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University of California Will Stop Using SAT, ACT

• DevKoala 6y ago
  To help minorities... sure Jan.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• hpoe 6y ago
  I 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 subjective, more biased, and more subject to abuse. Sure the SAT/ACT does favor students whose parents had enough money to afford private tutors, but it also meant that if I didn't have a private tutor if I could get a perfect score my chances increase. Now it changes to the whims of the interviewer, the committee that ranks my "holistic" experience, etc.
  • andi999 6y ago
    If one leaves out the 'what is fair' part, then it is ok (and probably best for society) that a student gets favored who can learn/absorb the material (no matter how).
  • anon102010 6y ago
    I didn't have a tutor, I got relatively bad grades in school (was boared?) - SAT was a game changer for me - got me into a good school -> learned some stuff -> making great money. The question is not, is the SAT bad, it is, what about the new system will be better and fairer. The other factor - this is likely a way to reduce asian american attendance at the top UC schools. The Harvard case really revealed how legacy admits etc came in with MUCH lower scores. Same thing with the scandal around sports admits, a way to get in with MUCH lower SAT scores. I'm not against either, but getting away from SAT will help hide this fact (ie, big donor gets kid in even if they are 200 points lower than average).
    • applecrazy 6y ago
      > 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 absolutely false. There are many free or low-cost resources out there, including Collegeboard sponsored Khan Academy prep (free for everyone). All it really requires is time and discipline (as do other things in life). Sure, it’s not perfect, but GPA and extracurriculars can vary vastly across schools, and the SAT provides a pretty good indicator of one’s academic ability in comparison to others. The supreme irony in my case is that I go to a school in Texas for completely free thanks to merit scholarships funded in part by Texas taxpayers, while the schools in my state (California) are charging $30k per year despite being funded by my parents’ taxes. Basically, going out of state was more affordable in my situation.
      • zamfi 6y ago
        > 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 scores correlate with wealth. Both directly, in that while you and I may not need tutoring to improve our scores, there are also millions of kids out there who do benefit from expensive tutoring, and millions of kids who would benefit, but don't because they can't afford it. But also indirectly: I'd be willing to bet you don't come from a low-SES background: i.e., living in poverty, unable to afford basic needs, parents or guardians infrequently present, with unsteady income, etc. (For the record, I don't have this background.) If I'm wrong about your background, you are truly an exception, not merely in the 1% of SAT scorers. Using the SAT in college admissions means that admissions is biasing -- at the margins -- towards, of those students who would benefit from expensive tutoring, the subset who can afford it.
  • awillen 6y ago
    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 same way that democracy is the worst form of government... except for all the others. A lot of people criticize them, but those critics haven't come up with anything better.
    • Shoue 6y ago
      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"?
      • MattGaiser 6y ago
        Finland has its own national exam. Many European countries have something like this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matriculation_exam_(Finland) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matriculation_exam_(Finland)
      • Rebelgecko 6y ago
        Would you mind explaining the difference? From a perfunctory search online it looks like Finland also has a system of university entrance exams (although of course theirs aren't called the SAT)
      • awillen 6y ago
        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 school in Finnish!"
  • mc32 6y ago
    One thing I’d like to see is freezing grade inflation. A more normal distribution curve for grades rather than an abnormal amount being rated A/A+.
    • jdashg 6y ago
      You can't without standardized metrics, is the problem! If no one's failing, must someone always get a D?
      • mc32 6y ago
        Not in a given class, but across all instances of that class, surely it will be more normal.
        • barry-cotter 6y ago
          Not if the population is not a random sample. Cal Tech admits would have no problem doing a two year A.S. in CS in one semester. Doesn’t mean you can expect the same of the average community college student. A highly selected student population could easily have the worst student in class at Harvard doing better than the best student at Directional State U.
    • henryfjordan 6y ago
      I think that universities can normalize a student's grades using their high school's distribution to level playing field amongst all schools, meaning the grade inflation isn't even working. The UC system is going to have more than enough data to figure out those distributions.
      • MattGaiser 6y ago
        Plenty of schools fiddle with that or just refuse to provide the data.
    • danhak 6y ago
      Why does this make any sense? Generally speaking, students at top universities are intelligent and hard-working. Their talent is not normally distributed, and this is increasingly the case as admissions becomes hyper-competitive. Not to mention, students self-select into courses to which they are most suited and likely to perform well. If all students in a particular class master the subject matter, why should some students be forced to receive failing grades? Should the purpose of higher education be to rank students on increasingly marginal criteria or to...educate?
  • resfirestar 6y ago
    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 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. And I worry that will be the main result while the inequities they seek to fix will be obscured rather than improved.
    • jeffbee 6y ago
      Did you just claim that Asian Americans are disadvantaged by UC admissions?
      • resfirestar 6y ago
        No, I referred to the broad category of "universities with highly competitive admissions". More of those are on the east coast than the west coast. California is a bit of an outlier in the US in both Asian American population and integration, so maybe UC is better and they'll be able to do away with standardized tests without hurting Asians too much. Anecdotally, though, people I know who grew up in California tend to think that UC lets in too many rich mainland Chinese and not enough from the large but poor and less integrated (vs. Vietnamese and Koreans) Filipino and Lao populations. Not sure how true that is, and I don't think UC records demographic info that granular, but as I mentioned the perception matters.
      • barry-cotter 6y ago
        > Part of the Mare report -- obtained by Sander through an open-records request -- looks at applicants by race/ethnicity for several years, noting those who -- all other factors being equal -- would have been admitted based on standard criteria. Over a five-year period, he notes that more than 1,300 Asian American applicants in this group were denied admission, while black and Latino applicants were admitted. https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2018/11/19/new-lawsuit-suggests-u-california-has-been-considering-race-admissions https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2018/11/19...
  • seph-reed 6y ago
    Crazy idea: What would happen if there was a circulating board of "shit testers" who each had their own very explicit, formal, and pre-meditated method which they had to apply equally to all people they were judging? The intentional net effect being something like a pool of unpredictable ever-changing criteria that pokes at person from all sides to see whether or not they're a polished turd. I think if it worked it would introduce a lot of chaos, but it would also be (hopefully) extremely difficult to game.
  • slg 6y ago
    I don't have WSJ subscription, but the part that cuts off right before the paywall says they are creating their own test. Maybe the hope is that they can create a test with less biases, but I have little optimism for a system that replaces two standardized and widely used tests with each school system creating their own versions as a replacement. This will make the process more complicated for all applicants and might inadvertently increase the advantage that wealthy have as now each school's test would need a different approach requiring more individualized and therefore more expensive prep.
    • eej71 6y ago
      Exactly. "Creating their own test". Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
      • slg 6y ago
        Except if most other schools follow this path, the average student will go from 1 boss to 5+. That end result would almost unquestionably be worse for the kids this is trying to help.
        • eej71 6y ago
          Very much agree. Of course this will drive up the cost of these elite prep programs because you'll need to find one that has the capability to summarize so many different tests and provide essentialized coaching. That won't come cheap. So only the very wealthy will have the means for this. Another fine piece of work brought to us by the good intentions paving company.
