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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

#431

Post by StanislavPetrov »

crazygringo wrote: post #356
Meekro wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know when all of this happened to you, but these days there's no excuse. I just googled for "how to increase my sat score" and the first result was this collegeboard.org page[1] called "How to Improve Your SAT Score." It referred me to the Khan Academy's free SAT practice course[2]. [1] https://blog.collegeboard.org/how-to-improve-your-sat-score [2] https://www.khanacademy.org/sat/confirmed

Let me reiterate: that requires for it occur to a student that you even can increase your SAT score. That remains non-obvious. After all, IQ tests aren't supposed to be something you can prepare for. So why should the SAT be, if it's this kind of supposedly holistic aptitude test? Why isn't "school overall" all the possible preparation you could do? Again, the difficulty isn't primarily in getting the extra resources…

>Let me reiterate: that requires for it occur to a student that you even can increase your SAT score.

If you are a high school student and the possibility of increasing your score doesn't even occur to you, I would suggest that college isn't for you.

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

#432

Post by polynox »

pannSun wrote: post #328
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 96…

Why would you take U.S. population rather than world population?

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

#433

Post by BobbyJo »

matai_kolila wrote: post #410
BobbyJo wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who grew up super poor, time tends to be one of the only things poor kids have as much of as rich kids. Is that universal? Of course not, but name something better.

My man, if you were poor and had a lot of free time, someone in your life was being a great person to keep you from that effect of poverty. Not all of us were so lucky.

Again, I'm not saying my experience is universal, just common among myself and my poor friends and cousins. Time seems to me to be the most equitably distributed resource, but I'd love a counter argument that was more than vague disagreement.

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

#434

Post by civilized »

yasp wrote: post #4

Was this not obvious from the outset? Do these people not consider the consequences of their actions beforehand?

They're not reversing the decision, are they?

Going test-optional was a capitulation to social pressure, not a deliberate decision made for its benefits.

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

#435

Post by remote_phone »

kelnos wrote: post #412
remote_phone wrote: post #65

> One college purchased a data service that ranked high schools and factored those high school rankings into each application. Students from underserved high schools received a lower ranking, an admissions officer explained. It wasn’t a fair process. This is the crux of the affirmative action fascists. They picked what they thought was a “fair” set of criteria and it didn’t produce the outcome they wanted. They concl…

> They picked what they thought was a “fair” set of criteria and it didn’t produce the outcome they wanted. They concluded it wasn’t “fair” because it didn’t produce they wanted. That’s garbage. No, that's science. If your goal is "more racially- and background-diverse admissions", and you set up a process to achieve that, and then find that your new process didn't work, then the process was wrong. So you come up wit…

No it is not science. If the objective is to be “fair” then they don’t like the outcome then that’s not science.

If the objective is to increase the amount of certain skin colors, then fine. But call it that. Don’t be racist and then wrap it up in a lie saying that it’s to be “fair”. “Fair” in the way it’s used in the article is entirely subjective, which is not scientific.

When the system is as obviously corrupt as it is now, people lose faith in the system entirely and that’s what’s happened.

> The problem is that universities don't really have the ability to invest in education and safety in lower income areas.

I wasn’t talking about the universities, I was talking about the government. If the government is willing to dump hundreds of billions into Ukraine, I’d rather see that money going into creating businesses, schools and safety in the most egregious areas of our own country and build them up. Create competitive applicants by destroying generational poverty.

Not by bending admission standards and lying to everyone’s face as if we are racist for pointing out their racism. I would much rather see my tax dollars funding this rebuilding of the worst parts of the country than war. And if it produces hundreds of thousands of competitive students one generation from now, we all benefit because they won’t be as underrepresented and we can get rid of these racist policies by radical left fascists that believe that more racism is the answer for racism.

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

#436

Post by lupire »

crazygringo wrote: post #356
Meekro wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know when all of this happened to you, but these days there's no excuse. I just googled for "how to increase my sat score" and the first result was this collegeboard.org page[1] called "How to Improve Your SAT Score." It referred me to the Khan Academy's free SAT practice course[2]. [1] https://blog.collegeboard.org/how-to-improve-your-sat-score [2] https://www.khanacademy.org/sat/confirmed

Let me reiterate: that requires for it occur to a student that you even can increase your SAT score. That remains non-obvious. After all, IQ tests aren't supposed to be something you can prepare for. So why should the SAT be, if it's this kind of supposedly holistic aptitude test? Why isn't "school overall" all the possible preparation you could do? Again, the difficulty isn't primarily in getting the extra resources…

The SAT stopped calling itself an Aptitude test 29 years ago.

If you go to school and you don't presume that your can improve your score on a test by studying, it seems unlikely that you would score high on the SAT anyways.

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

#437

Post by remote_phone »

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…

Asians are the only ethnicity that encounters true system racism in the education system, and no one seems to care.

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

#438

Post by matai_kolila »

BobbyJo wrote: post #433
matai_kolila wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My man, if you were poor and had a lot of free time, someone in your life was being a great person to keep you from that effect of poverty. Not all of us were so lucky.

Again, I'm not saying my experience is universal, just common among myself and my poor friends and cousins. Time seems to me to be the most equitably distributed resource, but I'd love a counter argument that was more than vague disagreement.

Only on the Internet would someone demand a “counterargument” to support the super basic statement “your life experience wasn’t universal amongst poor people”…

Fine [0][1][2][3]. Keep in mind this isn’t some “1+1=2” problem, and people have dedicated their lives to figuring this out, so if you’re looking for a “conclusion” then I don’t recommend human psychology.

Let me know if you have any questions, but honestly I’m wary of an attempted trolling on your part so please come honestly and with curiosity. Also this is not my area of expertise, and you’ll likely get a better understanding of this very complex issue if you look into this on your own. At best I can be (and frankly am only interested in being) a starting point.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/03/the-m...

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/20734446

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanshapiro/2014/10/24/3-ways...

[3] https://talkpoverty.org/2017/06/01/matters-poor-kids-dont-ti...

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

#439

Post by lupire »

matai_kolila wrote: post #410
BobbyJo wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who grew up super poor, time tends to be one of the only things poor kids have as much of as rich kids. Is that universal? Of course not, but name something better.

My man, if you were poor and had a lot of free time, someone in your life was being a great person to keep you from that effect of poverty. Not all of us were so lucky.

Please say what you are trying to communicate. That poor kids are working full time jobs? That's not true.

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

#440

Post by coredog64 »

cactus2093 wrote: post #414
crazygringo wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The benefits of SAT test prep seem to be a lot smaller than most people think https://slate.com/technology/2019/04/sat-prep-courses-do-the... . And in studies that have shown a benefit, the control group also tends to improve - meaning that simply taking one practice test ahead of time might have nearly as much of an impact as doing hours of test prep classes. Also, just curious, how long ago was this that you were p…

Way back in the day, my high school hosted a practice SAT session in the cafeteria some Saturday morning. Pair that with a free breakfast a little before the start, a 15 session on strategies (like watch the clock and guess if you’re not done with a minute or two left) and you could probably replicate most of the test prep gains in the low SES cohort.
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