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University of California Will Stop Using SAT, ACT
151–160 of 393 posts
Re: University of California Will Stop Using SAT, ACT
#152Another strike against genuine education. Now prep schools that have 17 valedictorians will help their students pad their applications with nonsense extra-curricular activities and experiences. However it's likely much easier to create the same pastiche of fluff in poorly-performing schools than it is to actually raise test scores. Now more than ever, college signals nothing other than the ability to follow rules and…
Alternatively, this may prompt more students to take the AMC examinations. https://www.maa.org/math-competitions
If anything, I think the AMC exams are more vulnerable to prep than the SAT/ACT in the following sense: I think a bright and disciplined kid who does lots of self-study (e.g. using the free Khan Academy SAT materials [1]) has a decent chance to do well on the SAT/ACT, even compared to a bright and disciplined kid whose parents pay for classes. I think the gap is bigger for AMC stuff because, IMO, it's harder to teach yourself math competition skills. In that sense, access to paid instruction becomes a much bigger edge.
Math competition skills also test something very specific and are a pretty useless metric for most people.
Re: University of California Will Stop Using SAT, ACT
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd hardly call rich parents paying for SAT prep classes a better solution.
SAT prep classes have a small effect size.
I'll absolutely second this. I know kids who went to tons of prep classes for literally years. I had a friend whose parents paid for her to attend SAT prep summer camp for about a month every summer starting in sixth grade. Most of them did fine, but their scores were commensurate with that you'd expect from their report cards. I didn't study much and did very well. The students who did very well were mostly either those who were high-achieving in other respects or those who worked very, very hard. E.g. I know someone who wasn't particularly academically outstanding but got a perfect score with study, practice books only, no expensive classes.
Re: University of California Will Stop Using SAT, ACT
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I agree with this 100% - these students are going to be compared to each other somehow, and it's always going to be imperfect and favor those who are better off. Still, these tests are at least relatively objective, and if you remove them the kids will be compared with less objective measures that allow for more bias to be introduced. The SAT/ACT are the worst form of college admission criteria very much in the…
Finland, often touted as the best in education, does not use SAT. The same can be said for many other European countries with excellent education. Are you implying there is no correlation? Have you looked at their systems before making a claim such as "haven't come up with anything better"?
In France, you have special schools (classes préparatoires) where you spend 2 years after high school just to prepare the entrance exam of the most competitive schools. The entrance exam can last for a week, with two 4-hour exams a day, and is marked anonymously.
They don't care that you were the captain of the fencing team or can play harmonica.
Re: University of California Will Stop Using SAT, ACT
#155I know some people protest measures that are considered more "objective" over measures that are more "holistic", whether this is in school admittance, performance evaluation, promotion consideration, interviewing, determining welfare benefits, choosing who makes the rules and governs. However it has been my experience that whenever an explicit test or hierarchy is removed another shadow one builds up that is more sub…
Yes exactly. This is why every tech company should apply this type of standardized testing to software engineers as well. We can test for specific types of algorithms and have them regurgitate them on whiteboards, making it easy to compare each candidate on highly relevant skills they will be using on the job. It's not perfect because there's still rampant ageism in our industry but it's better than letting ourselves use inferior shadow subjective judgement (cue loud dog whistle). Otherwise we might become biased and look at completely irrelevant things that don't measure a model programmer correctly.
/s
Re: University of California Will Stop Using SAT, ACT
#156I know some people protest measures that are considered more "objective" over measures that are more "holistic", whether this is in school admittance, performance evaluation, promotion consideration, interviewing, determining welfare benefits, choosing who makes the rules and governs. However it has been my experience that whenever an explicit test or hierarchy is removed another shadow one builds up that is more sub…
I worry that "holistic" admissions in universities with highly competitive admissions are already disadvantaging groups that aren't culturally aligned with university administrators and their donors: Asian Americans, people from the South and rural areas regardless of race, and people brought up in religious households where most time spent on "extracurricular activities" is church-related. I personally think that pe…
> I personally think that people pushing against standardized tests and for holistic admissions have good intentions and aren't trying to systemically ensure that all students at prestigious and elite universities in the US talk, think, and act like them, but I can't blame anyone for thinking so.
I’m not sure I feel like giving the benefit of the doubt here. I think folks are acting in good faith, no doubt. But they have decided that everyone who doesn’t talk, think, and act like them is a danger to society. Where those people are white, they can be condemned as “deplorables.” Where those same views are shared by minorities (Asian Americans with respect to views on family and marriage, and meritocracy, black people with respect to views on religion, etc.) they just select figureheads that happen to agree with them and then have those people claim to speak for everyone non-white.
Re: University of California Will Stop Using SAT, ACT
#157This pragmatically means the administrators are free to pursue their biased and ideological policy objectives.
I loathe to be so cynical but 'roughly objective' measures are usually better than none.
Re: University of California Will Stop Using SAT, ACT
#158I know some people protest measures that are considered more "objective" over measures that are more "holistic", whether this is in school admittance, performance evaluation, promotion consideration, interviewing, determining welfare benefits, choosing who makes the rules and governs. However it has been my experience that whenever an explicit test or hierarchy is removed another shadow one builds up that is more sub…
I'm not American, but I have seen a lot of my friends apply for American universities. Personally, I think the whole admission process is super messed up. In most places one would take a nation/international examination and based on the score of that exam one would enter. In the US one has to pay "college counselors" and various middle men for handling all sorts of things. I don;t see how removing SATs would make it "fairer" for students from less well to do backgrounds. Removing college counselors would though.
This is not to say I would agree with the fact that the SATs/ACTs are good. To be fair as far as exams go these exams have a lot of loop holes. I have seen people who can't speak proper English get perfect scores on these exams by memorizing hard words. The mathematics section is a bit of a standing joke in many Asian countries. It is almost impossible for a high school student to get less than the full score in many countries as it would not be possible to pass other national/international boards.
In all honesty, rather than scrap ACT/SAT, one probably should review these exams. It is possible for one to design an exam such that private tuition doesn't give too much of an advantage.
Re: University of California Will Stop Using SAT, ACT
#159Non paywall version (different site but same topic): https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/05/21/...
Is there any objective evidence that SAT favors wealthy people. I mean, I am sure it does to some extent. But how much? Even if there is a bias towards richer kids, the disparity could be due to other reasons as well - better schooling, better parenting, better social network etc. How are these other reasons eliminated?
Re: University of California Will Stop Using SAT, ACT
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
I worry that "holistic" admissions in universities with highly competitive admissions are already disadvantaging groups that aren't culturally aligned with university administrators and their donors: Asian Americans, people from the South and rural areas regardless of race, and people brought up in religious households where most time spent on "extracurricular activities" is church-related. I personally think that pe…
Indeed, I briefly mentioned my service work with my church in my interviews as a part of an overview of me; it led to some of my larger accomplishments I wanted to highlight. In most interviews, this resulted in me getting a look like I'd just grown a third eye. This after reading web pages full of smiling, multi-cultural faces that lectured me on just how diverse and open-minded students and alumni were at these uni…
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