  • TuringNYC 6y ago
    "Holistic" often ends up meaning "I'll make up the rules, and you dont get to know what the rules are" I'd rather take my chances on an unfair system with open rules than on an unfair system with opaque rules. Edit: spelling
    • caseysoftware 6y ago
      > I'd rather take my changes on an unfair system with open rules than on an unfair system with opaque rules. I think this is a perfect summary. No system is perfect but at least the flaws are consistent and well-known, not subject to the whims of a particular group on a particular day.
      • rgblambda 6y ago
        While I would personally take the unfair system with open rules, the system with opaque rules has an advantage in that it's more difficult to game the system. With open rules, you work off a formula for maximising your chances, which may defeat the purpose of the system.
        • TuringNYC 6y ago
          I'm a bit confused - how is prepping and/or studying for the SAT "gaming the system"? I realize SATs are not a prefect reflection of learning, and I also recognize we can make the tests better and better -- but -- what better system is there to gauge learning across millions of people in a consistent manner? I'm honestly interested in some measure that is better, and isnt subject to corruption and whims of the few and stacked in favour of the 1%. >> opaque rules has an advantage in that it's more difficult to game the system You are right that with opaque rules, you cannot study your way into college anymore -- because it will depend on who you know, which charitable boards your parents are part of, which civic organizations you support, how good your sports videos are choreographed, how good an essay writer you hire for your college application, how genuine your weekend "service trip to country x" photos look, etc. When you get rid of tests and replace them with opaque measures that is the sort of gaming you end up with -- and that seems like a far worse type of gaming. I'm comfortably middle class, studying way into a good college from below poverty. Prep books on weekends for 2yrs. I realize it is hard, it isn't fair -- but I dont want to replace that system where my children have to buy their way into college -- which is where we'll end up. I'm not wealthy enough to donate a building. I'm not connected enough to land on a charitable board with a college administrator. My kids have to study their way in. Now...i'm hearing there is no way to study their way in. Rather, we need to figure out how to please each individual school's decision makers. Is that really what is more fair? Is that what the 99% want?
  • nvrspyx 6y ago
    I agree as someone from a poor family that went to a tiny school in one of the worst states in terms of education. I was lucky to be accepted to one of the top schools in the world for a combination of grades, near perfect ACT scores, and athletics. I worked hard without the benefit of any tutors and not much thanks to my teachers since most of them taught multiple subjects, most were family members of the school's founder, and they offered no advanced or AP courses. I'm also extremely grateful that my entire tuition was covered by financial aid scholarships because I can't imagine the debt I would be in otherwise as my parents certainly could not have afforded the tuition. One year's tuition was more than their combined income. I was the first in my school to go to a top 10 college in over 20 years, so they made a pretty big deal out of it. I was also one of two people in the entire university from that particular state during my freshman year with the other student having gone to the top private high school in that state (~30k/yr for tuition). In other words, hard work and performance on the ACT was a huge contribution to being accepted to the schools I did, although I do contribute athletics as an equal contribution since it gave me the benefit of early admission. Then again, if the SAT was a requirement, I probably wouldn't have been accepted because I didn't do nearly as well on that one. Personally, I think it should be a combination of academic performance and other more "holistic" measures. The particular university I went to really emphasized being a well-rounded person and are known for rejecting students with perfect ACT/SAT scores because their application didn't reflect any particular drive, motivation, passion, whatever. Just because you can test well and got good grades does not necessarily mean that you'll thrive in such a competitive environment and make the contributions that the school loves to flaunt. They also want to maintain their graduation rate and don't want people that dropout or transfer from getting overwhelmed (or being entitled because that attitude got stomped out quick). Despite being someone that has always thrived in such a high pressure environments, I admit that things got overwhelming for me pretty often and affected my mental health to a great degree. The stress and imposter syndrome took a major toll on my mental health, academics, and athletics. It got so bad for some that they didn't even survive (suicide). I didn't do nearly as well in university as I had hoped in any facet, but I don't regret it because it made me stronger and ready for the world. I'm happy with the success I've found after years of working hard even after graduating. However, I do often wonder if I would have been more successful at a school that was less high stakes. ---- For those potentially applying to college and as cliche of advice as it is, I advise really emphasizing personal hardship and how you've overcome it in your application essays. Basically, demonstrate that you recognize your weaknesses and overcome them and also demonstrate that you don't turn away from obstacles. Give the admission board the perception that you are constantly progressing, not going backwards or maintaining your current progress, and that nothing is going to stop you from doing so. Excellent academic performance is often good supporting evidence of that, but good grades and test scores by itself doesn't necessarily prove that determination. You should provide as much evidence of that as you can, whether it's extracurriculars, succeeding despite social and economic disadvantages, major life events, natural disasters, etc.
  • Traster 6y ago
    > if I didn't have a private tutor if I could get a perfect score my chances increase. Sure and if you never played basketball ball but hit a 3 pointer on your first try 100 times in a row you could play for the golden state warriors.
  • zamfi 6y ago
    > However it has been my experience that whenever an explicit test or hierarchy is removed another shadow one builds up that is more subjective, more biased, and more subject to abuse. Many people seem to take as given that college admissions should be about "objectively" choosing the most deserving students academically and/or extracurricularly. That is not a complete picture. At the top schools, there's a big focus on constructing an incoming class with students that are likely to succeed both in college and post-college, such that the class is likely to include future stars in law, medicine, business, academia, etc., likely to be able to contribute money or prestige to the institution in 20 years -- these correlate with high school academic performance, for sure, but they also correlate with who your parents are, what types of activities you choose to engage in, your internal initiative and knowledge of yourself, etc. Of course, there's no way to know all this in advance, so admissions officers use a very noisy process to try to guess. That the SAT is game-able with money makes it a less useful indicator, because it starts to correlate with wealth rather than academic ability. Wealth already has plenty of proxies that are visible in the application file, so having another indicator of it is not super helpful. > it also meant that if I didn't have a private tutor if I could get a perfect score my chances increase Sure, if admissions officers ignore everything else they know about you -- which they don't!
  • programmertote 6y ago
    I second this. I grew up in a poor SE Asian country. There, we don't have prep school and such for SAT. But I went to US embassy library; borrow SAT prep books whenever they are available; make lots of photo-copies of some books (like Barron 3500 words) or just do practice tests at the library; and took these tests. I scored pretty well in SAT and SAT 2 subject tests that I won full scholarship at one of the good schools in the US. It took me ~1.5 years to prepare for these tests (English was the hardest; math, physics, bio and chemistry are fairly easy because I finished high school there and the curriculum there is much tougher than the ones in the states), but in the end it's 100% worth it because without the scholarships, I'd never have been able to study in the US and be able to support my family (siblings and widowed mom) back home. If the admission committee decides solely based on holistic view like volunteering and other extracurricular activities, how could I compete with other well-off kids in the US for admission?
    • Kalium 6y ago
      Until you mentioned it, I had no idea that so many embassies ran libraries. Thank you for teaching me something new.
