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More Colleges Than Ever Have Test-Optional Admissions Policies (theconversation.com)
Back in the 1980s, Bates College and Bowdoin College were nearly the only liberal arts colleges not to require applicants to submit SAT or ACT test scores. On Jan. 10, FairTest, a Boston-based organization that has been pushing back against America's testing regime since 1985, announced that the number of colleges that are test-optional has now surpassed 1,000. From a report: This milestone means that more than one-third of America's four-year nonprofit colleges now reject the idea that a test score should strongly determine a student's future. The ranks of test-optional institutions include hundreds of prestigious private institutions, such as George Washington, New York University, Wesleyan University and Wake Forest University. The list also includes hundreds of public universities, such as George Mason, San Francisco State and Old Dominion.
Perhaps the next step should be skipping grades? They might indicate that we aren't all equally precious otherwise.
Yet another assault on the idea that you can objectively measure reality, that some people are more suited to success than others, and that hard work yields tangible benefits. Oh, and you get to entice more lazy coddled to take on mountains of debt to feed the academic industrial complex. And then ten years after you've got indebted rabble to rouse against a Them that can be anything from moneylenders, The Patriarchy(TM), or just about anyone with their head planted squarely on their shoulders who made all the right choices in life and isn't drowning under the consequences of the past delusions. Disgusting.
Some of the stupidest people I've met had bachelor's degrees. Some people who aren't very good at math and science can absorb knowledge well. I'm down for the experiment to see if removing arbitary boundaries can improve the world.
Unless they are one of the top tier where their reputations depend on their alumnis having glittering careers, many colleges just want to have many students - as the fees will pay the bills. So accepting anyone who's father can afford to pay or who can raise a student loan is good: more students.
They desperately need the revenue. So they'll let anyone with a pulse enter.
PLEASE come to our college? We have 52 six figure salary administrators to pay for!!!
GW tuition is over $53,000 a year. They will take anyone's money. These institutions are now just money making empires.
Kids in other countries live and die to get into college by standardized test scores on really actually tough exams, while here in the US, we seem to have a fetish for removing any sort of criteria that makes kids feel bad, puts up "barriers" to opportunity, or treats some people differently from others.
There's some lesson to be learned in there, but I'm not sure yet what it is.
Then came Y2K problem. India was about 30 years behind USA in IT and so it had a huge army of Cobol programmers. In the 1990s the Indian cobol programmers were imported at the rate of about 100,000 a year. The H1B visa was raised from 65,000 to 130,000 at that time. And most of it went to Indian Cobol programmers.
They came in, most of them immigrated, married, got children and the percentage of Indian Americans rose to some 0.5% of the population. All of them came with college degrees, a tradition of valuing education, and they personally bought a ticket of out poverty through college education. They doubled and tripled down on educating their children.
Cupertino, CA, and Edison NJ were the first to see the brunt of Indian version of Tiger Moms and their children who finish the entire syllabus of next year in summer vacation and spend the entire academic year filling up rest of their resume. Blackbelt in karate, debate team, spelling bees, chess championships... Indian Americans overperform by a factor of 10 to 20 academically. They form 5% to 10% of the top bracket in competitive examns.
I count Indian last names in Intel scholarships and other such data. I routinely find Indian American children forming 15% of the top echelons. Almost all Indian parents know their children need to score 150 points over Whites to get admission to elite colleges. My Chinese colleagues also say the same thing. Their kids need to do 100 to 150 points more than Whites. If the college admission process becomes totally based on test scores, 20 to 25% of the top 10 college admissions will go to Asian Americans. Asian Americans are not counted towards minority quota statistics, since they are not traditionally disadvantaged minorities.
Now the Whites are on the receiving end. Suddenly "test score is not everything. We are going to drop test scores" band wagon is gaining steam. The colleges want to limit Asian Americans to less than 1% of admissions. Finding the right legal way to do that is the long term project. Dropping test scores is the emergency action.
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Youâ(TM)re accepted!!
