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Last month 2,400 University of California faculty asked for admissions to resume using the SAT "to ensure foundational fluency." Of course many employers want t

Last month 2,400 University of California faculty asked for admissions to resume using the SAT "to ensure foundational fluency." Of course many employers want to ensure that too, especially when college degrees don't anymore. The widening abilities gap followed the 2020 elimination of the SAT/ACT, a temporary measure that has now become a permanent vulnerability. This outcome was explicitly predicted by the Academic Senate’s 2020 Standardized Testing Task Force (STTF) report, which warned that removing these tests would eliminate a vital predictor of college success and obscure the impact of severe high-school grade inflation. Unfortunately, the outcomes cautioned against in that report have now materialized in the data across our campuses. All other leading STEM institutions, including the UC’s primary peers, have resumed using SAT/ACT in their admissions to ensure foundational fluency. For the University of California to remain a global leader in STEM, it is essential to restore these objective benchmarks. -- https://ucstudentsuccess.org/ https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty/learning-assessment/2026/05/29/hundreds-math-professors-ask-uc-bring-back-satact https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty/learning-assessm...

doctorpangloss 4mo ago
how many elected leaders are in STEM? would high SAT scores and grades exclude many US presidents and congressmen? (yes) winning elections seems kind of important to me. so if you were just like, selecting for leadership - and many of our leaders are brilliant people, just not in the sense of being good at taking tests - would that be good or bad? or... what is your real opinion? what are you actually mad about? obviously the UC system should give spots to the kids who will use those spots the best. but it is very hard to define what "using spots the best" means.
- jimbokun 4mo ago
  In the US or China?
- lern_too_spel 4mo ago
  We certainly don't want them to fail out, which is what is happening. Berkeley reported 10% failure rate in the intro CS course and 35% in the pre-intro course. https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/academics/failing-grades-soar-as-professors-see-greater-ai-usage-dwindling-math-skills-in-uc-berkeley/article_16fad0bf-02cb-4b8c-8d88-888ffd9f8608.html https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/academics/failing-grade...
- WalterBright 4mo ago
  > not in the sense of being good at taking tests The trick to doing well on the SATs is to pay attention in class.
  - Maxatar 4mo ago
    That's not how it plays out in practice. There is overwhelming evidence that students who otherwise excel academically score fairly mediocre SAT scores on their first attempt and then jump substantially after weeks of targeted practice and/or tutoring, even though they didn't learn anything new in the classroom. If attention in class were all it took then that improvement couldn't happen. What changed was familiarity with the test, not classroom focus.
    - fsckboy 4mo ago
      I'm not aware that there is any method to dramatically increase SAT scores (and neither IQ test scores). could you point me to your sources?
      - Maxatar 4mo ago
        Straight from the College Board themselves: https://research.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/osp-technical-report.pdf https://research.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/osp-technical-re... That report also references another study showing that each hour of tutoring was associated with an increase of 2.34 points on the SAT score which unfortunately is behind a paywall: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282492223_Preparing_students_for_college_admissions_tests https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282492223_Preparing...
    - WalterBright 4mo ago
      I guess times have changed. When I took the SAT, I did zero prep work. Nobody else I knew did prep work, either. Paul Graham recently posted SAT advice along the form of "when you finish the test and have more time, go back over the test and check for mistakes." I was kinda astonished at this advice, isn't it obvious? A strategy I also employed was to do the easy problems first, so I don't miss a question that would have been easy. Apparently this has to be explained to people? I suppose prep work would be fine for the students who didn't pay attention in class.
lern_too_spel 4mo ago
SAT score is known to be predictive of college grades. Is it also predictive for whether a mid-to-late career candidate will pass a phone screen? It is used for early career candidate filtering in finance, but I have not heard of anybody caring beyond that because of the availability of signal on the actual tasks they will be performing.
- consensus1 4mo ago
  It is correlated tightly with IQ, so yes it will likely be a strong predictive signal for passing a phone screen.
  - cute_boi 4mo ago
    Maybe Maths, but english is probably not correlated tightly with IQ as it is more affected by language background and education.
    - gruez 4mo ago
      >english is probably not correlated tightly with IQ as it is more affected by language background and education. No, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) English and math has a 0.64 correlation.
    - Maxatar 4mo ago
      I feel like it's a common misconception that IQ only tests some narrow intellectual abilities like math and logic, likely because online tests and fake IQ tests tend to focus on those kinds of puzzles. Actual IQ tests actually do place heavy emphasis on language skills like vocabulary, verbal abstraction and comprehension.
  - lern_too_spel 4mo ago
    That doesn't answer the full question. Is SAT (or even IQ) positively correlated with phone screen passage after controlling for past work/education experience?