      • programmertote 6y ago
        Thank you. :) The US embassy library in Rangoon (Yangon) is a good resource (at least when I was there back in 2000-2005). There is favoritism (library staff giving favors to people they know by keeping some books off the shelf and letting their favorite/connected people borrow first), a lot of boot-licking (library and embassy staff, who are mostly local people, licking the boots of foreigners while looking down on native/local people), and class hierarchy (mostly the rich kids have access to the library; sure there are some people like me from less well-off families, but that's not common). If one can ignore these ugly aspects and one can be patient to wait for the books needed to show up on the shelf (I took a bus for 45 minutes one way to go to the embassy almost everyday and stay there from 9am-2pm every day to catch the book I want being returned), the embassy is still the best resource we had.
  • jameslk 6y ago
    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
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • gowld 6y ago
      Obviously we shouldn't throw away the kinds of tests that I score highly on. Only the bad tests that reject my genius.
    • collegeburner 6y ago
      Okay, I hated taking SATs as much as anyone, and have an AP exam in a few hours, so I'm no standardized test fan. But there are reasons for it that obviously don't apply in the same ways when evaluating job applicants. While some objective comparison might be helpful, this is a massive apples-and-oranges issue. * College applicants have, by and large, no real-world experience that demonstrates their competency. There are obviously exceptions, but this remains true of the vast majority. Most job applicants have at least some experience, so it's easier to weed out the fruit loops by taking a look at their resumes. There's a lot more high-quality objective information by which one could compare job applicants than college applicants. * Job applications typically narrow the pool to a few candidates to be seriously evaluated. College bureaucrats have thousands. It's more realistic for a potential employer to perform more "holistic" evaluations then for a college to do so simply because of problems of scale. The interviews used to fill most of this role, but bureacrats have gradually shouldered that role: my parents had interviews of two hours for most of their colleges, which seemed to be common for that day. I had interviews of forty-five minutes when they went well, and this was true for my peers as well. Now I guess some administrator sits in a dark room and by the light of a single candle looks up your extracurriculars to determine your zodiac sign and thus your fitness for the school, or whatever garbage they came up with. Where do you usually see the subjective, interview-style evaluations break down in favor of whiteboarding? Big FAANGs that have a scale that makes that sort of individual evaluation difficult and may necessitate whiteboarding. Universities hit this same problem, only with the added concern that there's even less consistent basic competency: about one third [0] of students require remedial courses and therefore probably ought not to have been admitted to college. So there has to be at least some metric by which they can consistently compare. On the other hand, I applied to a bunch of "elite" schools that all had black-box "holistic admissions" processes. What frustrated me wasn't that "Oh no, now I can't game the system; drat!" Rather, I didn't know what to emphasize for best effect because they didn't make what they valued clear. I had enough stuff about which I could write that I could pick and choose, and I wasn't sure which I ought to pick. This made things like ordering my resume and writing my essays more difficult. You know who probably could have told me what to write about and how to order my resume, though? A fancy, expensive college consultant. Making the process more opaque only helps those who literally pay people to sit around and figure out how to game the system. [0]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5184995_Shape_Up_or_Ship_Out_The_Effects_of_Remediation_on_Students_at_Four-Year_Colleges https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5184995_Shape_Up_or...
  • accurrent 6y ago
    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.
    • Izkata 6y ago
      > In the US one has to pay "college counselors" and various middle men for handling all sorts of things. That wasn't a thing when I was applying in 2005, is it recent? I just applied directly to the colleges I wanted, filled out the forms myself with some help from my parents.
      • gowld 6y ago
        Today's headline news: "Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli agree to plead guilty in college admissions scam"
      • collegeburner 6y ago
        No, I just went through applications, and that's not a thing, except with a few rich parents who are desperate to get their kid who has slacked off for years into a decent school.
  • nickbauman 6y ago
    All education will be biased toward people who have had more resources from early childhood on. But what has been revealed is kids that go to elite colleges but have fewer resources growing up and get worse grades actually do about as well as their better trained and supported counterparts. So the conclusion is that there's probably a cultural bias going on for kids who are underprivileged that goes away once they enter the workforce if given the opportunities.
  • ciarannolan 6y ago
    >However it has been my experience that whenever an explicit test or hierarchy is removed another shadow one builds up that is more subjective, more biased, and more subject to abuse. I think it's naive to assume that this is an accident. This is _exactly_ the reason to make admissions more subjective: to give a small group of people carte blanche to pick and choose candidates based on race, origin, etc. This way the annoying statistics about affirmative action that look plainly racist just... disappear.
  • dragonwriter 6y ago
    > I know some people protest measures that are considered more "objective" over measures that are more "holistic", I don't think anyone does that; “objective” and “holistic” are on orthogonal axes. The opposite of “holistic” is “narrow” and of “objective” is “subjective”. You can have narrow or holistic subjective criteria, and narrow or holistic objective criteria. > Sure the SAT/ACT does favor students whose parents had enough money to afford private tutors, Well it favors students for whom the cost (both financial and opportunity) of taking it multiple times isn't an issue, even if tutoring isn't a factor.
  • an_opabinia 6y ago
    > Sure the SAT/ACT does favor students whose parents had enough money to afford private tutors Not really, most evidence points to private tutors as we know them having a very small impact on test scores. On a large study low-income students controlled I recall something like +30 points and something like a non-statistically-significant difference for high income students. The income difference was still its usual +100 points. The thing you and pretty much everyone else conflates with private tutors as Americans conceive them is cram schools, which are a different beast entirely. If you just punch private tutoring into Google Scholar you'll see they're really talking about cram schools whenever a large effect is observed. Should the University of California system reward parents who coerce their kids into a childhood-robbing experience they will pay dearly for later? Who's going to investigate, "Do kids who endured cram school emerge healthy?" Does that sound like a good policy, cram school? We don't want our regular education system to resemble a cram school. We regularly rally against teaching to the test. We can't have it both ways. Cramming is not valuable, it simply isn't, it is only valuable in a very narrowly delusional, zero sum worldview but it's not a policy.
  • svaha1728 6y ago
    I agree. I don’t think I would have gone to the Ivy’s without standardized testing. Rust-belter from a public school. Obviously, there are no easy answers. So many great students, teachers and perspectives... and probably an early realization that no one knows it all - especially me. I still look back at my education with nostalgia. The working world isn’t any more fair than the educational world.
• collegeburner 6y ago
  Yay, another chance for schools to curate incoming classes based on what they want on a brochure rather than on merit.
  • adammunich 6y ago
    I'd hardly call rich parents paying for SAT prep classes a better solution.
    • kansface 6y ago
      SAT prep classes have a small effect size.
      • collegeburner 6y ago
        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.
    • takeda 6y ago
      Now they can pay directly? At least with SAT poor students still had a chance if they did well on the test.
    • yters 6y ago
      I improved my SAT score 100 points just doing practice tests
      • catalogia 6y ago
        How many times did you take it? If it was only twice, how can you be sure how much of that 100 point discrepancy was attributable to practice, and how much of it was essentially down to chance? I doubt you'd get the same score twice if you took it twice without studying in between.
• redisman 6y ago
  Paywall. What is the proposed solution to replace it?
  • karanke 6y ago
    They're creating their own test. > The unanimous 23-to-0 vote ratified a proposal put forward last month by UC President Janet Napolitano to phase out the exams over the next five years until the sprawling UC system can develop its own test.