So, you want to attend an extremely expensive Liberal Arts college and get a degree in something that only makes you qualified to work at Starbucks and burying yourself in student debt that you have no hope of every paying back.
I see.
All you should need to do is shove the name of the kid's high-school, their high-school grades, a list of extracurricular activities, their facebook feed, and their essay into an AI application and let it do the deciding based on those. Could be much more efficient and accurate than admissions officers and their shortcuts (which is what the tests are).
That is all.
and they allowed me to skip the dumpster diving, hoarding manga, and losing money on silver coins.
They started me at the 200-level courses, straight to goat fondling!
I was allowed to do that because I exceeded one pound per square foot of habitation!
They'll have to pull all my teeth next year but it'll be totally worth it to know how to make videos no one watches.
It was not uncommon when I was applying to universities in Canada to expect them to do their own testing of prospective students, since they generally didn't trust high schools not to inflate marks, and didn't have faith in the relevance of what standard testing was available (not a lot - IIRC, standard testing did not continue through high school).
In my opinion, if an educational institution cares about its reputation it should have its own entrance tests.
Of course they're lowering admission requirements.
The Ponzi scheme needs new suckers to keep the money flow going.
Bernie Madoff would be proud.
Is education for the privileged, or a human right?
How can we expect people to contribute in an automated society if we give them inadequate education?
Get me a participation degree!!!
w00t!!!!
Most or all Canadian Universities havenâ(TM)t ever bothered with test scores (except perhaps for foreign students). Entrance is based on high school grades. Unless this has changed in the 20 years since I applied, I really think this is a better way, or at least, just as meaningful. You spent your whole high school career taking standardized tests, and the government has been writing curricula and standards to attempt to equalize the educational experience across the county. An extra exam seems superfluous.
McGill, the University of Toronto, UBCâ"these are solid institutions, and they donâ(TM)t see the need for extra exams.
(I understand that thereâ(TM)s variability in the educational experience of students across the USA, but another test is just going to reflect that, not provide any clarity.)
You left out one...how about that upper level education (college) is for the qualified??
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
they measure how much money your parents have. If they can afford to send you to test prep classes you do well. If they can't you don't. SAT/ACT are multi-million dollar scams to make money for the ones running the tests.
Disclaimer: I just went through this with my kid. The test had little to nothing to do with what she learned in high school or what she's learning in college right now. It did, however, make it that much harder for her to get the already scarce scholarships since I couldn't afford the thousands of dollars to get her preped. We had to make due with a few hundred worth of books (yay, more profit off my kid!).
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First, there is no such thing as a "non-profit" college. They ALL profit. Some are just more honest about where the money goes.
Second, Not relying on tests means relying on transcripts. Setting aside the stupid Pass/No Pass thing, relying on letter grades, however they are derived, is questionable since the grades are so variable. An A in one school could be equivalent to a C in another. Or, in the case of AP classes, an A in a regular class could be a C in an AP class.
Lastly, excluding any kind of objective or semi-objective measurements leaves only one criteria, the completely subjective measurement derived from essays, interviews, etc. That is how you get mostly illiterate morons accepted over potential geniuses because they interviewed better or expressed some form of SJW sentiments that impresses the interviewer.
What we have here is the gradual degradation of the US higher Education system due to the lessor of its graduates gravitating towards education where they implement their lessor standards.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The colleges and universities are well aware of the standards of the high schools sending them students.
Colleges just want your tuition. Why impose a test that would force them to not take your money?
In my country it's for those privileged with a brain. Anyone can get in. For free. Which means that about 90% fail. We can afford it. There's plenty of student material to work with, shooting down 9 out of 10 is no problem.
Studying here basically means that you're told what you're required to know. Now go and find out where to get that knowledge. Ok, it's not quite as cruel, but the lectures are usually a joke, the materials are ancient and you should be willing to camp in front of the various departments to get a lab slot like it was some Star Trek premiere. And yes, I do mean come a day or two early and bring your sleeping bag.