apparent 4mo ago
The UC faculty opposed the SAT requirement being discarded in the first place. They were overruled by the UC Regents, and that may happen again. And even if the SAT is brought back, I'm sure it will be given much less weight and subjected to the "in a local context" process in the name of equity.
- WalterBright 4mo ago
  I took the SAT 50 some years ago. I kinda doubt I would do so well on it today without doing remedial prep work on the math.
  - apparent 4mo ago
    Apologies, but which part of my comment was this a reply to?
    - WalterBright 4mo ago
      It was in the context of asking people for their SAT scores long after they had taken the tests. Perhaps I replied to the wrong person. Apologies.
  - hammock 4mo ago
    The SAT is actually a lot easier today than it was when most of us took it. It is an hour or more shorter in length, the long reading passages have been replaced with short paragraphs, calculators are allowed, and vocabulary has been removed.
    - WalterBright 4mo ago
      > calculators are allowed OMG. Calculators are useless on the SAT anyway. > vocabulary has been removed. I flipped through a book that coached on SAT vocabulary. I knew all the words. Oh well. I never learned vocabulary as an explicit task. I simply read a lot. I remember one question on the SAT verbal because it irked me. It asked an analogy question which required knowledge of mixed alcoholic drinks. Since I was far from drinking age, I had no idea.
WalterBright 4mo ago
I always enjoy the advocates who claim that students have mastered their subjects, but "don't test well". Would you want a pilot on your flight who flunked flying school exams, but somehow "really knew how to fly!"?
- Maxatar 4mo ago
  Not really comparable... the overwhelming majority of flight tests involve flying an aircraft. There is no meaningful way someone can be excellent at flying an aircraft but can't pass a test which involves flying an aircraft. The same can't be said for many other tests. If the test involves the practical application of the very skill being tested, then that test has direct relevance to he competency of said skill. But many other tests are not like that. A teacher can be brilliant in the classroom yet stumble on a standardized certification exam full of pedagogical jargon. A chef can cook a variety of excellent dishes but fail a written culinary theory exam testing the French names of techniques they perform by instinct. And perhaps more relevant to this audience, a coding interview that relies on whiteboarding algorithms from memory can easily fail an excellent engineer who builds great software every day but doesn't recall the optimal solution to some puzzle on the spot.
  - WalterBright 4mo ago
    They are never going to let you into a cockpit until you pass ground school, which involves a lot of math. > A teacher can be brilliant in the classroom yet stumble on a standardized certification exam full of pedagogical jargon. A teacher that cannot explain how calculus works cannot teach it to anybody. > a coding interview that relies on whiteboarding algorithms from memory can easily fail an excellent engineer who builds great software every day but doesn't recall the optimal solution to some puzzle on the spot. I've seen too many coders using bubble sort because they don't know enough to look for a better algorithm. In any case, the purpose of leet coding tests is to quickly filter out the utter frauds. I have a programmer friend who wanted a job at a major software corp. He knew he'd have to pass the leetcode in an early stage of the interviewing. He figured it would take 6 weeks or so to study that material. I suggested that, since he was applying for a $250K job, that would be the most productive studying he'd ever done. He agreed, did the 6 weeks of studying, aced the leetcode test, and got the $250K. So ya, there is a point to those tests, in filtering out the frauds and the ones who aren't willing to do what it takes to get those jobs.
eikenberry 4mo ago
Why is a lossy testing filter better than just failing out those who can't make it? Maybe allow for larger freshmen classes and smaller latter classes or adopt community colleges and have all students start there and advance into the UC system sophomore year on. Instead they bring back what is basically an IQ test for admission.
- bigthymer 4mo ago
  From the students' perspective, it is better to not be allowed in than fail out midway through. One test is cheaper than years in college.
  - falcor84 4mo ago
    I personally strongly disagree. I think it's much better to be given the opportunity to do the actual work, rather than to be required to do the pre-assessment song and dance. And if there are actual prerequisites that a person hasn't previously passed, they should be allowed to be tested on these specifically.
    - zugi 4mo ago
      It depends on a lot of things. If they've also applied to another college that's better suited to their ability, admitting then to a school where they'll likely fail is not really doing them a favor.
      - annzabelle 4mo ago
        Agreed. I've seen some interesting data that kids who could've been successful premeds or engineers at their state flagship but instead eke their way into Harvard or Princeton (sports scholarship, legacy etc) will instead graduate with a flaky studies major because they couldn't cut it in their intended major and the switching costs of transferring were too high. There are downsides if you end up a small fish in a big pond.
        4mo ago
brightball 4mo ago
It’s frustrating when easily predicted outcomes are ignored for the sake of feel good policy.
- expedition32 4mo ago
  The ironic thing is that feel good policy can be more racist and prejudiced than any test. They experimented replacing tests in my country with giving teachers the final say- it was a fucking disaster. Human beings are quite terrible at objectivity.
jdkee 4mo ago
Griggs v. Duke, 401 U.S. 424 (1971).

