optional policies (plus the nice side effect of likely raising the average scores of those admitted students that did submit scores, another common ranking metric)?

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

#236
I came from poverty and was able to go to a top CS school because of standardized testing . I didn’t score as well as my peers , but the admissions committee looked at district and county percentiles . I checked test prep books out of the library . I took the SAT test with low income fee waivers. I was saddened at the news regarding removing testing because my parents couldn’t afford extra curriculars and the tests were the only way I was able to level the playing field.

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

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"and with circumstance they've engineered such as giving extra "safe" fentanyl to people" Fentanyl is cut with other drugs and there's no fentanyl distribution that I can see. Care to provide a source? The drug is extremely potent to be consumed alone. ---------------------------------------- Here's a DEA warning about mass overdose events from Fentanyl "Fentanyl-related mass-overdose events, characterized as three o…

> Multiple Republicans ... and you wonder why there's a backlash I'm generally not in the USA so I'm trying to speak of things more internationally, and broader than just the divisive Dem/Rep mob. And no, the backlash I'm talking about is the last eighty or more years. The hippies are boomers, after all. > Top 10 states by drug overdose ... I'm not talking about deaths but deaths that society encourages. What would h…

You provided a link to a Canadian program. If you don't have other sources then why do you think it happens in the us

"The police warn non drug users that a cheap street dose is many times more likely to kill an inexperienced user than a similar dose from a decade ago."

This is a conspiracy theory. Evidence?

And about your first comment, I'm showing numbers of deaths, you're claiming that some part of that is encouraged and that percentage is higher for liberal cities. But the death rate doesn't correlate either way. So it doesn't make sense, even if it was encouraged apparently it's not making things worse

Most of what you said is speculation and you haven't provided meaningful evidence besides linking to a paper in another country.

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

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistically everything you listed here all requires you to come from at least an upper middle class family to attempt. My family couldn't even afford for me to join a club in high school. There is in reality no real fair way of selecting candidates without knowing more personal information such as their families tax history, income level, demographics, citizenship, etc.

I'm not aware of any clubs in my high school that charged its members. Not even the Boy Scouts. None of the colleges I applied to asked for my family's tax history or income level, except for on the separate financial aid application.

I can answer this because I was in this position. Parents couldnt afford the gas. They worked long hours to make ends meet and couldn’t take time to drive me to this stuff even if they had the gas money. Finally, there’s just not a lot of ECs available in a lot of poor areas , like the one I came from. I filled that space in the app talking about my hobbies instead because there was no money. Yeah.

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

#240
It's the illusion of control. It may be possible to select the obviously great candidates, but its foolish to think that this can be carried out for all of them.

Set aside 15% of the slots for the highest ranked candidates.

Set another threshold for "nope".

Then all the candidates that do not get into the 15% but are better than nope go into a lottery.

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