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UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

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Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#91

Post by alex_sf »

alphabettsy wrote: post #74
rsj_hn wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great if your only requirement is to train software developers to write CRUD apps - you can learn to do that by watching youtube videos, reading self-study materials, and taking MOOC classes - but if you want mechanical engineers, chemical engineers, electrical engineers, and be a leader in materials science or chip manufacturing, then you still need universities. So the price of this "equity" movement is goin…

I don’t believe objective measures of intelligence tell you all that much about someone. There are plenty of extremely intelligent people who for various reasons accomplish nothing and plenty of dropouts bringing enormous value to the world.

It’s not solely sufficient, but absolutely the baseline for excellence in any technical field.

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#92

Post by antognini »

WalterBright wrote: post #70
xyzzy21 wrote: post #2

UC schools have already become dubious - the entitlement of grads, the actual LACK of skills, not remotely "hungry" enough to have any grit or motivation, etc. My father (an engineering manager) always said: "If you want GOOD employees, you never want to hire from UCB, Stanford, Cal Tech, etc. The best engineers in California come from Cal Poly SLO and Cal Poly Pomona. They are actually trained as engineers". This is…

> They are actually trained as engineers Caltech's engineering program doesn't actually train you to design machines, or how to operate a milling machine, or how to assemble an internal combustion engine. You can certainly get an engineering degree without ever getting grease under your fingernails. What it does do is teach you math. Every class is a math class. Statics, dynamics, newtonian mechanics, thermodynamics,…

I remember signing up for a political science class at Caltech that was called something like "American politics in the 20th century." The professor began the course by saying, "Let us consider an N-dimensional policy space, S, with a set of M candidate feature vectors, {C}, ...."

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#93

Post by justicezyx »

rackjack wrote: post #76

In China there is 1 exam, the Gaokao. This exam in no small part decides your future. In the past, you had one attempt, and if you failed, tough luck. Now they let kids retake it a couple times. One exam. One billion people. One standardized metric to determine who goes where. There are flaws to this of course. The rich, with better access to tutoring and such, naturally have an advantage over the poor. But herein li…

China's system is not much of value in comparison. UC's problem is that there is no verification on acquired knowledge. Not standard test. You can have non standard test on how much and how well someone learned the knowledge.

> One billion people

If you referring to people who take the exam, it's 10.78M [1].

> One standardized metric to determine who goes where.

This is just to determine the entrance to public university. Of course, the people who can afford alternative higher education is negligible compared to those taking gaokao.

But there are actually a lot of people who won't take gaokao, as they entered vocational school, in 2019 6M entered the so-called vocational high school.

> Removing entry exam requirements does not help underprivileged students.

You got it wrong.

It's not about privilege it's about the effectiveness and efficiency of the talent selection. Secondary is about giving education as a means of climbing social ladder.

[1] https://3g.163.com/dy/article/GBTPVA0U0517M6OP.html?spss=ada...

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#94

Post by nitrogen »

WalterBright wrote: post #81
alphabettsy wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t believe objective measures of intelligence tell you all that much about someone. There are plenty of extremely intelligent people who for various reasons accomplish nothing and plenty of dropouts bringing enormous value to the world.

How many dropouts have successfully designed a jet engine? any of the critical parts on a rocket? a suspension bridge? a building more than 10 stories high? a submarine hull? a utility powerplant?

How many have been given the opportunity to do so? Could a pure apprenticeship model without universities (but still with lots of theory) work for engineering professions?

