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Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd hardly call rich parents paying for SAT prep classes a better solution.
I improved my SAT score 100 points just doing practice tests
One guy who went to Princeton used a flagship story of “building a forest”. The school was redoing its grounds and hired a bunch of homeless people to do it as they worked for cheap cash. They let him “oversee” it as a social initiative.
Another kid got into Columbia by creating a “nationwide startup innovation movement.” His parents paid the school to book all these convention centres and they flew him out to chill at these fictional events. They claimed all the funds from the events went to startups. They claimed to find over 50 startups and sent each a small check for $30. They sent random startups $30 and used it as a claim to funding innovation.
With grades, they had an internal grade to allow for actually rigorous education, but then they would multiply the grade by 1.2 to get your “public school grade.” That’s the grade reported to universities.
Oh and the teacher left the room for AP tests and we were taught how to efficiently “come to group conclusions.”
The only thing that kept them from doing that kind of stuff for everyone was the SAT as plenty of AP National Scholars couldn’t crack 1800 on the damn thing.
We won over a million dollars in our 60 person class in scholarship money off these absurdities as most of them don’t ask about the SAT.
I think this is a good move overall. Remember, they're not phasing out tests entirely, it's over a 5 year period before they can develop alternative tests. I think US college exam systems are horribly flawed. For one, why are they run by a private non-profit rather than the government? They're also clearly not difficult enough, when at elite universities it's more a qualification than a determinant. In other nations,…
Abolish entrance exams entirely. Replace them with the exams at the end of first semester coupled with some rudimentary requirement that e.g. if you want to do math your high school math grade is OK. Make the first semester de-facto "remedial education" oriented and vastly reduce fees. Basically start with a giant, relatively inexpensive MOOC (possibly joint with other schools to reduce overhead) and then filter that…
That sound you hear is panicked elites, rushing to the "side door" of the UC system in an attempt to figure out how best to influence their kid's probability of admission since paying a few grand for prep sessions (for piece of mind, mostly) on what's a pretty darn good measure of academic aptitude is a waste of everyone's time, now that the test is rendered meaningless ... until California develops their own. I'm su…
> That sound you hear is panicked elites, rushing to the "side door" of the UC system in an attempt to figure out how best to influence their kid's probability of admission It is far easier to influence extracurriculars and grades with money. I went to an expensive private school. Nobody there (nor their parents) would have opposed eliminating the SAT and replacing it with essays and activities.
If not for the evident sincerity of their academic advocates I'd suspect that these policies were carefully crafted by enemies of higher education.
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…
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"?
Spots are awarded very heavily based on points that anyone can calculate.
"Admission to the LAB University of Applied Sciences is dependent on scores earned either in the entrance examination or in SAT-test. Eligibility in itself does not yet guarantee admission. Student selection will be a competitive process in which the best Finnish degree certificates or entrance examination results or SAT results produce a place of study. See the studyinfo.fi -page for more information about student selection.
The applicant with the highest points score will be offered the first place, the second highest will be offered the second place, and so on until all places available have been offered.
In cases of equal minimum admission scores applicants will be ranked on the following ground:
all students with the same score will be selected."
As a required field on the common app, this could help in making admissions decisions. There are so many reasons using standardized tests for admissions isn't fair across the board, but perhaps understanding how much prep went into the test would provide useful data for admissions offices, and also at the macroacademic (lol) layer.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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"?
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…
Not disagreeing with you at all. Just wanted to point out another facet of the debate.