    • seibelj 6y ago
      Likely not: > Ms. Napolitano’s proposal allows four years for the UC system to develop a new exam. If it fails to create or adopt one, then it likely would cease to use any exam, said Robert Schaeffer, public education director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, known as FairTest, which has fought against standardized testing for 30 years. Mr. Schaeffer said he doesn’t believe a new exam will be implemented. “It appears very unlikely that they will be able to design an instrument that is more accurate and fairer than relying on applicants’ high school records,” Mr. Schaeffer said. “And, if a new test somehow meets those goals promoters would face massive adoption barriers, including persuading UC and the rest of the admissions world that a third test is truly needed or useful.”
      • stu2b50 6y ago
        To be fair, that's an assertion with zero evidence or even reasoning, from someone who, having "fought against standardized testing for 30 years", is not exactly an unbiased source.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • BurningFrog 6y ago
      How would the new test be better than SAT?
    • gliese1337 6y ago
• seibelj 6y ago
  Another 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 jump through hoops. Such a tragedy.
  • basementcat 6y ago
    Alternatively, this may prompt more students to take the AMC examinations. https://www.maa.org/math-competitions https://www.maa.org/math-competitions
    • zests 6y ago
      Good luck self studying for those -- I tried. I made AIME but had no chance there. There's no way a significant number of generic public high schools start caring about the AMC. It will just be helicopter parents, wealthy private schools and the odd self motivated student.
      • saagarjha 6y ago
        You can study for the AMC–I used to (disclaimer: I knew a lot people who did so as well). However, doing well on the AMC usually means you need to actually understand what you're doing; it's fairly difficult to cheese your way through.
    • papeda 6y ago
      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. [1] https://www.khanacademy.org/sat https://www.khanacademy.org/sat
• Aaronstotle 6y ago
  I took the SAT in high school and my scores discouraged me so much that I ended up not applying to any colleges. Worked out in the end because I went to a community college then transferred to Berkeley (which thankfully didn't require an SAT score)
  • sinkasapa 6y ago
    My experience was much like your own except I never took the tests, which I'm sure I'd have done horribly at given my high school experience. I'm now getting a PhD in a really nice program so I feel good about the transfer route. High school and college are so different, I've often wondered if transfering wouldn't be the best for most people. Then you can prove that you can succeed in college by going to college and learning what that means. I meet so many people that went straight from their high school to a competitive undergraduate institution and then came out the other end of it feeling like they never knew why they did what they did. In fact, many make it all the way through their PhD, only to think afterwards whether it was what they really wanted. They never worked at normal jobs or really left the citadel. 18 is so young to commit to all of this. I think the transfer route allows for more reflection and a far more realistic "model" for institutions to base projections of later success in a BA or BS program on. Going to a community college and being in class with people who are middle aged and seeking new directions, refugees, people who made mistakes, and other young people who knew they wanted to do something but not what yet, was an invaluable part of my life and formed my understanding of what it means to seek out education. It is an insight many of my colleagues lack. Though it doesn't really seem to be the point of the debate on exams, what really could stand to be improved is the extent to which undergraduates have the best long term life outcomes based on their educational experience and how the admissions process functions relative to this question.
• vikramkr 6y ago
  It's weird that the development of our educational system is being driven by what basically boils down to free market competition where UCs reject the value proposition of those standardized tests and impact the market for educational testing services. It's also interesting to see, if you view this as the market becoming more efficient, it's interesting to see how long it took for any significant move towards efficiency to happen by rejecting standardized tests. I wonder if market skeptics are right and that these evaluations and decisions would have been made a lot faster and better with regulation and centralization, or if market advocates are right and this was the best/fastest way to have educational institutions realize the impact subpar admissions selection based on flawed tests has and course correct, which they might only do because UC is competing against other institutions (unlike universities in other countries), and which opens up the market for better evaluation methods that will, because of a profit motive, lead to new, less biased standardized evaluations being developed rapidly to increase equity and equality of opportunity in society.
• stu2b50 6y ago
  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, they're hard enough that the bell curve doesn't clip at the end. The tests should be free, or at least free for, say, 2 tests per year per student. They should be harder. And they shouldn't be held in the hands of a third party.
  • corrupt_measure 6y ago
    They're definitely difficult enough to separate the abilities of most students into rough groups. At the upper 1% it's certainly hard to differentiate but for the other 99% it's quite effective.
    • stu2b50 6y ago
      What's the downside to making it harder, though? Scores are all considered relative. If the average student makes a 600 points out of whatever instead of 800 points out of whatever, it doesn't actually change anything for them.
  • kansface 6y ago
    What are the odds that the UC system will make a harder test, and secondly, will actually get good applicants to take it?
    • saagarjha 6y ago
      Whatever test the UC system comes up with will be taken by a huge fraction of college applicants, especially the good ones.
    • jedberg 6y ago
      CA is 10% of the US population. Also, UCLA and Berkeley are huge international schools (and have students from all 50 states). A lot of people will take that test for sure. And if it turns out to be a good indicator, other states would probably accept the scores too. Then California makes it free for CA residents and makes test prep part of the HS curriculum and you're on your way to solving a few systemic problems at once!
• MattGaiser 6y ago
  There is going to be a massive market for extracurricular consultants in a little while as when everyone gets As, that’s what will be the deciding factor.
• lemoncucumber 6y ago
  Can we fix the article title to properly capitalize SAT and ACT to be more readable? Particularly since both "sat" and "act" are words.
• corrupt_measure 6y ago
  >Admissions tests, allegedly biased against minority students, will be phased out over five years Why are we lumping minorities into one group when we know that many minority groups score better than average on standardized tests than the general population. Asian Americans, Nigerian Americans, Jewish people, etc all do very well. In a world where the wealthy have ever more advantages in college admissions, standardized tests serve to level the playing field. I grew up in a very wealthy town and many kids I knew whose parents spent large sums on SAT tutors never improved their scores because they didn't have the intellectual horsepower. Just because college administrators and others feel uncomfortable that certain groups continue to do better than others on the SAT is a horrible reason to get rid of the test.
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  • Barrin92 6y ago
    > In a world where the wealthy have ever more advantages in college admissions, standardized tests serve to level the playing field wish I could upvote this more than once. Rigorous testing and merit based examinations have a reputation for being elitist but they're the exact opposite. There's some benefit for people coming from higher social classes, but the difference in intellect is much smaller than the difference in networking, cultural attitudes or any other vague criterion that tests are replaced with. At any country you look that has truly high mobility in education and has managed to produce a broad, national high quality system there's almost a Leninist attitude towards discipline and putting people through examinations. It's much harder for social privilege to be sustained in these institutions than in some kind of essay writing competition. It's also I think the reason for the pretty strong diversity of the military.
  • ikeyany 6y ago
    A lot of people mean "underrepresented and underprivileged people", which has a less racial implication than "minority". In that case, regardless of race, they would look at your parents' income, or the kind of school you went to and the district it was in.
