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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

#241

Post by themitigating »

FredPret wrote: post #223
themitigating wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm angry about the loss of abortion rights federally, the rise of Christian nationalism, politicians lying about election fraud, people calling their enemies pedophiles and communists, politicans not knowing what those words mean, and facism What is this center you think we are going back to because all I see are far right politicans and the end of American democracy

By the way, I don't know where you're from, but I bet it isn't currently fascist. In the same vein, most leftists shouldn't be called communists. Examples of fascism are the Nazis, Mussolini, that Spanish chap, and apartheid. The only modern incarnation that springs to my mind is the Phillipines. I'm not saying I like the American right with their religion and their fixation on abortion (I do agree with them on some…

Who is more of a centrist right now, the republican party or the democrats?

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

#242

Post by themitigating »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #207
themitigating wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm angry about the loss of abortion rights federally, the rise of Christian nationalism, politicians lying about election fraud, people calling their enemies pedophiles and communists, politicans not knowing what those words mean, and facism What is this center you think we are going back to because all I see are far right politicans and the end of American democracy

> the end of American democracy Granting all the problems you've cited, things have still been much worse in the past than they are today. Maybe not in the recent past, the 90s and 00s look quite rosy today in some (not all) respects, but think a bit further back. America has gone through civil war, anti-communist witch trials, frequent politically motivated bombings and assassinations, etc. Throughout all of that, p…

So people don't trust the government and the election system. Could that is why they think demise will occur? That's the doing of the republican party.

Trump is constantly saying America is a failed state. A democracy fails because people don't believe it works. All of this is republican

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

#243

Post by WalterBright »

metalforever wrote: post #239
WalterBright wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The school clubs met after school, one was there anyway. The Boy Scouts also met within walking distance. The Scouts used to meet at public schools, but the people who hate the Scouts got them kicked out because they had a religious requirement for one of the ranks.

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

#244

Post by thegrimmest »

themitigating wrote: post #234
thegrimmest wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I actually think nordic countries do 2. and 3. quite well, and their crime rate has risen significantly due to the large number of migrants. The baseline number of violent antisocial people in a society also does vary - but avoiding the creation of these people is different that dealing with the ones who already exist.

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

#245

Post by crackercrews »

raincom wrote: post #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,…

I've heard that lots of professor kids get into the colleges where their parents teach. But is that surprising? They would presumably be much more well-qualified than the average applicant, based on both nature and nurture.

Most administrators are not professors, but are former professors. The same rationale would apply to their kids.

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

#246

Post by [deleted] »

dgacmu wrote: post #18
hattmall wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they even need phds at all. Teaching first year student should be more of a side job thing.

I think you're misunderstanding the challenge. Teaching first year students doesn't require Ph.D.-level knowledge, but it requires more teaching experience and skills than teaching later levels: The classes are larger; the students are less experienced at learning on their own; the students are new to the environment and less familiar with how to navigate it. Large classes of novices are particularly sensitive to log…

[deleted]

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

#247

Post by ALittleLight »

bombcar wrote: post #137
2devnull wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For the cost of a college education at some places you could likely hire a knowledgeable professor of the skill set you’re interested in to live with you for four years. Nobody will loan you money to do that, howvevr.

People would probably loan you money for that if you have the income or collateral to support a loan.

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

#248

Post by onetimeusename »

rayiner wrote: post #100

What surprises me is how many Asians support these measures. Make no mistake: our ability to progress as we have in America has depended on the fact that objective metrics cannot easily be gamed. The cost of test prep is a minor barrier to entry compared to the cultural knowledge required to write an essay that moves a WASP admissions officer, or the social capital and connections required to get involved in charitab…

I don't think WASPs are given an edge here. I feel like it is actually racist to make this assumption also. White people as a broad category are the only racial group that is underrepresented relative to their population percentage in Ivy League schools. Maybe you could make the argument that WASPs are a subset of white people who are overrepresented specifically because of that faculty benefit for admissions but then I am not sure why, for example, you couldn't make that claim about other groups who are overrepresented in the faculty and student body. There are other groups who fit that critique but the people who argue Ivy League admissions are unfair seem to make a scapegoat out of WASPs exclusively.

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

#249

Post by luckylion »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #195
derbOac wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I almost felt like flagging this submission. It's taking something that on its own could be interpreted in many ways and giving it a strong political spin. For the sake of argument, let's imagine a college doing the opposite: admitting students solely on the basis of a standardized test score. You submit your SAT score, and everyone above a certain percentile is admitted. People below the threshold are not. Man…

> I feel like these tests are kind of like buying a house based on nominal square footage alone Great analogy. Buying a house is about far, far more than just the square footage. How are the neighbors? How's the walkability? Noise levels? Schools? Access to transport routes? Access to jobs? Property taxes? HOA fees? Access to activities of interest? There are so many factors to buying a house that it would be ridicul…

> There are so many factors to buying a house that it would be ridiculous to look at any single dimension alone and make a determinate based on that one dimension.

But that's not what they've been doing. Standardized tests played a role, but were not the only factor.

To continue the house analogy: look at everything _but_ square footage before you make an offer.

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

#250

Post by texaslonghorn5 »

nO0b wrote: post #41
onos wrote: 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.

that's such a loser mindset, you should want to be challenged and pushed by peers stronger than you

edit: I agree that the first part of this comment is too harsh, see child thread

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