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Cancelling SAT (especially subject exams) is the stupidest decision I've seen anywhere. Make access more fair? Sure. Cancel it? Plain wrong! How do I know? I'm

Cancelling SAT (especially subject exams) is the stupidest decision I've seen anywhere. Make access more fair? Sure. Cancel it? Plain wrong! How do I know? I'm one of those students who didn't have stellar high school grades, but I excelled in subject exams --- those subjects were genuinely interesting to me (math, science). I didn't find the rest of high school interesting, and I wasn't a nerd nerd studying anything my parents told me to study. I turned out "ok" (graduated as the top my class in college, then had a successful career in top tech companies). Without that final exam that gave me the opportunity, I probably wouldn't be typing this message today. I'm not even counted as "diverse" (because I'm not black or hispanic) despite coming from a muslim family and middle eastern background. I can only select "white", though I'm not really white (european). Today's admission debates and anti-racist treatments are wrong at so many levels, I don't know where to start.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> Cancelling SAT (especially subject exams) is the stupidest decision I've seen anywhere. Make access more fair? Sure. Cancel it? Plain wrong! UC doesn’t control access to the SAT, it does control whether it uses the SAT. Not using it in its current form is the strongest influence it has to incentivize change.
- waterhouse 5y ago
  So is your position that, while the SAT is still the best choice for admissions, UC should stop using it for some years in the hopes that this will motivate College Board to improve it more quickly, after which UC should resume using the SAT? That the impact (on future applicants and everyone else involved) of using a worse admissions process for some years is less than the bargaining-chip value?
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > So is your position that [...] the SAT is [...] the best choice for admissions No
    - nickff 5y ago
      What did you mean by your second sentence? >"Not using it in its current form is the strongest influence it has to incentivize change." What change (and by whom) is/should UC incentivize?
908B64B197 5y ago
> I'm not even counted as "diverse" (because I'm not black or hispanic) despite coming from a muslim family and middle eastern background. I can only select "white", though I'm not white white. Should that even matter for admission purposes?
- dcow 5y ago
  No it shouldn't, but as a society we seem to want it to so it does. Sowell has an interesting take on AA and believes it actually does more harm than good because it pits those subject to it against scenarios they have not been prepared to handle and thus in turn results in over-stress, higher rates of failure, and ultimately disillusionment.
  - dcow 5y ago
    The means at which we arrive upon AA is even suspect: A: We want equality, why are white people successful? B: Clearly because they went to a good college. C: Okay easy, let’s put the underprivileged into good colleges, that should fix ‘er right up. It doesn't seem like anybody is interested in solving the hard problem of why underprivileged communities aren’t producing good high school graduates. Maybe it has something to do with, IDK, the fact that they’re under served and underprivileged? Maybe primary education is a more important factor than the name at the top of your college transcript? Maybe good communities produce outstanding colleges and universities, not the other way around? Yet we can’t seem to spend money on primary education or figure out how to help struggling communities. Why is that?
    - gjhh244 5y ago
      Exactly. From an European perspective America's obsession with race seems absolutely idiotic. Progressive taxation and major help for poor communities and families regardless of skin colour is obviously the only sensible solution.
      - zozbot234 5y ago
        Racial groups are used as vote banks by the two major parties - that's all there is to it. It has nothing to with wanting to help the poor or improve social cohesion, rather the opposite. A divided society is great for the most incompetent politicians since it provides them an easy way to whip up their constituents against other groups and fish for more votes.
smoldesu 5y ago
> I'm one of those students who didn't have stellar high school grades, but I excelled in subject exams I'm in the same boat. If it weren't for my SAT scores, most colleges wouldn't take me seriously.
paulpauper 5y ago
Agree. when we hear about 'promoting opportunity' , what they mean is is we need more of groups X and Y and less Z. Motte and bailey at its finest.
- Spivak 5y ago
  Any change to the college admissions process will positively affect some groups and negatively affect others. There will always be some controversy over whether any change actually makes it fairer or whether the changes were made to achieve a specific outcome.
  - rayiner 5y ago
    > Any change to the college admissions process will positively affect some groups and negatively affect others. That embeds some really questionable assumptions about “some groups.”
    - imwillofficial 5y ago
      No it doesn’t. It’s simply stating the realty of a trade off.
  - ralusek 5y ago