  • 6y ago
• usui 6y ago
  Yes, finally! As someone who underwent the standardized testing grind, I have been waiting for an announcement like this by a university system for years. I understand that there needs to be some standardized way to objectively score students, because allocating college seats to students seems to be an induced scarcity problem. However, as someone who scored highly and is currently studying computer science at UC Berkeley, I ultimately feel like my time was wasted because the tests have almost no relation to any of my studies in class. I know that in the absence of SAT and ACT, universities will need to come up with a different system, that has an equal chance of being gamed. Perfect is the enemy of good, and in this case, I would rather we strive toward standardized systems that actually relate to the content of high school. So many times while studying for the test I thought how much of a waste of time it is, and that I would rather be doing something else like programming. Thank goodness that nowadays all I have to worry about is actual computer science. I got past the time-wasting hump and I never have to look back again. That is, unless I face the GRE...
  • realbarack 6y ago
    The problem is that whatever fills the void left by SAT and ACT will likely be _easier_ to game. Standardized tests are not perfect but they're a better signal than extracurricular checkboxes or professionally-edited essays.
    • TuringNYC 6y ago
      Yeah...i'm pretty sure that is the whole intention. Us New Yorkers have been having the same problem as they tried to take away standardized high school entrance exams. Most doubt the intention was to make it fair -- the intention was to make it opaque so admins could pick and choose students rather than leave it up to people studying their way in.
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  • harryh 6y ago
    I ultimately feel like my time was wasted because the tests have almost no relation to any of my studies in class. The SAT is basically a somewhat disguised IQ test and I'm quite confident that intelligence was related to the studies in your classes.
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• xxpor 6y ago
  If you thought grade inflation was bad before, hold on to your tuchus.
• grumple 6y ago
  I wish UC the best of luck designing another test. That it was a unanimous vote is suspicious to me though... did the college board stop bribing the board of regents? Or did the regents pool together to create a consulting agency that's getting paid out to develop the new test? Or are they really all so pliable or same-minded?
• yters 6y ago
  Well, does IQ matter for academia? Some latent ability to think quickly matters. That's the point of the SAT.
  • carry_bit 6y ago
    The SAT stopped correlating with IQ in 1994.
    • yters 6y ago
      I have taken both IQ and SAT tests, and the sorts of questions are very similar. I am doubtful there is no significant correlation. The GRE, on the other hand, is more busywork and knowledge based than IQ insight based, in my experience.
• nicholas73 6y ago
  I had middling grades and not much extracurricular padding in high school but 99th percentile SAT (no prep other than a practice test). If it weren't for the SAT I would have had worse college options. School felt like it provided nothing more than read and regurg and my background did not promote anything extra. So personally I do not see how this decision evens the playing field.
  • paxys 6y ago
    There are a lot more cases which are the exact opposite. People who have done well in school, extra curriculars and more, but are held back by a meaningless test.
    • Gwypaas 6y ago
      I guess it comes back to if you do a cumulative weighting or have different buckets, especially regarding soft things like extra curricular activities. Where I went to uni we simply have two different buckets which the schools can change around a bit, but still keeping both. For for my program 66% of students were selected by grade and 34% based on a national test with normalized scoring. Extra curricular activities or whatever isn't really a thing ever, because it can't be measured. Well, until you are padding your resume for that first job.
    • nicholas73 6y ago
      I don't have perspective, maybe, but what is exactly holding back someone who does well in school to score higher on a test? It's not like you don't get to retake it if it was a fluke. If it's the test fee, just allow a retake for free like a gas station smog check offer. Or, a college can bucket grades and test scores separately and just take whichever is higher.
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    • kortilla 6y ago
      Extra curriculars don’t mean shit realistically when it comes to predicting performance in college classes.
• remarkEon 6y ago
  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 sure whatever they come up with will be quite the improvement. If there was a checklist that you'd go down to help the University system implode "remove testing for academic aptitude" is probably right before "all objective measures of performance are banned". At that point who the hell can justify paying $150k+ for a "degree"? Edit: pasting this from my below comment. I think people are misinterpreting my comment as suggesting elite parents would've been against this - far from it. They absolutely wanted this because now it's easier to hide middling academic aptitude from admissions boards at elite schools. To be clear: Removing this test helps elite parents, and hurts those who can't afford spending money on "summer experiences" abroad or poverty tourism or whatever.
  • MattGaiser 6y ago
    > 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.
    • remarkEon 6y ago
      Yeah, I think people are misinterpreting my comment as suggesting elite parents would've been against this - far from it. They absolutely wanted this because now it's easier to hide middling academic aptitude from admissions boards at elite schools. To be clear: Removing this test helps elite parents, and hurts those who can't afford spending money on "summer experiences" abroad or poverty tourism or whatever.
      • anon102010 6y ago
• Medicalidiot 6y ago
  Personally, I would like to a see a government sponsored test where the study materials are provided for free. I feel like that would help decrease the amount of people who couldn't afford the prep courses or tutors. Not ideal, but better than the current system where wealthy parents pay for the best tutors and materials.
  • HALtheWise 6y ago
    Today, the official preparation materials for the SAT are provided for free to anyone with internet access through Khan Academy, and others in this thread have claimed they are as good as privately available tutoring. I suspect that no matter how effective the publicaly available test prep is, somebody will always be able to convince parents to pay them to do better, whether or not that actually works. For strong cultural reasons, having the police enforce a ban on all nonfree activities intended to prepare students for the test is not viable.
  • harryh 6y ago
    https://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/sat https://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/sat
• mberning 6y ago
  Higher education is an absolutely shameful industry. They work hand in glove with public and private financiers and textbook cartels to sell 18 year olds on a highly speculative “investment” that very frequently turns out to be worthless from an economic standpoint. This is jus another way to further push open the floodgates.
• m0zg 6y ago
  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 down to people who are going to be able to pull their weight.
  • 121789 6y ago
    is your scenario not already currently adequately served by going to a community college and transferring to a state college?
    • m0zg 6y ago
      Such a path has significant stigma associated with it, so no.
      • google234123 6y ago
        Doesn't the current system already accomplish what you want? Why does berkeley need to do this "remedial education"? How would you determine who goes to where?
• augustt 6y ago
  For the best schools, like Berkeley, I don't think this should matter much. At that level, SAT/ACT scores are pretty much just a threshold used to whittle down the number of candidates. Once you're over say 1500 on the SAT there's diminishing returns on trying to close the gap to 1600.
• cameldrv 6y ago
  This is very unfortunate. Yes, you can improve your SAT score by studying somewhat, but not massively. The College board has made a free online prep course with Kahn academy that achieves similar results to professional coaching if the student puts in the time. The fact that a student is willing to put in that time should be an indicator that they're likely to be successful in college. Where more of the abuse is is in parents getting disability diagnoses to get extra time on the test. This same technique can be used to game grades though too.
  • catalogia 6y ago
    I'm not convinced more time on tests will actually help somebody who doesn't legitimately have some relevant disability. Generally tests are structured so that if you know the material, you'll have plenty of time to spare. But if you don't know the material, it's unlikely you'll figure it out even if you're given twice as much time on the exam. It's not like they'll spend that extra hour teaching themselves the trigonometry they neglected to learn in the weeks/months before the exam.
    • cameldrv 6y ago
      This is not true for the SAT. Having extra time to double check answers or work out harder problems will definitely lead to a better score. Speed is intended to be a factor in the SAT.
