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University of Chicago To Stop Requiring ACT and SAT Scores For Prospective Undergraduates (chicagotribune.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: For years, a debate has simmered at the nation's universities and colleges over how much weight should be given to standardized tests as officials consider students for admission -- and whether they should be required at all. A growing number, including DePaul University, have opted to stop requiring the SAT and ACT in their admissions process, saying the tests place an unfair cost and burden on low-income and minority students, and ultimately hinder efforts to broaden diversity on campus. But the trend has escaped the nation's most selective universities. Until now. The University of Chicago announced Thursday that it would no longer require applicants for the undergraduate college to submit standardized test scores. While it will still allow applicants to submit their SAT or ACT scores, university officials said they would let prospective undergraduates send transcripts on their own and submit video introductions and nontraditional materials to supplement their applications.
Good thing then that most Americans are wealthy by European standards.
Stanford hasn't required the SAT for some time, and I'm pretty sure there hasn't been a drop in incoming student quality.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Except, according to TFA, it isn't:
Standardised tests measure how well people do on those standardised tests, nothing else -- just like IQ tests don't tell you how smart someone is.
This sounds like universities are realising that if the test isn't a good predictor of success in university, why use it at as a basis for admission?
You don't have skin in the gave, what the fuck do you care who they admit?
Income adjusted for purchasing power isn't the only metric when making such comparisons. In most European countries, people don't pay through the nose for health care aka "insurance." They often don't need two cars, due to availability of public transport. University tends to be cheap -- nearly free -- in many countries. Disposable incomes may be lower, but a lot more things are paid for by taxes than in the US, where it's sink-or-swim, on your own.
Yes, but it's easy for the admissions process to adjust scores for impoverished backgrounds. It doesn't even run afoul of laws against racial quotas if you base it just on poverty.
For students from the top half or so of the economic system, tests are quite predictive. Not enough to use them in isolation, but they correlate better with success than any other individual measure.
The tests are still the most predictive tool, but there are many useful tools.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
So some people who are college material don't have good test scores but conversely some people without exceptional grades actually are rather bright and do fine in college. I was the later.
And you can still take and turn in such tests to support your application, they just are no longer required.
That is why most universities have personal interviews, check the students records, Look at other activities and accomplishments.... The SAT and the like tests, are about proper prep, vs actual knowledge and skill. If students took the test cold without prep, then it may be more fare of a test, but for the most part the more affluent students will have hours of SAT Test training, taken multiple practice tests, and prepped for the full test.
And all of those other criteria can be biased and highly in-favor of the affluent as well. In fact, most of those things can be far more in favor of students from richer households and can be gamed by those with more time and resources at their disposal. Perhaps for some majors and fields these tests are not useful, but for STEM they most certainly are. There is a considerable amount of research that says they are the best indicators that admissions staff have as things like GPA can be very different things at different high schools (especially when you add in international students from entirely different systems). I think these changes will make it harder for those from poor backgrounds to be admitted and will favor most those from richer families (and to an even greater degree those who are of the right demographic groups).
Creating a system for evaluating students is very very hard. Consider the game theory aspects of trying to reduce the amount of "gaming the system" that those with more resources can do (think Freakonomics). Any set of criteria you come up with (outside of outright quota systems based upon demographics) can be gamed, even standardized tests. The issue is which criteria are "gamed" by the smallest amount and in favor of who are those criteria? And the research that I've seen says its the tests that are the hardest to game as its the one place where everyone truly has a level playing field. Now if a design program doesn't use the SAT or ACT at all, I think that is sensible. But getting rid of it across the entire university seems foolish at best, especially for the STEM departments.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
That's untrue. Late 90s had A=5.0 B=3.75 C=2.5, D=1.25 for AP-level classes. GPAs > 4.0 have been around for a long time.
The problem is that getting into AP/Honors classes was a corrupt process. Teachers and department heads were the "gatekeepers", and their selection process was opaque. Opaque but ended up favoring white, Asian, and rich kids over ones of different ethnicity or economic status.
they're a by product of massive federal funding cuts. Thanks to that schools have cut back and they're getting more qualified applicants than they have places. They predicted this when I was in college 20 years ago but everybody scoffed at it because they wanted those sweet, sweet tax cuts (jokes on them, those only went to the top 1%). You'd know this if you had a kid in college (I do).
And it's been shown that people with black sounding names are much less likely to have applications reviewed. Mr D'Andre's name is likely to hurt him. If anything the video will be to his advantage. You're parroting a false talking point that comes out of right wing think tanks whose primary goal is to distract you from real economic issues with a persecution complex. Time to get woke my friend.
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