    There is a deontological perspective here in which you seem to be uninterested. Not everything is best viewed from the perspective of how various groups would be impacted by a given system.
  - roamerz 5y ago
    At a superficial level yes. The actual impact to people and society I think is far greater and will have an overall negative affect on society and interracial relationships. Putting myself in the shoes of someone that was bumped out of something they earned through hard work and dedication because my skin color was not correct would make me bitter to those that implemented the policy as well as (hopefully less so) the person that got my seat. So now whoever made this policy has just maybe added a little racist chip on my shoulder where one did not exist previously. Multiply this many times over and all of a sudden we have a more racist society and reversing what I think the direction we have been going.
jbluepolarbear 5y ago
I took the SAT the first year they added the essay. It wasn’t optional and they had no accommodations for people with disabilities. I would have much rather had a score of 1500/1600 than the dumb 1700/2400 I got.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  You should have been like me and... 1. Take the test the year before they added the essay, so you'd have the "non-essay" exam grade recorded. Even if you were in 9th or 10th grade, that's still useful. 2. Take the test again with the essay. But when you do so, have AP classes worth of "knowing how to write against a graded rubric" experience so that you beat everyone else's writing score. (Thank you AP World History teacher that I've forgotten... I'm pretty sure she taught me how to beat an essay portion on any test)
  - jbluepolarbear 5y ago
    I have illegible hand writing. I was able to type all other standard tests I had taken up to that point. How was I supposed to know that they changed the test? When I signed up there was no mention of the essay and a lot of kids were surprised by the essay at the time of the test. I’m sure I would have rocked the essay had I been able to type it. I planned to major in English because i enjoyed writing. I haven’t written for fun since that test.
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      Its so weird to hear that. My entire college-bound peer group took the SAT twice, once without the essay and once with the essay. Literally all of us, every single friend/acquaintance in my year. Most of us took the PSAT (practice SAT) to get used to the "timing" of multiple choice. (When you're low on time, its time to start guessing and moving way quicker) The exceptions were the military dudes, who left for the Iraq / Afghanistan wars. So they had no need to take the SATs. We all were worried about how the essay would be graded, whether or not colleges would accept the essay score, or whatever. Some of us even took alternative tests (ACT) in addition to the SAT (I only took the SAT twice). For us, the essay thing was announced long-in-advance and we literally strategized our college acceptance plans around it. I don't know who figured out the essay announcement, but... it was very well known in my bubble.
cmh89 5y ago
Deciding whether or not the SAT is equitable, fair, or valuable shouldn't have any anecdotal component. For every one person with a story like yours, there is someone who had a bad experience with it for reasons outside of their control. I did exceptionally well in take home or book assignments because I understand the subject matter, but never was a good test taker. I took the ACT and did 'fine' but I could have done much better in an untimed, open book environment. What are we trying to measure with these tests? Your memory? Your ability to devote time to studying? At the end of the day, tests like the ACT/SAT will always privilege people who can afford to spend more time on it. Lots of kids do better because their parents spend thousands on tutoring. Other kids of the same skill level do worse because they work 25 hours a week to help their family make rent. No amount of change in 'access' can overcome that. Knowledge and skill is complicated and trying to boil it down to a timed test isn't a particularly useful measure.
- rayiner 5y ago
  That kid working 25 hours a week to help their family make rent is going to have an easier time buckling down for one test than keeping up their GPA over four years. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2021/03/23/standardized-testing-poor-students-sat-benefit-identify-column/4800781001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2021/03/23/sta...
  - cmh89 5y ago
    I agree that there are issues with GPA too, but despite saying that it's easier to take one test than it is to maintain a high GPA throughout high school, that's opinion. Teachers can work with over extended students to help them while they are in school I can't really speak to your opinion piece because its behind a paywall
    - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
      It's written by a contributer to the National Review, if that helps you decide whether you're missing out on anything important: https://theintercept.com/2020/07/05/national-review-william-buckley-racism/ https://theintercept.com/2020/07/05/national-review-william-...
the-smug-one 5y ago
In Sweden there is a university exam you can take which functions similarly. You get a curved score between 0.0 and 2.0 with which you can apply to unis with. You can take it however many times you want at a cost of about 80 USD (I think).