      • catalogia 6y ago
        Maybe so, it's been many years since I took the SAT and I can't remember much about that experience. But I think with respect to more general academic performance, extra time on tests won't usually help much. In my experience in college, very few of my peers ever used up the full hour or two given for exams. The ones that did seemed to be worrying themselves sick double-guessing themselves, and it never seemed to do them much good. I had one friend who I suspected of having a bogus disability. He had rich parents and got double-time on exams. But it's a miracle he graduated at all, he seemed to always be on the brink of flunking out. I think that had a lot to do with his video game addiction that stopped him from studying much. He was a reasonably bright guy with a horrible work ethic, and I really don't think the extra time on exams helped him at all.
• nimbius 6y ago
  Ibram X Kendi has an excellent book, "Stamped from the Beginning" that does a great job of explaining how SAT and ACT tests were really only ever meaningful as a barrier to class mobility for blacks in the United states. in the 21st century it does the same thing. By keeping test prep out of public school and forcing takers to invest up to a thousand dollars on a classroom instruction for the test (which often promises an increase up to 200 points) it remains a disadvantage to latinx and black minorities who are generally poorer. 'Test prep' is also less about what you learn, and more about the finesse or 'form' required to take the test. Much the same as a power lifter lifts greater weight due to ther superior form, those whove attended test prep complete the SAT and ACT with a higher score because of superior test taking 'form.'
  • harryh 6y ago
    SAT test prep has a very small impact on scores. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/after-service/201903/5-seriously-stunning-facts-about-higher-education-in-america https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/after-service/201903...
    • kasey_junk 6y ago
      It’s likely more a marker about having caretakers who understand how to navigate the process than any actual explicit improvement. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/10/04/new-papers-find-persistent-barriers-aid-low-income-students-despite-federal-policy https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/10/04/new-papers-fi... FAFSA which isn’t even meant to be a filter is a barrier to entry for students without resources who understand the process and can guide them through it.
  • spekcular 6y ago
    I'm not sure this take comports with the facts. Test prep materials are readily available at most public libraries, and even professional prep courses produce marginal gains (smaller than the test-retest measurement error). The claim that rich white people are leveraging their wealth to buy a secret "one weird trick" that instantly boosts their scores is simply false. I am happy to provide citations if you're interested.
• moneywoes 6y ago
  There is no SAT in Canadian school admissions. What would make it difficult fo the US to adopt a similar policy?
  • jariel 6y ago
    It wouldn't be difficult, the question is, does it have merit or not. Canada has far fewer wealthy people, far less extreme poverty, far fewer private schools and essentially no private universities. Even the relative quality of universities is flatter. The top schools are pretty good, the mid-tier schools not hugely different. Whereas Harvard can offer something considerably more substantial than most state schools, on average. (It always depends on many factors, especially the student) Very different landscape as well.
• fnord77 6y ago
  > ...dealing a significant blow to the multibillion-dollar college admission testing industry. why such concern for a parasite industry?
• aiyodev 6y ago
  The real reason for the change is to exclude more Asians. History is a circle. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/harvard-s-jewish-problem https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/harvard-s-jewish-proble...
• mjfl 6y ago
  They're trying to reduce the number of Asians at the school, plain and simple.
  • ciarannolan 6y ago
    Even more ironic is that Asian students from the _exact same_ income levels and neighborhoods are still outperforming their peers. Maybe there's another solution besides blatant racism.
• Antecedent 6y ago
  I attended an elite private high school ($30,000 a year). The school gamed everything for them. It wrote their essays, created leadership positions for everyone, and made sure to spread the applications around so that every student in the references could be “once in a generation.” 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.
• hirundo 6y ago
  A large fraction of the value of a degree is as a hiring signal of employee quality. That signal is degraded by anti capitalist training, by merit hiring equated with white nationalism, by academic grounding diverted to activism, and now by the removal of objective admission standards. As an economic transaction college is being made less attractive, to its long term peril. If not for the evident sincerity of their academic advocates I'd suspect that these policies were carefully crafted by enemies of higher education.
• pacala 6y ago
  PDF of the decision: https://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/may20/b4.pdf https://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/may20/b4....
• Budabellly 6y ago
  Is there any way that it could make sense to require reporting the # of hours a student spends in SAT/ACT tutoring, whether it be private, through your school, or other? 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.
  • gen3 6y ago
    I can’t see how that makes anything more fair? Some people are just bad test takers. What good does it make to penalize them for studying and trying to do the best they can do? Someone with a learning difference would be at a disadvantage. Also, why wouldn’t I just lie?
    • Budabellly 6y ago
      I was thinking less about penalization or individual application decisions, and more about aggregate or anonymized datasets for institutions and governing bodies (College Board, Common App, etc.) to inform their policies. And yeah, you could certainly lie, but I feel that's true for a lot of fields on college apps? Perhaps it could be reasonable to have your school validate or sponsor the answer? It's well researched that private tutoring (among many other socio-economic factors) gives you a huge advantage on these tests. Having one of these bodies come out and say by how much could be a wake up call, and maybe spur more decisions like this one in the original post. Totally agree with your points, but also think tutoring != independent studying, the latter of which could not effectively be reported.
      • gen3 6y ago
        That’s a good point. Having those numbers would be interesting, and hopefully help us employ better use of funding. Having an anonymous survey portion that you ripped off from the main test and is collected separately could be beneficial, I think. I would want to also ask questions about their parents backgrounds, if they had a connection with a teacher in high school, internet access, and general questions about social media usage.
• bcatanzaro 6y ago
  This is a great victory for privileged kids that can now rely more than ever on coaching to have the most awesome extra-curriculars and most convincing essays. Truly a brave step to ensure that poor kids can't sneak through the admissions system using their smarts. I expect this will lead to higher donations to the UC system in the future. </s> Seriously, considering stopping donations this year - I'm a UC alumnus and this makes me sad.
• gamesbrainiac 6y ago
  Preparing for the SAT, I have to say that it was one of the weirdest tests I've ever taken. I don't think it does a good job at predicting future outcomes for students, compared to how they did in their school work. For most people outside of the US system, who want to go to US universities, it is an extra (and expensive) hassle when you've already taken internationally accredited qualifications like the A-Levels or the IB. I'd much rather trust something that has assessed you over a couple of years over something that just asses how well you can cram for something.
  • collegeburner 6y ago
    I'll give an alternative perspective from someone who just did the whole college admissions thing. While measuring ability to cram isn't perfect, I'd hate to be measured purely based on performance over the years. While I did well and pulled straight As in some very hard classes, just knowing I was under such a microscope from day one in high school would be pretty brutally stressful and might prevent me from participating in as many extra-curriculars.
• downerending 6y ago
  I grew up fairly poor in a rather mediocre school district. I wonder if I'd have even gotten into college without the SAT (which is the better test, in my opinion). Getting 99%s on that made a difference for me.
• jwilber 6y ago
  UC Berkeley alumni here. Don’t know that this is a good thing. Currently, the UC’s provide a lot of weight to holistic applications. These often favor privileged kids, as they have access to far more opportunities than others. For some, the SAT provided a sort of leveling field in that regard. Still, it wasn’t perfect, but I fail to see how what they come up with will fix the issue. Of interest is that all of this is taking place in a state that has banned affirmative action.
