I think an important thing to note is that the university of California Academic Senate (not exactly a body that is seeking to overthrow liberal narratives) conducted a review on the effects of eliminating the SAT, and concluded that eliminating the SAT would disadvantage non-asian minorities. They then voted unanimously to keep standardized testing, but were overruled by the UC regents, who made their decision based on no evidence at all, resulting in UC dropping standardized tests.
Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief
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Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief
#112The key part that is glossed over is that Columbia is making SATs optional, so if a candidate is amazing in all ways except they are a poor test taker, they do not have to submit a test score. And the author also tries to correlate SATs with the Armed Forces aptitude tests, the latter which weeds out those at the far bottom end of aptitude versus making hitting a high bar a requirement for entry. Once in, recruits ar…
"Poor test taker", without fail, is a bs excuse for people who are lesser academically talented but cannot bear to admit it. With a couple of exceptions that I list at the end.
Doing well on these tests is absolutely as important as all of the other ways that these candidates are amazing.
It is as irrational to highlight amazing performance in other areas while discounting sub-par performance in standardized testing. Just as much as it would be the inverse.
These tests lend insight into, and serve to balance, the "amazing" or "underperforming" metrics in these other areas that may be in fact be more a measure of the relative quality or relative competition within these other areas.
In my opinion, the only two factors that are likely to truly affect test scores beyond innate / developed talent are: time management and the timeline of natural cognitive development.
If time management is an issue, then it will be an issue in college as well. If it is an issue because of uncontrollable factors, then the student should seek help to have other arrangements made that will enable them to eventually do well on the test.
Some people truly don't cognitively bloom until their early to mid twenties. One indication of this might be signs of talent with underperforming grades. Other strategies are more appropriate than having them flounder at an elite University at eighteen years old.
Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief
#113When universities drop standardized testing but keep legacy admissions it tells you all you need to know.
There are no bottom-barrel legacy admissions.
The "club", which includes the assurance of giving legacies a hard look, is largely why these Universities are desirable for non-legacy candidates.
In general, but also University depending, the education itself is nothing that can't be attained at many liberal arts colleges.
Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief
#114I think people are missing the bigger picture, that's related directly to the SAT. In the USA, public education funds are directly derived from the local tax base as a percentage of that revenue. If you live in a rich area, it means your family is also rich. The tax base, although it may be the rough same percentage, is much higher actual dollars than a small non-rich community. I even see that locally in my nearby c…
Even the most expensive prep schools tend to do limited SAT test prep, if any.
Poor kids can technically access the same private test prep as rich kids, and whether they actually can or not, financially speaking, has nothing to do with the tax base and the school itself.
That being said, better schools do provide for better child development.
This can be compensated for, to a degree, by enhanced parental interaction with the child from an early age.
Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief
#115I live in a society with free education for all, up to and including university. To make that possible, there are a limited number of seats, and the number is based on the needs of society, and on our government's budget. The seats are allocated based on testing, but there are multiple ways to "test into" a seat, i.e. "you missed it this time, but go do another two years of pre-university and you might get in later".…
If there's a limited number of seats, it's not "free for all". (Of course, there's no way around inherent class size limits under any system, other than MOOC's which are quite different from actual real-world college classes.)
All education at all levels is free for all. If what you are capable of contributing to society to support your family is plastering, your plastering training is free.
Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief
#116Isn't this patently obvious that dropping the SAT is entirely about creating pretext for continued discrimination against Asian applicants? In 1996, California repealed affirmative action via Prop 209. At the UC Berkeley and UCLA, considered the 'best' of the UC system, Asians represented 25-30% of the student base. Studies and fear-mongering at the time showed that a repeal of affirmative action would imply that Asi…
How could whites be discriminated against if Asians would rise to 90% of the accepted population? There aren’t enough underrepresented minorities at selective all combined to get Asians to 90%. That is most of the pool that Asians would take is from White students. From a pure counting perspective, more whites get in over “more deserving” Asians than any other group (assuming your numbers are accurate). Based on this…
I was incorrect about the 65% of Berkeley as Asian. It's 30.6%. Note this is double the percentage as the Ivy League schools - and it's based on a framework that was specifically developed as a way to get around the 1996 ban on affirmative action.