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#95

Post by farrarstan »

TeeMassive wrote: post #86
temp8964 wrote: post #29

I found what is funny / pathetic about this is that there are tons of psychology / education / especially educational measurement top experts in the UC system, and they know how wrong it is, while they just keep mouth shut. The whole anti-standard-testing movement is pushed by ideology leftists and corrupted bureaucrats, but the supposed experts just quietly watch the world burn. Lol. Update: I found experts in the U…

About 10 years ago in my old university they had no minimum score because back then Computer Science was still considered a fringe field for geek but I digress. Eventually they had to put a minimum because there was too much low score students draining the professors and tutors time both in and outside class. When Computer Science became mainstream and synonymous with making lots of money then they began to limit pla…

lol

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#96

Post by rsj_hn »

alphabettsy wrote: post #74
rsj_hn wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great if your only requirement is to train software developers to write CRUD apps - you can learn to do that by watching youtube videos, reading self-study materials, and taking MOOC classes - but if you want mechanical engineers, chemical engineers, electrical engineers, and be a leader in materials science or chip manufacturing, then you still need universities. So the price of this "equity" movement is goin…

I don’t believe objective measures of intelligence tell you all that much about someone. There are plenty of extremely intelligent people who for various reasons accomplish nothing and plenty of dropouts bringing enormous value to the world.

> I don’t believe objective measures of intelligence don’t tell you all that much about someone.

Unfortunately that's not true. And we have a lot of data that this isn't true.

I recommend reading "The Ape That Understood the Universe" for an overview https://www.amazon.com/Ape-that-Understood-Universe-Culture/...

Part of the problem here is that people feel qualified to weigh in with their feelings of how they want the world to be, completely ignoring all the evidence and data. It's that type of confident denial of reality that is at the heart of this UC decision

"Well, my uncle Jim is really smart and he was always bad at tests!"

That's basically the level of discourse happening here when making public policy, and it's shameful.

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#97

Post by chmod600 »

Another way to look at this is, like so many things, a conflict of visions.

Vision one is that college is an elite institution meant to bring together smart, rich, and connected people in a learning and growth environment. This is sort of a perti-dish of success. In this vision, standardized tests bring in the smart people to compliment the rich and connected.

Vision two is that college is an institution for everyone to have a chance to get ahead. It's a natural extension of high school as we move into a period where we depend on knowledge workers. In this vision, standardized tests exclude people from opportunities.

Clearly the UC is adopting vision two. Whether the tests are racist or not is a distraction.

The problem with vision one is basic fairness, especially when public money is involved.

The problem with vision two is that, if we want real success, we do need elite institutions to concentrate a mix of people likely to produce amazing things. And also, I predict that the noble shine of college as a gateway to opportunity will wear off pretty quickly once they cease being elite institutions, and succumb to bureaucratic stupidity and financial recklessness.

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#98

Post by tasty_freeze »

spoonjim wrote: post #12

I feel like with a 5-4 Supreme Court (6-3 if Breyer doesn’t retire) the explicit rationale of race percentages sets this up for a Supreme Court defeat.

Breyer is one of the three liberal justices. If he retires and Biden gets to choose a replacement, it would still be 6-3.

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#99

Post by [deleted] »

WalterBright wrote: post #40

From their criteria page: https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/counselors/fres... "Special talents, achievements and awards in a particular field, such as visual and performing arts, communication or athletic endeavors; special skills, such as demonstrated written and oral proficiency in other languages; special interests, such as intensive study and exploration of other cultures; experiences that demonstrate…

[deleted]

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#100

Post by abhiyerra »

zzt123 wrote: post #90
abhiyerra wrote: post #64

I was on the UC Berkeley campus on Tuesday. So many more black and latino students than when I was on campus. It was nice. I had many black friends in high school and none when I went to Berkeley in 2005-2010. I can say the SAT, ACT, etc. are biased against anyone who doesn't have the money to get the prep for them.

I don’t know about the ACT, but the SAT in that time period was trivial to study for. I had one Barrons book, and the rest was accomplished by being a student in a public school. There were no surprises come test day. I genuinely don’t understand when people say the SAT is so biased, because it seemed quite fair to me compared to alternative metrics. Unless asking someone to spend a lot of time studying is too much t…

The SAT isn't hard to study for, but the question is, if your dad is in jail (which many of my black friend's dads were), you are feeling uncertain about the world because of the color of your skin, would you put in the effort? I think people look at tests like the one and all, but many kids have other stuff to work out.
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