Money means jack shit in that system. What matters is whether you're willing to get off your ass, whether you're able to organize your work and whether you are actually smart enough to survive the tests because they have zero remorse to fail you, their pay check is by no means tied to you, actually, they would have more time for research and writing papers if they didn't have to teach, test and grade you, so guess how much the average prof loves you, essentially wasting his time.
That's something you can do if you have more students than you need. If you're dependent on students, on the other hand, you have to coddle them and hold their hands. Now take a wild guess how serious we take degrees from US colleges...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What kind of liberal socialist commy pansy talk is that? Government regulation is oppression! Let the invisible hand of the market decide what surgeons are qualified. The incompetent ones will soon be out of business and the good ones won't have the added expense of all that unnecessary regulation. Some patients might die in the process but that's a small price to pay for freedom.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
I'd be interested to know which country that is. Holland?
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But... but... FREE MARKET!
This is precisely what happens when the free market gets their grubby hands on it. You'll get a handful of colleges/products only the already-rich can afford, then you get all the shit-boxes everyone can afford but doesn't mean very much.
Both equally useless in the long run =p
Whether or not they should, the reason the can do this is the absence of governmental control of the admission policies.
That government is best, which governs least. We all better remember this principle next time we think something we like ought to be mandatory or something we dislike — banned.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I think he got his local Apple store confused with the University.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Why would universities deny admission to anyone who could get those sweet sweet federal loan dollars? Admission standards are now more to ensure "diversity" population metrics while profiting from taxpayers and not really being required to turn out a useful product.
At some the only test needed if you can get an student loan that that test has a low bar.
https://www.tofugu.com/japan/j...
He doesn't really study during college. But then he's really not the only one. The statistics are clear – Japanese students do not study. An earlier Japan Times article quoted some University of Tokyo research which stated that Japanese students study far less than American college students. Takashi skips a few classes a week, and for the lessons that he goes to, even if his classmates are physically present a large number are having a mental vacation in dreamland while the lecturer drones on.
There is much to learn from others and this is something we could use over here in the USA. The biggest problem in the USA is we think we are #1 (we are not by almost every metric) and nobody can teach us anything; it's actually worse, we don't even bother to think about anybody else except who to bomb (and not even where to bomb, an embarrassing number of Americans couldn't find Iraq on a map; I think back during the war it was one third.)
We raise over confident students who are not very motivated (or lazy; you pick,) not creative, have short attention spans, and zero shame about ignorance. I often wonder if they even grasp what understanding/learning actually is. Recently, I observed a teen say "I'm smart, I know that" and then they googled it! I helped a teen in math a few years ago, it was unbelievable-- the textbook and the student were simply pathetic.
All these traits were a problem for my generation X but have only gotten worse with the subsequent generations. Education has been hammered with propaganda that it is a business and students are both (or either) the customer or the product. This change predates my time but is quite clear to older observers. Educators should teach but they must also be the gatekeepers and not be pressed either way on pass/fail decisions, including being subjective. I can evaluate somebody far more accurately with a short talk than any exam or homework. Think about it: An expert human brain vs a simple static paper that AT BEST is analogous to a simple computer program. Same issue becomes blatantly clear when evaluating doctors, trade skills, and martial arts. You don't want a dentist who wasn't an apprentice or get into a fight using your black belt in Kung Fu from a correspondence school! (oh, I forgot correspondence school is now called "online education" and is more acceptable. I hope they don't rename it again to "cloud learning," for the sake of humanity.)
The workers in the job/school metaphor are the STUDENTS not the educators and the product in the metaphor is educated people with a side of research (which is supposed to be free to benefit society.) Money is not the motivator and if it does anything, it harms the whole process. Free education and moderate pay without any strings attached has worked best -- and it is unthinkable to the MBA mentality that any institutions could operate in such socialist ways, for centuries.
Standardized entrance exams have always been idiotic and frankly I wonder why so many educated people mindlessly failed to question their use (outside of extreme situations where an additional filter is required.) High school transcripts and school reputations never disappeared, both existed before computers and rating services. Given that teens are still developing, it always has been short sighted to pigeonhole somebody from their less mature years. My experience has nearly always been that older more mature students are far more productive and while they may not perform much better on paper, their understanding of the material is far greater than traditional students because they are mature and serious while traditional students are playing the grade system like a rental video game.