JPKab 5y ago
All of this revolves around a selective assumption that a disproportionate outcome (if the outcome isn't favorable to a group with a large activist base in US universities) is evidence of discrimination. Note that I say "selective". Males are disproportionately incarcerated and killed by police, but nobody is saying police are systemically bigoted towards males, because it's blatantly obvious that males disproportionately commit crimes vs. women. However, the same depth of thought is ignored the minute the discussion turns towards discrepancies where women/Black/etc are on the "losing" end. At the end of the day, the ideology is shallow, and equates to something very similar that emerged in the waning days of the Weimar Republic: Group X (German Jews) has more on average than Group Y (German Gentiles), and this must be because those with more are rigging the system and taking from Group Y. They ignored the cultural differences that make Ashkenazi Jews vastly more successful than other ethnic groups wherever they go, because that would have forced German gentiles to look inward, rather than externalizing blame. I grew up in a mostly Black county, and didn't sit in a classroom where I wasn't in the minority until I left to college. By all definitions, my mostly Black school was underfunded and fit the narrative of "systemic racism". But this ideology makes no allowances for the non-Black students who attended my school. Was I a victim of systemic racism because I attended the same schools? I lived in a trailer park, and my family's income put us squarely below the federal poverty line. But this ideology makes race the primary and essential reason for all things bad in the world, ignoring the complexity of life that emerges when viewing it at high resolution. Like all fundamentalist ideologues/religions, it constructs a low-resolution narrative, and places blame for all bad things in the world on a nebulous superstructure (Satan, White Supremacy). And predictably, it is filled with clerics who desperately try to blow up any incident into evidence that the nebulous superstructue "great evil" is far more prevalent than it really is. In the 80's it was devil worshippers, and today it's "White supremacists". The desperation is readily apparent in attempts to frame a wave of anti-Asian violence that was primarily perpetrated by young Black men into a narrative of newly ascendant White supremacy. The worst part of this ideology to me has been it's utterly US-centric focus, where things like objective testing, education, and work ethic have been labelled as "White", ignoring the numerous cultures throughout the world, such as your Middle Eastern ancestors or China, who were conducting Civil Service entrance exams while my ancestors in northern Europe were running around the woods with bows and arrows chopping each other's heads off. The biggest element of White privilege that I possess is not having a tiny group of useless, whiny, unelected activists get put on a pedestal by corporate media as personifying and representing my views on the world. Al Sharpton doesn't speak for Black Americans, and was never elected to do so. BLM doesn't speak for them either. They only claim to do so, and are convenient tools for White elites to shift the conversation from discussions on economic class to purely race. For an ideology based in Marxism, it's amazing how much it undermines the ability to organize unions. After all, Jeff Bezos just had to make s few donations here and there, put a few words on his website, and was let off scot free by the media for his awful treatment of workers and aggressive union busting.
limeblack 5y ago
Forgive me but what is wrong with the AP classes/exams. And yes you can take them with out taking the class(I did.)
- wpasc 5y ago
  This is not my opinion, but critiques against AP classes point to the correlation between the resources a high school has and the amount of AP classes and resultant tests available. More focus on AP classes would likely exacerbate economic inequality in admissions (so the [not my] argument says).
  - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
    AP classes aren't an inherent problem if they're providing longer duration intensive study for more advanced students. There is, however, no reason for an external testing industry to validate a student's knowledge in fine grained subject areas. I went through high school before private testing had metasticized into its current form. AP classes had the benefit of a +1 bump in GPA. Nobody was left standing at the gate because of lack of resources.
spoonjim 5y ago
Who could argue with you if you selected “African American?” Just say that you feel African as a result of your Middle Eastern heritage.
GaryTang 5y ago
This is precisely why alternatives to traditional education are accelerating now and will eventually replace all but the boys club institutions and capital intensive science programs.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> Cancelling SAT (especially subject exams) is the stupidest decision I've seen anywhere. Make access more fair? Sure. Cancel it? Plain wrong! UC doesn’t control access to the SAT, it does control whether it uses the SAT. Not using it in its current form is the strongest influence it has to incentivize change.

