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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.
Taking and passing a ln SAT test sure does cost a lotbof money /s
....we cater to the lowest common denominator......
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
When we eliminate objective means of measuring performance, we increase our control of the process. We increase our power.
In the pursuit of skin color (but not ideological) diversity, they've throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Yes, a video from the applicant will be helpful ... we wouldn't want to accidentally accept a white guy who goes by "D'Andre".
If anything, that's yet another damning indictment of the US education system.
Here in Denmark, your standardized scores coming out of secondary education (high school, et al) mean everything, and can be relied upon to do so. There are no entrance tests for universities, no essays to write, no customized applications. Your test scores represent you - and it works, because the whole (free!) public education system is good enough, from the ground up.
(Universities here do have non-standard application options for people who want to go that route, or don't qualify for first priority for any reason.)
An educational institution's goal is — or ought to be — education.
Whether SAT and other scores help that or not, "diversity" certainly does not. It is a completely bogus goal to pursue.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I don't understand how they're going to evaluate students.
In the US, we have no national education standards. In many states, we have no state standards. The quality of schools and what is taught in schools varies wildly from district to district, and even school to school, due to wildly unequal funding. With no standards, how are they going to compare students?
I don't respond to AC's.
Using test scores meant they had to admit too many Asians and whites. Getting rid of test scores makes it easier to discriminate against Asians and whites.
Not everyone is willing to join the military and volunteer to murder, be murdered, or come back crippled or ill from fighting for Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil, or Aramco. Let's not kid ourselves -- most wars in the last 70 years haven't been for "country." they've been to make big corporations money and to preserve their lines of income. War is a racket.
Far better for one's children to go to Europe, where they can take advantage of cheaper tuition, even for foreign students.
Not everyone who's made for college is made for a standardized test.
True but for some of us (like me) the standardized test gave us a way to prove we were smarter than our grades would otherwise indicate. I wasn't a great student. Partly because I'm easily bored especially by subjects I don't care about. But mostly because primary school tends to heavily reward the ability to memorize and regurgitate random facts and my brain isn't optimally wired for doing that. But I could do rather well (generally 90-95th percentile) on standardized tests so even though my grades were mediocre I was still able to get into a very good college.
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.
Some people can afford to give their kids extra resources. Technology, books, tutors, free time. That all helps pass the SAT test.
You need to look at this from a university's perspective though. When I am teaching a first year physics course if the students in the lecture do not have a sufficient background in maths and physics to understand the material then they are wasting their time and money being there. That is the point of having standardized tests: they ensure all students have a sufficient background to be able to cope with the program they want to enrol in.
If society fails to support those from disadvantaged backgrounds enough so that they too can also reach the standards required for university then there is not a lot the university can do without lowering its academic standards and then you end up with a second rate institute whose qualifications are far less useful and whose value to society is far less than it was. If the university intake is not diverse enough for society then, provided the university is applying its intake requirements in an unbiased fashion, that same society needs to fix the problem at the school level.
the whole "wealth inequality" thing. When it comes to quality of life America isn't even in the top 10.
Put another way, what the hell do I care if there's 100 billionaires in driving distance of me if I'm living in a slum?
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Mr D'Andre's name is likely to hurt him.
The article is literally about trying to give even more explicit preference based on race. because the programs they've been trying so far - for decades - apparently aren't effective enough. In their goal to give preference by race.
This isn't even arguable.
the article is about a University ending the practice of using SAT & ACT scores in admission criteria. The fact that they noticed some racial bias in the scores is one factor in that decision. The fact that those scores don't appear to be an accurate predictor of academic success is another.
Again, right wing talking points and wedge issues. We're all completely missing the point, which is that the 1% have cut funding to education so they can pocket the money as tax cuts while using cheap foreign labor to avoid paying for an educated workforce.
Every, and I mean everything, is always about the economy. If you and I weren't getting so screwed by wealth inequality you wouldn't give 2 shits about this. Because you wouldn't be at every other working stiff's throat for the scraps left by the billionaires. Face it, you've been had, again.
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