doctorpangloss 4mo ago

how many elected leaders are in STEM? would high SAT scores and grades exclude many US presidents and congressmen? (yes) winning elections seems kind of important to me. so if you were just like, selecting for leadership - and many of our leaders are brilliant people, just not in the sense of being good at taking tests - would that be good or bad? or... what is your real opinion? what are you actually mad about? obviously the UC system should give spots to the kids who will use those spots the best. but it is very hard to define what "using spots the best" means.

jimbokun 4mo ago
In the US or China?
lern_too_spel 4mo ago
We certainly don't want them to fail out, which is what is happening. Berkeley reported 10% failure rate in the intro CS course and 35% in the pre-intro course. https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/academics/failing-grades-soar-as-professors-see-greater-ai-usage-dwindling-math-skills-in-uc-berkeley/article_16fad0bf-02cb-4b8c-8d88-888ffd9f8608.html https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/academics/failing-grade...
WalterBright 4mo ago
> not in the sense of being good at taking tests The trick to doing well on the SATs is to pay attention in class.
- Maxatar 4mo ago
  That's not how it plays out in practice. There is overwhelming evidence that students who otherwise excel academically score fairly mediocre SAT scores on their first attempt and then jump substantially after weeks of targeted practice and/or tutoring, even though they didn't learn anything new in the classroom. If attention in class were all it took then that improvement couldn't happen. What changed was familiarity with the test, not classroom focus.
  - fsckboy 4mo ago
    I'm not aware that there is any method to dramatically increase SAT scores (and neither IQ test scores). could you point me to your sources?
    - Maxatar 4mo ago
      Straight from the College Board themselves: https://research.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/osp-technical-report.pdf https://research.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/osp-technical-re... That report also references another study showing that each hour of tutoring was associated with an increase of 2.34 points on the SAT score which unfortunately is behind a paywall: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282492223_Preparing_students_for_college_admissions_tests https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282492223_Preparing...
  - WalterBright 4mo ago
    I guess times have changed. When I took the SAT, I did zero prep work. Nobody else I knew did prep work, either. Paul Graham recently posted SAT advice along the form of "when you finish the test and have more time, go back over the test and check for mistakes." I was kinda astonished at this advice, isn't it obvious? A strategy I also employed was to do the easy problems first, so I don't miss a question that would have been easy. Apparently this has to be explained to people? I suppose prep work would be fine for the students who didn't pay attention in class.

lern_too_spel 4mo ago

SAT score is known to be predictive of college grades. Is it also predictive for whether a mid-to-late career candidate will pass a phone screen? It is used for early career candidate filtering in finance, but I have not heard of anybody caring beyond that because of the availability of signal on the actual tasks they will be performing.

consensus1 4mo ago
It is correlated tightly with IQ, so yes it will likely be a strong predictive signal for passing a phone screen.
- cute_boi 4mo ago
  Maybe Maths, but english is probably not correlated tightly with IQ as it is more affected by language background and education.
  - gruez 4mo ago
    >english is probably not correlated tightly with IQ as it is more affected by language background and education. No, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) English and math has a 0.64 correlation.
  - Maxatar 4mo ago
    I feel like it's a common misconception that IQ only tests some narrow intellectual abilities like math and logic, likely because online tests and fake IQ tests tend to focus on those kinds of puzzles. Actual IQ tests actually do place heavy emphasis on language skills like vocabulary, verbal abstraction and comprehension.
- lern_too_spel 4mo ago
  That doesn't answer the full question. Is SAT (or even IQ) positively correlated with phone screen passage after controlling for past work/education experience?

apparent 4mo ago

The UC faculty opposed the SAT requirement being discarded in the first place. They were overruled by the UC Regents, and that may happen again. And even if the SAT is brought back, I'm sure it will be given much less weight and subjected to the "in a local context" process in the name of equity.