waterhouse 5y ago
So is your position that, while the SAT is still the best choice for admissions, UC should stop using it for some years in the hopes that this will motivate College Board to improve it more quickly, after which UC should resume using the SAT? That the impact (on future applicants and everyone else involved) of using a worse admissions process for some years is less than the bargaining-chip value?
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > So is your position that [...] the SAT is [...] the best choice for admissions No
  - nickff 5y ago
    What did you mean by your second sentence? >"Not using it in its current form is the strongest influence it has to incentivize change." What change (and by whom) is/should UC incentivize?

908B64B197 5y ago

> I'm not even counted as "diverse" (because I'm not black or hispanic) despite coming from a muslim family and middle eastern background. I can only select "white", though I'm not white white. Should that even matter for admission purposes?

dcow 5y ago
No it shouldn't, but as a society we seem to want it to so it does. Sowell has an interesting take on AA and believes it actually does more harm than good because it pits those subject to it against scenarios they have not been prepared to handle and thus in turn results in over-stress, higher rates of failure, and ultimately disillusionment.
- dcow 5y ago
  The means at which we arrive upon AA is even suspect: A: We want equality, why are white people successful? B: Clearly because they went to a good college. C: Okay easy, let’s put the underprivileged into good colleges, that should fix ‘er right up. It doesn't seem like anybody is interested in solving the hard problem of why underprivileged communities aren’t producing good high school graduates. Maybe it has something to do with, IDK, the fact that they’re under served and underprivileged? Maybe primary education is a more important factor than the name at the top of your college transcript? Maybe good communities produce outstanding colleges and universities, not the other way around? Yet we can’t seem to spend money on primary education or figure out how to help struggling communities. Why is that?
  - gjhh244 5y ago
    Exactly. From an European perspective America's obsession with race seems absolutely idiotic. Progressive taxation and major help for poor communities and families regardless of skin colour is obviously the only sensible solution.
    - zozbot234 5y ago
      Racial groups are used as vote banks by the two major parties - that's all there is to it. It has nothing to with wanting to help the poor or improve social cohesion, rather the opposite. A divided society is great for the most incompetent politicians since it provides them an easy way to whip up their constituents against other groups and fish for more votes.

smoldesu 5y ago

> I'm one of those students who didn't have stellar high school grades, but I excelled in subject exams I'm in the same boat. If it weren't for my SAT scores, most colleges wouldn't take me seriously.

paulpauper 5y ago

Agree. when we hear about 'promoting opportunity' , what they mean is is we need more of groups X and Y and less Z. Motte and bailey at its finest.

Spivak 5y ago
Any change to the college admissions process will positively affect some groups and negatively affect others. There will always be some controversy over whether any change actually makes it fairer or whether the changes were made to achieve a specific outcome.
- rayiner 5y ago
  > Any change to the college admissions process will positively affect some groups and negatively affect others. That embeds some really questionable assumptions about “some groups.”
  - imwillofficial 5y ago
    No it doesn’t. It’s simply stating the realty of a trade off.
- ralusek 5y ago
  There is a deontological perspective here in which you seem to be uninterested. Not everything is best viewed from the perspective of how various groups would be impacted by a given system.
- roamerz 5y ago
  At a superficial level yes. The actual impact to people and society I think is far greater and will have an overall negative affect on society and interracial relationships. Putting myself in the shoes of someone that was bumped out of something they earned through hard work and dedication because my skin color was not correct would make me bitter to those that implemented the policy as well as (hopefully less so) the person that got my seat. So now whoever made this policy has just maybe added a little racist chip on my shoulder where one did not exist previously. Multiply this many times over and all of a sudden we have a more racist society and reversing what I think the direction we have been going.

