Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
Yeah, and keep going down that road and you won't even need to be literate to get a medical degree or a PE license. How's the prospect of being operated on a by surgeon who didn't opt to take the medical license exam but nontheless feels his ability to make a positive contribution shouldn't be predicated on a single number sound to you? Wanna live in a building designed by a person who's grasp of calculus isn't necessarily quantified, but who definitely has the right aura?
Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. All of it.
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.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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.
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.
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?
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.........
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.
As long as quacks can sell you MMS and "Vitamin B17", you're already there. It's not like much would change.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
>Some of the stupidest people I've met had bachelor's degrees.
Were they the kind of people that think anecdotes are the best way to understand reality?
To be a doctor, you need to do well on the MCAT, get into med school, take the USMLE, and get a residency. Or get into a combined medical program out of high school and still pass the USMLE and get a residency.
Engineering in life-critical fields involves passing the FE and PE exams. Not trivial.
There will still be standard exams as gatekeepers for both fields.
Or to be president.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
I'm trying to remember the actual case, but I'm pretty sure it ran down like this. Person from India or Pakistan, came to Canada with a mechanical engineering degree. The requirements in Canada require that if you get a degree out-of-country you have to submit to reexamination. Went all the way to court, and the court said nope, you're just doing that because of his race. The examination rules were rewritten to get around that particular court case and still require reexamination.
If there's one thing you can be sure of, it's that in today's hypersensitivity of "you're only doing this because x, reason so I don't have to follow your rules!" bullshit, you can be sure that there's a judge somewhere that will agree with that "progressive agenda" and put people at risk.
Om, nomnomnom...
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?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
No, prep classes might make you feel slightly more comfortable taking them, but they won't significantly improve your score (well, they didn't in the past; not sure if the tests have been de-objectified enough now for that to have changed.)
They were a rough proxy for IQ, itself a good predictor for academic success.
To be a doctor, you need to do well on the MCAT, get into med school, take the USMLE, and get a residency. Or get into a combined medical program out of high school and still pass the USMLE and get a residency.
Engineering in life-critical fields involves passing the FE and PE exams. Not trivial.
There will still be standard exams as gatekeepers for both fields.
Give it time. First diplomas, then 4-year degrees ... first entrance criteria, then protests that not enough graduate ... these things always move up the chain.
Just give it time.
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.
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.
On the math side of things, definitely not.
Our university went though years of trying to figure out the best way to place freshmen in the sequence of math courses, even designing our own math placement test. It's a hard problem. You don't want to set up someone to fail by tossing them in over their head. Likewise, you don't want to waste someone's time by putting them in a class full of stuff they already know.
Guess what? The single best predictor of success in the vital calculus series of classes (which are pre-reqs for lots of of ther STEM courses) was the student's math ACT score. Better than custom placement tests. Better than high school transcripts. Actual data over many years as analyzed by a department full of actual statisticians concerned about their own students' success.
Were "test prep" courses a factor? I don't know. But, if the test prep was inflating student math ACT scores, then it was also inflating their success in university calculus, so sounds like money well spent if that was the root cause. I'd also like to call "BS" on the raft of cynical posts in this thread claiming universities are only interested in scamming students out of tuition. While the US university system has plenty of faults, that's not one of them. Student success is a driving concern in academia. Maybe even to an extreme, as we are currently in the grips of an "assessment" frenzy that tries to quantify it in an overly bureaucratic way.
The test had little to nothing to do with what she learned in high school or what she's learning in college right now
Note that this is intentional. The SAT is intended as an aptitude test. As such, it is intended to measure your ability as independent of knowledge and learned skills as possible. This is obviously impossible, but tests like the SAT and IQ tests try to get as close as they can. Unfortunately, it is often possible with such tests to learn for a particular style of test (and you can't significantly change the style without compromising reliability). There's some research that indicates that you get much more useful information by making people take a lot of these tests and comparing their best and worst marks, but that is not normally practical.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
My son got a 35 on the ACT, never did a single test prep class. This suggestion is BS, and those prep classes generally don't help at all anyway.
- Vincit qui patitur.
When I was in high school, my mother bought one of those home-study SAT prep courses that comes on a CD-ROM. I can't imagine it cost more than maybe 60 USD, and I scored very well.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
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.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
"FEM/FEA and CAD software" is not a substitute for engineering knowledge. It is possible to use it incorrectly, to misinterpret the results, to misrepresent or ignore results you don't like because they'll eat into your profit margin or damage your reputation, and anything in between. It is also possible for the software to have been written incorrectly from the beginning. Engineering judgement is required to determine whether a piece of software is appropriate to use for any project. Google Sketchup is fine for a garage project, not to build a skyscraper.
Yes. They were and are. Many of them find their way to the top of the heap in traditional and new media and into politics.
engineers with questionable knowledge and experience?
no prob, brah, there's an app for that
No matter what criteria colleges use, parents with means are going to do everything they can to see their kids succeed, there is just no way to level the playing field. In a way a standardized test is probably the most fair, I just bought 3 of the top rated ACT prep books for one of my kids off of Amazon for less than $60. That's at least doable for lower income families If colleges start looking at other factors like extracurricular activities and internships and things like that it'll really tilt the playing field in favor of the middle and upper class families, all of those things can come much easier to students of means.
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
SAT/ACT are multi-million dollar scams to make money for the ones running the tests.
I 100% agree with this. At some point these tests measured something useful, now they only measure amount of prep for these tests. You can't, for example, take a smart kid and expect him to get a good score without extensive prep.
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.
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.
Recently, as a parent, I went to take SAT test to try to prove to my progeny that it is relevant. I am an engineer currently working in tech, I mostly deal with protocols and crypto, so it is math. I published papers, wrote standards, have my own office, and no longer asked to shave my now gray beard. You know, the whole works.
While my math score wasn't abysmal, it isn't good enough to secure me admission to my old program. The same program I am now qualified to teach.
Try it yourself. Go take SAT with zero prep and see how far you get. I am not convinced that SAT is test-taking-prep industry. They both create the problem and offer solution.
"take a smart kid and expect him to get a good score without extensive prep." - Yes you can, my prep consisted of looking over the practice questions in the SAT registration handout and driving myself to the school to take the test, result, perfect score in Math, just under perfect in Verbal. I told my kid the best prep for his SAT is to read a lot of high quality books and publications ("The Economist" is the example I put in from of him). About the only useful real prep is multiple choice test taking strategies (for those who haven't already figured those out) and how much time can you spend on that?
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).
http://college.usatoday.com/20...
As a student, I took no test prep courses and did really well on these things (National Merit scholar and all). My oldest son just did the same, no special prep classes. I was a fairly "meh" student, but did well on standardized tests (my boy is better at both aspects, yay for him). Lucky for me.
If I were to take it now, though, like you I also probably wouldn't do as well as I did when I was a student: even having a job as a professor. Why? As a student I was taking tests of all sorts all the time. And that was in the day before all the school-based state mandated standardized tests, so students now, even more so.
My point? When you're a student, you're practicing taking tests, so you'll do better on tests than those of us who aren't. Test prep? Yeah, sort of. But you don't have to pay for extra practice when you're doing it for a living as a student. For what it's worth, I suspect I'd also not do as well at taking tests, doing homeworks, all the other student-y things I no longer practice at daily. Does that make school irrelevant too, since obviously educated me wouldn't do as well at it as I used to? Nope. All it's saying is that practice matters.