  • tankerdude 6y ago
    Yes, but wealthy or not, the UCs limit the number of kits from high achieving schools, usually to around 50 for UCLA and UCB, as examples. They then accept a certain number for every lower achieving school, due to the 10% requirement (is it still 10% these days?). People then game the system, with the wealthy, moving to a poorly performing school, and the child will be ranked very high in their school, so it is easy to get into the highest rated UCs. I will also disagree that the SAT is a leveling field. The reason is that in the high achieving schools, the child is sent to private tutors and classes every single year of their lives starting in elementary school. The parents will spend $1k+/month on activities as well as academic classes. That type of knowledge seriously adds up. For the disadvantaged, they _could_ but the steps are a lot steeper, and most don't make those steps.
    • ApolloFortyNine 6y ago
      >I will also disagree that the SAT is a leveling field. The reason is that in the high achieving schools, the child is sent to private tutors and classes every single year of their lives starting in elementary school. The parents will spend $1k+/month on activities as well as academic classes. That type of knowledge seriously adds up. This sentiment is littered throughout the comments here. Do we want colleges to admit the brightest, most academically ready 18 year olds? Or to simply admit equal percentages matching race and income levels? You even seem to admit the student would be better off with those extra classes. >That type of knowledge seriously adds up. Personally I'd have no problem with someone smarter than me getting into a college over me... It's not as if you can pay a tutor and then go to bed while they do the work for you, you still have to put in time...
• deleted 6y ago
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• AaronFriel 6y ago
  Such a move would mean I would never have been admitted to university, and I don't think I'm alone. I graduated third from the bottom of my class from High School and had enormous difficulties with a school system that was adversarial to me throughout my childhood. In my public elementary school my principal deceived state officials to try to put me into special ed. She was admonished after it was revealed she hid my Iowa standardized test scores from state officials. In my public high school, my teachers and administrators were given my elementary school file and treated me similarly. I was forbidden from taking AP classes or even taking the exams with self study. After I graduated, my high school refused to release a copy of my file to me, saying they had destroyed it mere weeks after I received my diploma. Standardized tests were the one opportunity I had to demonstrate I didn't fit my grade point average or what I'm sure would have been derogatory information provided by my public school to any university I applied to.
  • ikeyany 6y ago
    > In my public elementary school my principal deceived state officials to try to put me into special ed. She was admonished after it was revealed she hid my Iowa standardized test scores from state officials. I think a student talking about that during the application process would actually be considered for admission.
    • AaronFriel 6y ago
      I would say it's a very naive assumption that admissions will look that deeply into a story of a "low-performing" student saying they have been wronged with no evidence otherwise. Especially if I did not have a standardized test score, a public school file documenting it, or anything to back up that claim other than recollections of my own and my father's.
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• ponker 6y ago
  Clever way of thwarting all the discrimination lawsuits... remove any truly objective measures of students.
• vimax 6y ago
  Everyone is focused on this being a means of controlling the selection process, but just look at the money. CollegeBoard had a 2017 revenue of $1.07bn with an astonishing $928m in expenses. If the new UCSAT displaces the SAT, UC gets to add an extra $100m to profits and $XXX million in 'expenses' to get lost in the UC System. And they get more control over the selection process.
  • azinman2 6y ago
    You're assuming they'd charge for the test. Is that documented somewhere? I don't see that in the article.
• deleted 6y ago
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• jariel 6y ago
  This 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.
  • ciarannolan 6y ago
    > This pragmatically means the administrators are free to pursue their biased and ideological policy objectives. This is the express purpose of this change.
    • jariel 6y ago
      This is probably true, and really it hurts. In this Trumpian era we like to talk about the 'integrity of institutions' and yet so many are boldly willing to do away with the results of baseline objectivity when it doesn't suit their agenda. Because of course, the 'agenda' is what matters, not Truth or Objectivity. Hmmm ... I wonder if we could have a place, where like ... 'free thinkers' could be free to talk about ideas and be objective without worrisome authoritarians creeping in. Maybe we could protect such people with things like 'tenure' so that they would be free to not have to follow some specific ideal ... Now that would be interesting!
      • dominostars 6y ago
        > In this Trumpian era we like to talk about the 'integrity of institutions' and yet so many are boldly willing to do away with the results of baseline objectivity when it doesn't suit their agenda. Except that the SAT and ACT have been shown over and over again to not be objective, so calling it "baseline objectivity" misses the point entirely.
        • jariel 6y ago
          No, the SATs are by far the most objective criteria, to not realize this, is to miss the point entirely. That 'rich kids to better' is a more nuanced thing, not a fundamental flaw, because, after all, that 'rich kids do better' at the SATs and everything else, means that they are actually first-order better candidates for the school. It's only when you take into consideration the secondary objectives, that the flaws in SATs become evident. Now, of secondary objectives such as 'economic and racial composition' become the 'primary objective' - then objectively academic exercises like the SAD, grades etc. become irrelevant. There is the possibility that SAT's are actually a distraction, that and that there might be a better way of determining ability - most of the rest of the world does it somehow.
• raz32dust 6y ago
  Non paywall version (different site but same topic): https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/05/21/university-of-california-eliminates-sat-act-requirement-1285435 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?
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• ausjke 6y ago
  welcome to socialism/communism, where equal opportunities are nothing, only equal results matter. the left is absolutely brain dead, the road to hell is paved with their "good" intentions.
• Balgair 6y ago
  The connections between this decision, the recent Students for Fair Admission INC v Harvard, and the Varsity Blues scandal are striking. The interesting tid-bit is the Varsity Blues information. Previously, the price of bribery was unknown. The economics of such a trade, illegal as it was, were murky. With the unmasking of the scheme, including possible angles, and now a known bargaining price point, the whole admissions process has become much clearer. Covid19, throws a wrench into everything, including college admissions. But these other mechanisms of entry are still in place. I suspect that the admissions departments are about to get a lot larger. Especially with the ability to use Zoom for everything now.
• neonate 6y ago
  https://archive.md/SuCkO https://archive.md/SuCkO
  • QuantumGood 6y ago
    interesting url there...
• willberman 6y ago
  I would prefer if schools just gave as concrete as possible feedback for why individual applicants are or are not admitted. i.e. Congrats, you got accepted. Your GPA ranked in the top $X percentile of our admitted class and your engagement in robotics was astonishing. or You were not admitted because while your GPA was excellent, we did not see sufficient community engagement in your extracuriculars.
  • google234123 6y ago
    There's no point in feedback since you can't go back in time to fix those issues. You should already be able to guess from looking at the profiles of students who got in and those that didn't.
    • willberman 6y ago
      I don’t necessarily agree with either of those. Maybe a college tells me that a particular type of extra-curricular wasn’t valued as highly as I thought it was and I elect to pursue something different in undergrad (I wouldn’t recommend this but to each their own). The feedback would also provide relevant data points to future applicants if chosen to be shared. There are plenty of examples of students who are accepted/rejected to schools which you wouldn’t expect.