jbluepolarbear 5y ago

I took the SAT the first year they added the essay. It wasn’t optional and they had no accommodations for people with disabilities. I would have much rather had a score of 1500/1600 than the dumb 1700/2400 I got.

dragontamer 5y ago
You should have been like me and... 1. Take the test the year before they added the essay, so you'd have the "non-essay" exam grade recorded. Even if you were in 9th or 10th grade, that's still useful. 2. Take the test again with the essay. But when you do so, have AP classes worth of "knowing how to write against a graded rubric" experience so that you beat everyone else's writing score. (Thank you AP World History teacher that I've forgotten... I'm pretty sure she taught me how to beat an essay portion on any test)
- jbluepolarbear 5y ago
  I have illegible hand writing. I was able to type all other standard tests I had taken up to that point. How was I supposed to know that they changed the test? When I signed up there was no mention of the essay and a lot of kids were surprised by the essay at the time of the test. I’m sure I would have rocked the essay had I been able to type it. I planned to major in English because i enjoyed writing. I haven’t written for fun since that test.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    Its so weird to hear that. My entire college-bound peer group took the SAT twice, once without the essay and once with the essay. Literally all of us, every single friend/acquaintance in my year. Most of us took the PSAT (practice SAT) to get used to the "timing" of multiple choice. (When you're low on time, its time to start guessing and moving way quicker) The exceptions were the military dudes, who left for the Iraq / Afghanistan wars. So they had no need to take the SATs. We all were worried about how the essay would be graded, whether or not colleges would accept the essay score, or whatever. Some of us even took alternative tests (ACT) in addition to the SAT (I only took the SAT twice). For us, the essay thing was announced long-in-advance and we literally strategized our college acceptance plans around it. I don't know who figured out the essay announcement, but... it was very well known in my bubble.

cmh89 5y ago

Deciding whether or not the SAT is equitable, fair, or valuable shouldn't have any anecdotal component. For every one person with a story like yours, there is someone who had a bad experience with it for reasons outside of their control. I did exceptionally well in take home or book assignments because I understand the subject matter, but never was a good test taker. I took the ACT and did 'fine' but I could have done much better in an untimed, open book environment. What are we trying to measure with these tests? Your memory? Your ability to devote time to studying? At the end of the day, tests like the ACT/SAT will always privilege people who can afford to spend more time on it. Lots of kids do better because their parents spend thousands on tutoring. Other kids of the same skill level do worse because they work 25 hours a week to help their family make rent. No amount of change in 'access' can overcome that. Knowledge and skill is complicated and trying to boil it down to a timed test isn't a particularly useful measure.

rayiner 5y ago
That kid working 25 hours a week to help their family make rent is going to have an easier time buckling down for one test than keeping up their GPA over four years. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2021/03/23/standardized-testing-poor-students-sat-benefit-identify-column/4800781001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2021/03/23/sta...
- cmh89 5y ago
  I agree that there are issues with GPA too, but despite saying that it's easier to take one test than it is to maintain a high GPA throughout high school, that's opinion. Teachers can work with over extended students to help them while they are in school I can't really speak to your opinion piece because its behind a paywall
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    It's written by a contributer to the National Review, if that helps you decide whether you're missing out on anything important: https://theintercept.com/2020/07/05/national-review-william-buckley-racism/ https://theintercept.com/2020/07/05/national-review-william-...

the-smug-one 5y ago

In Sweden there is a university exam you can take which functions similarly. You get a curved score between 0.0 and 2.0 with which you can apply to unis with. You can take it however many times you want at a cost of about 80 USD (I think).

