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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

#321

Post by alistairSH »

BobbyJo wrote: post #285

The greatest source of admissions inequity is childhood socioeconomic status. Dropping the SAT is so obviously not a fix for that I question the competency of the administrators who thought doing so was a good idea. The SAT is probably the most attainable piece of the application process for a poor kid to succeed at. You literally just need a guide book or two and enough time to study. One good smart friend helps if…

Part of the argument for dropping the SAT is that the SAT has been shown to be a proxy for family socio-economic status and is no better an indicator of success at college than GPA, honor/AP/IB course participation, and extracurriculars.

(I’m not making that argument myself, I haven’t seen numbers explained well enough to form a solid opinion)

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

#322

Post by MereInterest »

crazygringo wrote: post #307
BobbyJo wrote: post #285

The greatest source of admissions inequity is childhood socioeconomic status. Dropping the SAT is so obviously not a fix for that I question the competency of the administrators who thought doing so was a good idea. The SAT is probably the most attainable piece of the application process for a poor kid to succeed at. You literally just need a guide book or two and enough time to study. One good smart friend helps if…

> You literally just need a guide book or two and enough time to study. I think it's important to realize just how extremely non-obvious this is, though, for many high school sophomores/juniors. I went to a decent high school and was in honors classes, and even I would have had zero idea test prep was even a thing, if a single science teacher hadn't randomly mentioned it in class once. I went to the school library an…

Especially because the entire purported schtick of the SAT is to measure aptitude (the "A" in the acronym). In principle, if the SAT is true to its name, getting a study book shouldn't help at all. But since study guides or repeated testing does improve the score, it can't be a true measurement of aptitude.

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

#323

Post by WalterBright »

Mezzie wrote: post #304
metalforever wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please explain how the child would get home from the after school activity, if it existed? I’m being clear when I am saying there really aren’t any EC options . In poor areas , there’s no money because school funding comes from property tax . Where I went, the funding was so tight they had to fire the foreign language , art teachers and music teachers . If they can’t afford regular instructors , where is the…

Poor or rural. One of my school systems had less than 100 kids in the middle school over an area of several square miles. There just wasn't the population density for many/any non-sport ECs (and even those were difficult).

Then create your own extracurricular activity. There aren't any rules about it. It just has to be something that shows initiative, drive, and ability to accomplish something significant. I did things like build a gokart out of scrap (had a lot of fun with that, too!). No adults were involved in any way.

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

#324

Post by robot1 »

BobbyJo wrote: post #285

The greatest source of admissions inequity is childhood socioeconomic status. Dropping the SAT is so obviously not a fix for that I question the competency of the administrators who thought doing so was a good idea. The SAT is probably the most attainable piece of the application process for a poor kid to succeed at. You literally just need a guide book or two and enough time to study. One good smart friend helps if…

This rings true for myself and a couple of my friends who grew up relatively poor in a wealthy area - our test scores on the SAT and relevant subject tests boosted us into private schools that we would not have gone to otherwise, which then led us to well-paying jobs right out of college. Last I checked, my high school implemented affordable/free SAT tutoring for all students and I hope to see more of it nationwide as I believe it helps immensely in socioeconomic mobility.

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

#325

Post by fortran77 »

WalterBright wrote: post #243
metalforever wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> but the people who hate the Scouts got them kicked out because they had a religious requirement for one of the ranks.

Actually people who love our Constitution got them kicked out.

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

#326

Post by tester756 »

WalterBright wrote: post #293
bushbaba wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Test prep is not overblown. Prior to test-prep I got a 630 on my math section. Post test prep I got an 800. Why? Prior to test prep I was solving the problems as I was taught in calculus. Deriving equations. The test prep re-inforced memorizing key formulas and how to think not about solving the problem but eliminating options and determining when it's faster to validate if a given answer is correct. SAT test prep do…

You'll wind up just knowing the formulas from paying attention in math class, and especially from doing all the homework problems and taking all the math classes your high school offers. To be sure, maybe your high school is deficient in teaching math (mine was). For test prep, then you need some extra math instruction, not test prep. > not about solving the problem but eliminating options and determining when it's f…

>You'll wind up just knowing the formulas from paying attention in math class, and especially from doing all the homework problems and taking all the math classes your high school offers. To be sure, maybe your high school is deficient in teaching math (mine was). For test prep, then you need some extra math instruction, not test prep.