I still believe the only explanation for eliminating clear, measurable and quantifiable metrics for university admissions is because universities are looking for discrete ways to continue discriminatory tactics against Asians and to a lesser extent, whites. This is not about legacy admissions practices.
"Berkeley diversity statistics show that the enrolled student population at the University of California, Berkeley is composed of individuals who identify as Asian (30.6%), White (25.4%), Hispanic or Latino (16.3%), Two or More Races (5.5%), Black or African American (2.42%), American Indian or Alaska Native (0.139%), Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islanders (0.132%), and Other Pacific Islanders (0.132%)."
Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s the other way around. It helps to have some familiarity with the test, so test prep has some value, but some rich kids can’t test their way out of a paper bag. The one thing they could do is hire a ringer to take the test for them, otherwise it is a valuable form of downward mobility which presents a “barrier” to them hoarding opportunity from someone more able.
Yes, exactly. “Holistic” evaluation is entirely game-able. The claim is that they are trying to give the kid from East New York a shot but the reality is that this is all about the Dalton parents not wanting their little precious to have to go head to head on a fair playing field against a Stuyvesant kid. Their goal is to make all desirable institutions look like Dalton—-very wealthy students with an appropriate spri…
The issue is that the standardized tests correlate with IQ, and IQ has been determined to be have racial and other biases.
I went to a shitty rural high school - high scores on my ACT made a huge difference as anyone who could read got out of that school with a 3.7.
Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's virtually no such thing as ringers taking tests. The majority of rich kids, whose parents are serious about college, are tracked through prep schools beginning with kindergarten. Its more rare than not that such a kid underperforms enough to be excluded from elite University admission. Especially once one includes the many elite liberal arts colleges that are generally off of the radar of poors. I do agree ab…
Don’t forget the off the chart rates of testing accommodations for rich kids vs everyone else.
Respectfully, the issue of unprovided testing accommodations is only relevant for kids with a disability.
This would not apply to everyone else. Only to kids with an unidentified disability. Which will be more in the underprivileged group, but it is still a minuscule group.
Especially taken in the context of elite University admissions, for which we are actually speaking of the even rarer child that is "twice exceptional'. That is, gifted with a disability.
Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief
#119Sigh...
Isn't it obvious? The affirmative action wall is about to be breached by the conservative court, for better or for worse. If not by the current two cases brought by SFFA, then it's only a matter of time. The dropping of the SAT is the same reason Princeton et al. pulled out of the USNews rankings: they fully intend to continue AA, and they need to cover as much of their tracks as possible by not requiring people submit incriminating data that can be demanded in court once the policy is declared illegal.
Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief
#120The following paragraphs were especially powerful:
> The chattering class is using poor kids as pawns to eliminate standardized testing. Which helps their own kids. Rich kids who “don’t test well.” But they know how to strategically boost their GPAs, get recommendation letters from important people, stack their resumes with extracurriculars, and use the right slogans in their admissions essays. They have “polish.”
> Applicants from the most affluent families excel at these games. A study at Stanford found that family income is more highly correlated with admissions essay content than with SAT scores. Applicants from well-to-do backgrounds are especially adept at crafting their essays in ways that please admissions committees.
If equity is so important, why not grant preferential treatment to all children coming from families that aren't upper-middle-class? Or ban legacy preferences at the very least? This is a simple and effective way of achieving the goals they claim to be championing. The author hit the nail on the head. Every other metric used for admissions is far more easily gamed by rich families. Hence why they are being preserved. Standardized test scores are the hardest metric to game, and hence, are most under attack. All this talk about equity is the most convenient and cost-effective way to eliminate the one barrier that most vexes rich parents.