• organicfigs 6y ago
  I can't say I agree with this decision. I graduated from Cal probably a bit higher than 70th percentile by GPA in EECS 10 years ago. To this day, I was motivated by everyone smarter than me who was admitted based on merit based on their SAT. If I were to graduate today (at lets say) 85th percentile, not because of merit but because Berkeley admitted applicants not as strong, that would've damaged my motivation more than being in a fair 70th percentile placement.
• dang 6y ago
  A related article is https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/us/university-california-sat-act.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/us/university-california-...
• wholien 6y ago
  Still feel like test scores are the least inequitable parts of college admissions. This is where people can https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/upshot/how-universal-coll.. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/upshot/how-universal-coll.... Louisiana made everyone take the ACT and... more people went to college, especially the high achieving low income and/or minority students! https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2303z4.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2303z4.html
• RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
  People keep saying those tears favor the rich, but I think if you look at legacy admissions, which are the domain of the rich, those tend to have lower SAT scores than other students. Also, the various people arrested in the college payment schemes were rich, but still were not able to get their kids into the colleges based on their scores. Basically, the colleges are doing this so they have more leeway to select the students they want without having to answer tough questions about bias and discrimination.
• perseusprime11 6y ago
  I hope they don’t replace one standardized test with another standardized test. Although, that’s exactly what may happen. It is not far fetched to create a more personalized project based testing that factors in race, ethnicity, socio economic status, gender, etc. Also, if all colleges are created equally, endowed similarly, we may not need a test and follow the K12 model of going to your local college because it is as good as any other college. It is about time we solve education along with healthcare and create equity in the system.
• nitwit005 6y ago
  Giving even more incentive for high schools to inflate their students grades. Give them all straight As so they have a good shot at the UCs. I don't see how you can eliminate having some sort of admissions test. It's too easy to fake most of the other criteria they want to use for admissions.
• ordinaryperson 6y ago
  Lot of great comments here, just wanted to add one piece of historical context: This had a really bad outcome the last time the UC system tried to do this 20 years ago: https://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2001/02/21_sat.html https://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2001/02/21_sat.html In response to the UC's criticism the College Board added an essay to the SAT. The thinking was this would expose the softer, more human side that standardized tests missed. What happened? It significantly increased the cost of the test (gotta pay someone to grade it) and made it even harder for poor kids to go to rich schools because they couldn't afford the more expensive test. Not to mention the subjectivity of grading an essay. Standardized testing is like that Winston Churchill quote on democracy being "the absolute worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time" -- what system does the UC have that's more fair? The NYT piece said they're planning on developing their own test -- so now prospective students have to take two tests if they plan on applying to schools outside the UC system? The practical effect of this is Asian Americans will have to work 2x as hard as other groups to get into good schools, as was revealed by the Harvard case https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollment-applicants.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollme....
• yhoiseth 6y ago
  > The road to Thursday’s vote has been full of twists and turns. Ms. Napolitano began the review of the use of the SAT in 2018, that prompted a faculty committee began a review of the use of the exam. In February it recommended that the system continue to use the exams, arguing that applicants’ scores on the SAT and ACT still serve as better predictors of first-year performance than high school grades. I think I would have followed that recommendation.
• jxramos 6y ago
  Does this mean the UC system will leave it up to the individual universities or departments within? Or is this an outright ban they're going for?
• nottorp 6y ago
  <quote>dealing a significant blow to the multibillion-dollar college admission testing industry.</quote> You mean those tests are privately done? It's not some standard high school end test administered by the state like the baccalaureate exam? Sheesh.
  • woofie11 6y ago
    In between. They're run by not-for-profits.
    • nottorp 6y ago
      Multi billion dollar not-for-profits? :)
      • hardsoftnfloppy 6y ago
        As long as you spend all the profit... it’s non-profit
      • woofie11 6y ago
        Yes. ETS, ACT, College Board, etc. are all not-for-profits. The not-for-profits means individuals can't get limitlessly rich off of it, and there is no fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value. They're not perfect -- plenty of people make multimillion salaries at not-for-profits -- but you don't get hundreds of millions or billions of personal profit from a not-for-profit. There are plenty of many-billion-dollar not-for-profits, especially in education and in medical.
• LatteLazy 6y ago
  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 people with lower grades than usual. Hs basically made offers to everyone who applied. So our first year class was almost twice the size it was meant to be. He was my personal tutor and asked me to help host admissions lunches for prospective students, so the subject of admissions came up. He laughed and said he admitted everyone because as far as he was concerned, if you were too dB to pass first year you'd be kicked out then and if not you deserved to be in second year whether you're grades at 18 were good or not. Of the 20 people without maths, at least 15 failed or transfered to other subjects in year 1. But a few graduated. So he gave them a chance and they took it. I know the logistics make it impossible. But I actually think letting everyone who applies in and letting the end of term/semester/year exams decide who stays is much fairer than single tests or one off interviews of lists of (parentally supported) extra circular projects. Imagine if MIT or Harvard said "Everyone is welcome but only 10% of people pass the first year".
  • fnord123 6y ago
    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.
    • ibejoeb 6y ago
      Maybe not all, but some programs in France work this way, too. Grades and exams are certainly considered, but the thresholds are lower, entry classes are larger, and then there is a rather large culling after first term.
    • tgv 6y ago
      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).
• gexla 6y ago
  Anecdote. I did HORRIBLE in high school. I somehow still graduated with less than the required GPA. I think they called it close enough because they didn't want to continue dealing with me. When I stupidly thought college would be a good idea, I got in based on my SAT score as my GPA wasn't high enough. Of course, I failed out of college too. ;)
• frosted-flakes 6y ago
  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.
• hardsoftnfloppy 6y ago
  Entrance will now be solely based on how much money your parents bribe admissions with.
• therobot24 6y ago
  It'll probably come back in some form. Totally agree that too much emphasis was on the test score and that it didn't actually represent the student and their likelihood for success at the university. This is just Goodhart's law in effect, "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." However, the reason it'll be back in some form later is because you need quantitative measures to help sort the stack of applications otherwise the overhead becomes too much to deal with.
• jgwil2 6y ago
  Does this mean they will not require the exams, or that they will not consider them in admissions at all? I'm guessing the latter but couldn't be sure from the article.
• simonsarris 6y ago
  Sadly this is a continuation of a long trend. In 2005 Inside Higher Ed mentioned: > Fewer than a third of college degree recipients are “proficient” in everyday literacy, U.S. study finds, and rate is falling. Do you think its gotten worse or better, 15 years on? Back in 2017 I wrote about how Cal State replaced no-credit classes with credit bearing ones, and then nixed the requirements for placement exams and remedial classes: https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/higher-education-erodes-a7c9983692e0 https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/higher-education-erodes-a7c... > At Cal State, about 40% of freshmen each year are considered not ready for college-level work and required to take remedial classes that do not count toward their degrees. > The hope is that these efforts will also help students obtain their degrees sooner — one of the public university system’s priorities. Cal State has committed to doubling its four-year graduation rate, from 19% to 40%, by 2025.
• nunez 6y ago
  This is extremely exciting news. Here’s to hoping that the UC system can create an unbiased exam-free admissions process that increases access to college.