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The comments here are strange to me, as a non-American. "Without SATs the rich will just pay their way in!!" Are there not other ways of evaluating a students

The comments here are strange to me, as a non-American. "Without SATs the rich will just pay their way in!!" Are there not other ways of evaluating a students aptitude? Like... their grades? In my country, we do not have standardized testing. We have world renowned universities. Students are evaluated by their grades, often an application essay, and possibly any extracurricular or volunteer work (but I know of no anecdotal evidence of this making any difference). Here, wealthy students usually pay full tuition (usually under 10k USD a semester) and the less fortunate get heavy subsidies. My partner's parents had low income, and combined with bursaries and grants, she paid next to nothing.

curiousllama 5y ago
Curriculum difficulty varies WIDELY among US High Schools - not just public/private, but based on state, locality, etc. It's heterogenous to the point that A-quality work in one school might get you a C in a school 20 miles away. The traditional solution has been standardized tests (SAT, ACT, AP, IB are all fairly common nationally, PLUS most states have their own tests by subject). The qualms people have is that, short of these tests, universities are forced to make subjective judgements about high school quality, extracurriculars, etc that are often skewed rich.
lr4444lr 5y ago
Your perspective assumes we have universal access to schools of at least comparably good quality giving a proper education without any grade inflation, bogus credits to make graduation rates look higher, and uniform standards for teachers and students. This is not remotely the case in the USA. At some point, we have to start using a common yardstick to compare apples to apples that had at least the rudiments of an unbiased statistical sampling. The SAT does a decent job.
renewiltord 5y ago
Well, there's an easy answer. Suppose a school student from Dhaka, Bangladesh wants to go to university in your country. She has her high-school grades and the application essay. How do you determine if she gets in? That is the Ozarks vs. Berkeley.
- xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
  > Suppose a school student from Dhaka, Bangladesh wants to go to university in your country. It's up to the university. Here's how the University of Waterloo looks at applicants from Bangladesh: https://uwaterloo.ca/future-students/admissions/admission-requirements/computer-science/international/bangladesh https://uwaterloo.ca/future-students/admissions/admission-re...
  - renewiltord 5y ago
    Appears that they use an entrance exam: > You're strongly encouraged to write the Euclid Mathematics Contest and/or the Canadian Senior Mathematics Contest. Results of the contests will be used in scholarship decisions and possibly admission decisions for programs in the Faculty of Mathematics.
lotsofpulp 5y ago
>Are there not other ways of evaluating a students aptitude? Like... their grades? also known as SAT/ACT. The US does not have a government issued testing or grading system, so SAT/ACT and AP exams serve as grades. High school grades are known to be laughable inflated. For example, my high school grade point average was over the "highest" amount due to extra points being added to Advanced Placement classes. The problem is it just so happens that being poorer is a disadvantage for basically everything, and being richer is an advantage for basically everything. So instead of addressing the actual issue, which is the ever widening income/wealth gap, US society is engaging in these funny little acts of plausible deniability so they can say they tried to something, when in reality are avoiding doing the only thing that will address the actual issue (wealth transfer from rich to poor and narrowing the gap).
- paxys 5y ago
  Sending poor kids to college is the best way to close the wealth gap, which is exactly what they are trying to do. I'm not sure what other solutions you are advocating for.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    The best (quickest, efficient) way to close the wealth gap is to take from the wealthy and give to the poor. Sending kids to college helps, but seemingly too slowly to counter the affects of automation/outsourcing working against it to widen the gap. There is also another problem with the current implementation of sending more poor kids to college such as wasting time on unproductive degrees due to blank checks from the government, but that's a separate issue. I am not a fan of rescinding admissions requirements just because they correlate with parental income/wealth. What these measures are trying to do, however, is to mitigate the advantages that children of richer parents have and the disadvantages children of poorer parents have to overcome. And in that endeavor, there is simply no other solution than reducing the income/wealth gap between richer/poorer parents. These other measures will not work, and simply lead to more games being played and more bureaucracy, and will further disadvantage the children of poorer parents, since the more opaque the game, the more resources you need to play it (or discover its rules).

curiousllama 5y ago

Curriculum difficulty varies WIDELY among US High Schools - not just public/private, but based on state, locality, etc. It's heterogenous to the point that A-quality work in one school might get you a C in a school 20 miles away. The traditional solution has been standardized tests (SAT, ACT, AP, IB are all fairly common nationally, PLUS most states have their own tests by subject). The qualms people have is that, short of these tests, universities are forced to make subjective judgements about high school quality, extracurriculars, etc that are often skewed rich.

lr4444lr 5y ago

Your perspective assumes we have universal access to schools of at least comparably good quality giving a proper education without any grade inflation, bogus credits to make graduation rates look higher, and uniform standards for teachers and students. This is not remotely the case in the USA. At some point, we have to start using a common yardstick to compare apples to apples that had at least the rudiments of an unbiased statistical sampling. The SAT does a decent job.

renewiltord 5y ago

Well, there's an easy answer. Suppose a school student from Dhaka, Bangladesh wants to go to university in your country. She has her high-school grades and the application essay. How do you determine if she gets in? That is the Ozarks vs. Berkeley.

xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
> Suppose a school student from Dhaka, Bangladesh wants to go to university in your country. It's up to the university. Here's how the University of Waterloo looks at applicants from Bangladesh: https://uwaterloo.ca/future-students/admissions/admission-requirements/computer-science/international/bangladesh https://uwaterloo.ca/future-students/admissions/admission-re...
- renewiltord 5y ago
  Appears that they use an entrance exam: > You're strongly encouraged to write the Euclid Mathematics Contest and/or the Canadian Senior Mathematics Contest. Results of the contests will be used in scholarship decisions and possibly admission decisions for programs in the Faculty of Mathematics.

lotsofpulp 5y ago

>Are there not other ways of evaluating a students aptitude? Like... their grades? also known as SAT/ACT. The US does not have a government issued testing or grading system, so SAT/ACT and AP exams serve as grades. High school grades are known to be laughable inflated. For example, my high school grade point average was over the "highest" amount due to extra points being added to Advanced Placement classes. The problem is it just so happens that being poorer is a disadvantage for basically everything, and being richer is an advantage for basically everything. So instead of addressing the actual issue, which is the ever widening income/wealth gap, US society is engaging in these funny little acts of plausible deniability so they can say they tried to something, when in reality are avoiding doing the only thing that will address the actual issue (wealth transfer from rich to poor and narrowing the gap).

paxys 5y ago
Sending poor kids to college is the best way to close the wealth gap, which is exactly what they are trying to do. I'm not sure what other solutions you are advocating for.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  The best (quickest, efficient) way to close the wealth gap is to take from the wealthy and give to the poor. Sending kids to college helps, but seemingly too slowly to counter the affects of automation/outsourcing working against it to widen the gap. There is also another problem with the current implementation of sending more poor kids to college such as wasting time on unproductive degrees due to blank checks from the government, but that's a separate issue. I am not a fan of rescinding admissions requirements just because they correlate with parental income/wealth. What these measures are trying to do, however, is to mitigate the advantages that children of richer parents have and the disadvantages children of poorer parents have to overcome. And in that endeavor, there is simply no other solution than reducing the income/wealth gap between richer/poorer parents. These other measures will not work, and simply lead to more games being played and more bureaucracy, and will further disadvantage the children of poorer parents, since the more opaque the game, the more resources you need to play it (or discover its rules).