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The college system been successfully corporatized; that is, taken over by pointy-haired administrators instead of educators. The motivation becomes simply more students/money/diplomas, and the professors who care about upholding disciplinary standards have less and less say in the matter. Having more unprepared students in the classroom means more money/prestige for administrators, at the price of more ongoing nightmares for classroom educators.
See Ginsburg, The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
In my country it's for those privileged with a brain. Anyone can get in. For free. Which means that about 90% fail.
Your country only has a college education rate of 10% and you think that is better?
the lectures are usually a joke, the materials are ancient and you should be willing to camp in front of the various departments to get a lab slot like it was some Star Trek premiere. And yes, I do mean come a day or two early and bring your sleeping bag.
The "privileged with a brain" don't actually learn anything in college and the other 90% don't get to go to college. Tell me what country is this so I know not to hire anyone from there.
In America, EVERYTHING is for the privileged. Fuck the plebes. If they wanted anything, they'd have been born into the right family.
In college, Pass/Fail grading or Pass/No Record grading is actually better for the majority of the student body, but worse for maybe the top third of the class.
In terms of applying for college, not having a testing policy is smart because it lets you admit people who may not have done a test but who are amazing. If you don't have the testing you will need to have done better at other things. This actually makes it harder to game the system, not easier. Optimizing on test-taking ability is easy if you have a good mind for it or if you have good discipline, but doesn't necessarily make you the best candidate.
Real lawyers write in C++
My kids, for some reason I can't quite figure out, flat out can't bring themselves to do homework. They'll always ace tests though. Something to do with their particular flavor of ADHD, I'm told. Most "solutions" to this problem involve extreme parental intervention, which aren't practical when you have more than one of them at once, and flat out doesn't work when the young person goes off to college in another state.
So what I really need are colleges that do the opposite - Test-only policies.
Ahh, good old European hubris based on flimsy rationalization. I thought that had been mostly wiped out with globalization.
Colleges have never REQUIRED tests. I got into a regular university having never taken an SAT in my life. It's called transfer from community college people.
Yep. Can't believe I had to scroll so far to find this answer. Same with all colleges, they're slowly transforming from institutions of learning to high-priced daycare for anyone capable of signing the loan application. More loans, cost goes up. Up up up goes the cost spiral. Down down down goes the education quality.
Any warm body that can fill out a student loan application is automatically qualified to go to America's bottom 1000 colleges.
Colleges began using test scores because different high schools (and in fact different teachers) awarded grades differently. An 4.0 in one high school might only be worth a 3.2 in another high school. A 4.0 by a student who took the "easy" teachers' courses might only be worth a 3.5 by a student who took the harder courses at the same high school. The test scores were used to try to normalize the grades.
The problem started when some college admissions staff got lazy, and started using test scores as a cutoff for admissions. That way they could circular file a bunch of the applicants without even having to read their application (but we still get to cash your application fee check kthxbye).
It's Nonexistland. Check his posting history he's a paranoid delusional nutbag.
http://college.usatoday.com/20...
Yeah, the lesson is for the conservatives to stop being dicks. These types of loopholes and end run policies were put into place for a reason and that reason is usually cause some fucker had to be an asshole.
https://www.brookings.edu/rese...
there is actual data on that page. Asians score highest, whites, then latinos then blacks. We have to make perfect ethnic rainbows.
I scored a composite 29 on ACT(taken in 10th grade), still didn't do great in college at 18, went back at 22 and got straight A's, BS and Master's. I don't think standardized tests matter much. Schools teach for the test and deliver college freshman without the ability to overcome challenges. Not everything will be cookie cutter rote memorization in life.
Also I got a 99% overall percentile on the PCAT (pre pharmacy school test) and didn't get accepted. Had an interview, but I'm a white male. Plenty of ethnic rainbows got in with lower scores.