JPKab 5y ago

All of this revolves around a selective assumption that a disproportionate outcome (if the outcome isn't favorable to a group with a large activist base in US universities) is evidence of discrimination. Note that I say "selective". Males are disproportionately incarcerated and killed by police, but nobody is saying police are systemically bigoted towards males, because it's blatantly obvious that males disproportionately commit crimes vs. women. However, the same depth of thought is ignored the minute the discussion turns towards discrepancies where women/Black/etc are on the "losing" end. At the end of the day, the ideology is shallow, and equates to something very similar that emerged in the waning days of the Weimar Republic: Group X (German Jews) has more on average than Group Y (German Gentiles), and this must be because those with more are rigging the system and taking from Group Y. They ignored the cultural differences that make Ashkenazi Jews vastly more successful than other ethnic groups wherever they go, because that would have forced German gentiles to look inward, rather than externalizing blame. I grew up in a mostly Black county, and didn't sit in a classroom where I wasn't in the minority until I left to college. By all definitions, my mostly Black school was underfunded and fit the narrative of "systemic racism". But this ideology makes no allowances for the non-Black students who attended my school. Was I a victim of systemic racism because I attended the same schools? I lived in a trailer park, and my family's income put us squarely below the federal poverty line. But this ideology makes race the primary and essential reason for all things bad in the world, ignoring the complexity of life that emerges when viewing it at high resolution. Like all fundamentalist ideologues/religions, it constructs a low-resolution narrative, and places blame for all bad things in the world on a nebulous superstructure (Satan, White Supremacy). And predictably, it is filled with clerics who desperately try to blow up any incident into evidence that the nebulous superstructue "great evil" is far more prevalent than it really is. In the 80's it was devil worshippers, and today it's "White supremacists". The desperation is readily apparent in attempts to frame a wave of anti-Asian violence that was primarily perpetrated by young Black men into a narrative of newly ascendant White supremacy. The worst part of this ideology to me has been it's utterly US-centric focus, where things like objective testing, education, and work ethic have been labelled as "White", ignoring the numerous cultures throughout the world, such as your Middle Eastern ancestors or China, who were conducting Civil Service entrance exams while my ancestors in northern Europe were running around the woods with bows and arrows chopping each other's heads off. The biggest element of White privilege that I possess is not having a tiny group of useless, whiny, unelected activists get put on a pedestal by corporate media as personifying and representing my views on the world. Al Sharpton doesn't speak for Black Americans, and was never elected to do so. BLM doesn't speak for them either. They only claim to do so, and are convenient tools for White elites to shift the conversation from discussions on economic class to purely race. For an ideology based in Marxism, it's amazing how much it undermines the ability to organize unions. After all, Jeff Bezos just had to make s few donations here and there, put a few words on his website, and was let off scot free by the media for his awful treatment of workers and aggressive union busting.

limeblack 5y ago

Forgive me but what is wrong with the AP classes/exams. And yes you can take them with out taking the class(I did.)

wpasc 5y ago
This is not my opinion, but critiques against AP classes point to the correlation between the resources a high school has and the amount of AP classes and resultant tests available. More focus on AP classes would likely exacerbate economic inequality in admissions (so the [not my] argument says).
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  AP classes aren't an inherent problem if they're providing longer duration intensive study for more advanced students. There is, however, no reason for an external testing industry to validate a student's knowledge in fine grained subject areas. I went through high school before private testing had metasticized into its current form. AP classes had the benefit of a +1 bump in GPA. Nobody was left standing at the gate because of lack of resources.

spoonjim 5y ago

Who could argue with you if you selected “African American?” Just say that you feel African as a result of your Middle Eastern heritage.

GaryTang 5y ago

This is precisely why alternatives to traditional education are accelerating now and will eventually replace all but the boys club institutions and capital intensive science programs.