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University of California Will Stop Using SAT, ACT

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Re: University of California Will Stop Using SAT, ACT

#331

Post by throwaway0a5e »

zajio1am wrote: post #145
awillen wrote: post #44

Earlier 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…

Here the common strategy for STEM degree programmes is to admit most people and then make first year hard enough that e.g. 2/3 of students are eliminated. In some sense it is more fair than strict admission criteria.

The colleges also make more money that way. A 500 person freshman lecture class is a money maker. A 50 person capstone class is a money loser. I agree it's nice to give people a chance but it's not all rose considering the debt many of those people who don't make it take on.

Re: University of California Will Stop Using SAT, ACT

#332

Post by njonesuk »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #280
BurningFrog wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the whole system in Europe Pet peeve: There is no European system. At least every country has their own unique system.

So whats your point here?

That your statement about "the whole European system" is factually incorrect, because every single country takes their own approach, and there are huge variations between them.

Trying to tar the whole of Europe with one brush would be like Europeans conflating the US education system with Paraguay and Ecuador because it's the "whole American system".

Re: University of California Will Stop Using SAT, ACT

#333

Post by tsimionescu »

zamfi wrote: post #117
applecrazy wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is likely a way to reduce asian american attendance at the top UC schools This is exactly what I was thinking when I read the Times article about this yesterday. I also applied to college last year, so I have a pretty recent knowledge of the process. I spent a grand total of $28 and managed to get a 99th percentile score on the SAT. To claim it’s impossible to score high on that test without money is absolutel…

> I spent a grand total of $28 and managed to get a 99th percentile score on the SAT. To claim it’s impossible to score high on that test without money is absolutely false. No one is claiming it's "impossible", and I don't want to minimize your experience -- 20 years ago, I also scored 99th percentile on the SAT with only $15 spent on practice books -- but it's absolutely not the norm. The reality is that a SAT score…

I'm sure SAT scores correlate with wealth, but the more important question is if they correlate with knowledge.

In the end, there isn't any point in admitting a student to a university where they don't understand the curriculum. So the important question that I expect universities to ask themselves is: are we getting enough information about how well a student is going to be prepared for our curriculum based on their SAT score?

If rich people who know less have higher SAT scores than poor people who know more, then the systemic bias is in the SAT itself. If not, then the SAT isn't the problem, the actual school system is. And, unless they want to take on educating younger children, Universities can't to do too much to fight that type of bias.

I firmly believe that exams are in principle the only fair way to do admissions in educational institutions. They could be national exams or admissions exams created by that institution itself, but either way, as long as the exams are kept un-biased (which I'm not claiming is an easy problem to solve) and scoring is anonymous, you get the closest thing we have to a fair process.

The only alternative could be an easy exam covering just the bare-minimum knowledge, and a lottery system for everyone who passes the exam.

Of course, private universities are free to be as biased as they want. I don't think it's ethically or morally correct, but it shouldn't be illegal.

Re: University of California Will Stop Using SAT, ACT

#334

Post by njonesuk »

ryandrake wrote: post #119
_23sd wrote: post #61

Earlier 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…

Reminds me of the nebulous catch-all “cultural fit” criteria that allows a company to justify not hiring someone who, while they measurably fit with the job, the company just doesn’t want to hire due to some feeling or unconscious bias they have. When you remove quantitative measurements, no matter how flawed the measurements are, you risk further dooming discriminated-against groups.

It's also a useful catch-all to reject candidates who, while they have the technical skills, would cause significant personality clashes within the team. I don't disagree that the "culture fit" criteria can be abused in the way you're describing, and I'm sure it is, but I think it's a little less black and white than you're describing.

Re: University of California Will Stop Using SAT, ACT

#335

Post by frosted-flakes »

As a Canadian who moved to the US for a year in my early 20s and had friends entering university, I had no idea what the SAT or ACT was, and I couldn't hear the difference between them when they talked about it. Did you know that SAT and ACT are near-homonyms? When said quickly as in regular speech, they sound almost the same. Talk about confusing.

Re: University of California Will Stop Using SAT, ACT

#336

Post by throw872579 »

geomark wrote: post #100
awillen wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm obviously speaking about the SAT/ACT in the context of the US system. The entire Finnish education system is extremely different than the one in the US - to say that they don't use the SAT and have better educational outcomes while ignoring everything else is just not a valid comparison. It would be equally valid to say "Finland teaches school in Finnish and they have better outcomes, so we should be teaching sch…

There some people who assert that it is in fact the Finnish language that gives them an advantage in early schooling, that the language is much more regular and easier to learn that it gives school children something like a 2 year advantage over English learners. Not disagreeing with you at all. Just wanted to point out another facet of the debate.

A key advantage seems to be no private schools:

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-am...

Re: University of California Will Stop Using SAT, ACT

#337

Post by magicalhippo »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #250
SiempreViernes wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is in the context of a free education system, the only thing the poor students loose is a bit of time.

A year is A LOT of time, and you have to explain why you lost a year later on. Also, even in "free" education systems, some taxpayer is going to ask "why the hell am I paying for 2/3 of crappy students, can't you just raise the bar at the beginning, and only accept the top 1/3?"

> and you have to explain why you lost a year later on.

That's only if you do nothing else for the rest of the year...

Re: University of California Will Stop Using SAT, ACT

#338

Post by tgv »

fnord123 wrote: post #321
LatteLazy wrote: post #320

When this subject comes up I always tell the same story. When I entered university, the head of admissions had been forced to accept the job. He didn't want to be head of admissions (for physics, our subject). He used the opportunity to do an experiment. Normally you need advanced Maths with a decent grade to get onto a physics degree. He abandoned that and admitted about 20 people without that. He also admitted peop…

The logistics aren't impossible. As far as I'm aware, this is how e.g. the Belgian system works. In the US, however, I think attrition is a metric that contributes to University rankings. So if you accept people into a course you want people to graduate. In such a scheme, the attrition rates are high.

Dutch system too, except for studies with a limited number of places (a tool which is unfortunately used more and more often). There are some prerequisites, though: e.g. for physics, you need to have had physics at secondary school, and for bio-medical sciences, chemistry and physics are obligatory (IIRC).

Re: University of California Will Stop Using SAT, ACT

#339

Post by ruph123 »

LatteLazy wrote: post #320

When this subject comes up I always tell the same story. When I entered university, the head of admissions had been forced to accept the job. He didn't want to be head of admissions (for physics, our subject). He used the opportunity to do an experiment. Normally you need advanced Maths with a decent grade to get onto a physics degree. He abandoned that and admitted about 20 people without that. He also admitted peop…

Excately what is done in Germany. In the engineering fields, people are admitted left and right (often over thousand per subject) and then they make the first semester exams so hard that only about a third pass.

There is this famous thing professors say to engineering students in the first lecture:

"Everyone please look to your right and to your left. [Statistically speaking] only one of you will be able to graduate in the end."

This is why engineering schools are so tough. I heard from some american universities that the master programs are (if you have gotten over the hurdle to get in) rather "easy" and that they want people to have good grades (because it would look bad if top university students have really bad grades I guess?). Whereas in Germany you have to survive. And especially the good university make it as hard as they can to get the cream of the crop.

(Part of this is related to the change from Diploma to Bachelor/Master because for the Diploma people did not have to care about grades and Universities made exams so hard that people would barely pass them: "4 gewinnt").

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