I don't agree that math classes are enough because teachers do vary, some sucks, some are great, but also at the end of the day they have to teach whole class, not just you, meanwhile maths on youtube runs at your pace

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

#327

Post by ethbr0 »

thegrimmest wrote: post #182
ethbr0 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Skin color, sex, sexual orientation" all drastically impact an individual's experience in our world. Therefore, having interactions with someone with different varieties thereof increases the diversity of ones experience.

More so than economic, cultural, geographic or domestic factors? Do you have a citation?

Sure, if you can give me ones supporting your preferred measures.

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

#328

Post by pannSun »

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…

If culturally-discriminating WASP admissions officers were the main barrier, one would not expect non-Jewish whites to be the most underrepresented group in the Ivy League. Circa 2019, looking at non-international students only:

                          Ivy League   US      Ratio  Mean SAT score [1]
  Jewish                  17.2%         2.4%    7.16  n/a
  Asian                   19.6%         5.3%    3.71  1216
  White (incl. Jewish)    50.3%        61.5%    0.82  1148
  Hispanic                11.4%        17.6%    0.65  1043
  Black                    7.8%        12.7%    0.61   966
  White (non-Jewish)      33.1%        59.1%    0.56 ~1141 (lower estimate)
Percentages don't sum to 100 because multi-ethnic students, a few minor ethnicities (American-Indian, Pacific Islander..), and students categorized as "unknown"/"other" by the universities were excluded. Data on university undergraduate demographics was taken from the universities own diversity reports. Jewish representation was gathered from http://hillel.org/college-guide/list/, https://forward.com/jewish-college-guide/, and https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/how-many-jewish-undergraduat..., taking the lowest estimate when sources conflicted. ejewishphilanthropy.com (eJP) points out flaws in Hillel's data gathering (e.g. showing Harvard as 30% Jewish, when eJP found it only 16%) Hillel seems to have since fixed these flaws, as the estimates they now give are in-line with those of eJP.

[1] https://www.ednc.org/eraceing-inequities-the-influence-of-ra...

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

#329

Post by metalforever »

actionablefiber wrote: post #319
WalterBright wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I walked home from school. I can't recall my parents ever picking me up. The Boy Scouts didn't run on money. A chess club, book club, drama club, dance club, photography club, math club, etc., don't require money. Besides, creating something from nothing is going to look a lot better on an application than following a course that is laid out by instructors and papered with cash.

> I walked home from school. I can't recall my parents ever picking me up. In the United States in the 2020s being able to walk yourself to and from school without A) having your life in grave danger from motor vehicle traffic and B) having someone call CPS or the police on your parents is an incredible luxury. The neighborhood where I grew up was built in the early 90s and its elementary school and middle school are…

Yeah this was the issue. It’s probably a common one in rural areas like the one I am from. These areas also tend to lack public transit.

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

#330

Post by tester756 »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #320
5mv2 wrote: post #28

It reminds me of European universities switching from selecting on humanities to selecting on maths a century ago. The idea was to remove the social upbringing's impact on test scores, as candidates from higher socioeconomic status are heavily advantaged from using a larger vocabulary from birth. A PhD friend who studied this told me it had no measurable impact. Put aside raising math tutors salaries of course.

I'm from a former socialist european country, and we use grades + standardized tests results to get into most colleges (art, music and acting colleges are an exception, due to obvious reasons). Everybody has to pass a standardized test at the end of highschool, 5 subjects, for most, the first three are slovene (our native language), english (second language) and math + two subjects chosen by the student (eg. physics…

40% are grades?!

taking grades into account seems weird as hell

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