WalterBright 4mo ago
I took the SAT 50 some years ago. I kinda doubt I would do so well on it today without doing remedial prep work on the math.
- apparent 4mo ago
  Apologies, but which part of my comment was this a reply to?
  - WalterBright 4mo ago
    It was in the context of asking people for their SAT scores long after they had taken the tests. Perhaps I replied to the wrong person. Apologies.
- hammock 4mo ago
  The SAT is actually a lot easier today than it was when most of us took it. It is an hour or more shorter in length, the long reading passages have been replaced with short paragraphs, calculators are allowed, and vocabulary has been removed.
  - WalterBright 4mo ago
    > calculators are allowed OMG. Calculators are useless on the SAT anyway. > vocabulary has been removed. I flipped through a book that coached on SAT vocabulary. I knew all the words. Oh well. I never learned vocabulary as an explicit task. I simply read a lot. I remember one question on the SAT verbal because it irked me. It asked an analogy question which required knowledge of mixed alcoholic drinks. Since I was far from drinking age, I had no idea.

WalterBright 4mo ago

I always enjoy the advocates who claim that students have mastered their subjects, but "don't test well". Would you want a pilot on your flight who flunked flying school exams, but somehow "really knew how to fly!"?

Maxatar 4mo ago
Not really comparable... the overwhelming majority of flight tests involve flying an aircraft. There is no meaningful way someone can be excellent at flying an aircraft but can't pass a test which involves flying an aircraft. The same can't be said for many other tests. If the test involves the practical application of the very skill being tested, then that test has direct relevance to he competency of said skill. But many other tests are not like that. A teacher can be brilliant in the classroom yet stumble on a standardized certification exam full of pedagogical jargon. A chef can cook a variety of excellent dishes but fail a written culinary theory exam testing the French names of techniques they perform by instinct. And perhaps more relevant to this audience, a coding interview that relies on whiteboarding algorithms from memory can easily fail an excellent engineer who builds great software every day but doesn't recall the optimal solution to some puzzle on the spot.
- WalterBright 4mo ago
  They are never going to let you into a cockpit until you pass ground school, which involves a lot of math. > A teacher can be brilliant in the classroom yet stumble on a standardized certification exam full of pedagogical jargon. A teacher that cannot explain how calculus works cannot teach it to anybody. > a coding interview that relies on whiteboarding algorithms from memory can easily fail an excellent engineer who builds great software every day but doesn't recall the optimal solution to some puzzle on the spot. I've seen too many coders using bubble sort because they don't know enough to look for a better algorithm. In any case, the purpose of leet coding tests is to quickly filter out the utter frauds. I have a programmer friend who wanted a job at a major software corp. He knew he'd have to pass the leetcode in an early stage of the interviewing. He figured it would take 6 weeks or so to study that material. I suggested that, since he was applying for a $250K job, that would be the most productive studying he'd ever done. He agreed, did the 6 weeks of studying, aced the leetcode test, and got the $250K. So ya, there is a point to those tests, in filtering out the frauds and the ones who aren't willing to do what it takes to get those jobs.

eikenberry 4mo ago

Why is a lossy testing filter better than just failing out those who can't make it? Maybe allow for larger freshmen classes and smaller latter classes or adopt community colleges and have all students start there and advance into the UC system sophomore year on. Instead they bring back what is basically an IQ test for admission.

bigthymer 4mo ago
From the students' perspective, it is better to not be allowed in than fail out midway through. One test is cheaper than years in college.
- falcor84 4mo ago
  I personally strongly disagree. I think it's much better to be given the opportunity to do the actual work, rather than to be required to do the pre-assessment song and dance. And if there are actual prerequisites that a person hasn't previously passed, they should be allowed to be tested on these specifically.
  - zugi 4mo ago
    It depends on a lot of things. If they've also applied to another college that's better suited to their ability, admitting then to a school where they'll likely fail is not really doing them a favor.
    - annzabelle 4mo ago
      Agreed. I've seen some interesting data that kids who could've been successful premeds or engineers at their state flagship but instead eke their way into Harvard or Princeton (sports scholarship, legacy etc) will instead graduate with a flaky studies major because they couldn't cut it in their intended major and the switching costs of transferring were too high. There are downsides if you end up a small fish in a big pond.
      - 4mo ago

brightball 4mo ago

It’s frustrating when easily predicted outcomes are ignored for the sake of feel good policy.

expedition32 4mo ago
The ironic thing is that feel good policy can be more racist and prejudiced than any test. They experimented replacing tests in my country with giving teachers the final say- it was a fucking disaster. Human beings are quite terrible at objectivity.

jdkee 4mo ago

Griggs v. Duke, 401 U.S. 424 (1971).