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.

Comments

So it's turning into a community college?

[SmaryJerry]

Taking and passing a ln SAT test sure does cost a lotbof money /s

Re: So it's turning into a community college?

[flink]

Not everyone is made for college.

Not everyone who's made for college is made for a standardized test.

Re: So it's turning into a community college?

[Anonymous Coward]

College is a series of standardized test culminating in a degree. If you can't take one, you can't take the rest. It's a filter.

Re: So it's turning into a community college?

[PopeRatzo]

I will only be surprised on how long it takes for them to admit that they had a drop in incoming student quality.

Stanford hasn't required the SAT for some time, and I'm pretty sure there hasn't been a drop in incoming student quality.

Re: So it's turning into a community college?

[ShanghaiBill]

Stanford hasn't required the SAT for some time

It isn't required, but nearly all applicants still submit scores.

The exceptions are mostly "legacy" children of alumni. If an application comes with a $1M donation to the endowment, then nobody is going worry about a silly little test score.

Re:So it's turning into a community college?

[ShanghaiBill]

remedial classes/SAT prep classes cost money, but not everyone needs them.

You can buy a $10 test prep book on Amazon that covers the exact same material as the $5,000 classes.

The only thing the classes provide is a babysitter to make sure you actually do the exercises.

Re: So it's turning into a community college?

[Train0987]

There are limited seats at university. Of course there should be an entrance filter to accept the most viable students.

Re: So it's turning into a community college?

[sfcat]

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.

So, once again....

[cayenne8]

....we cater to the lowest common denominator......

Re: So, once again....

[lgw]

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.

Corruption

[Anonymous Coward]

When we eliminate objective means of measuring performance, we increase our control of the process. We increase our power.

Pure stupidity

[TimMD909]

In the pursuit of skin color (but not ideological) diversity, they've throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Re:Pure stupidity

[ooloorie]

not stupid at all, the tests don't predict what grades a student will get in college

Yes, and that's because college grades have become nearly meaningless.

Re:Pure stupidity

[Train0987]

Not graduates in actual disciplines, there will always be demand for those. Graduates in gender studies and social sciences (that have zero to do with science), of course. Those only exist for Big Academia to continue their multi-billion $$$ scam.

Public education fail

[Jezral]

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.)

Re:Public education fail

[ooloorie]

The US education system, is indeed, garbage, unless you're wealthy. While we're at it, so is health care and many other indicators of quality of life. The US is a really, really awful place to live if you're not wealthy.

Good thing then that most Americans are wealthy by European standards.

Re:Public education fail

[b0s0z0ku]

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.

"Diversity" can not be the goal

[mi]

ultimately hinder efforts to broaden diversity on campus

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.

SAT is not required, but still expected

[MobyDisk]

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.

It may not be required, but I suspect that most students will provide them anyway. Students apply to multiple universities so they will have the test scores. The students who don't provide them may be at a disadvantage compared to the students that do. These tests exist because it is hard to screen every possible application by watching their personalized video. Objective measures are useful and they won't go away.

How do they evaluate students?

[DogDude]

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?

Predicted by Heinlein

[mi]

In his book "Friday", Robert Heinlein predicted (in 1982) The California Confederacy voting to grant a Bachelor degree to every citizen graduating high school.

Because someone observed "that Californians with college degrees earned more than those with high school diplomas alone".

Translation

[Kohath]

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.

Re:The absurd cost of college

[b0s0z0ku]

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.

It helps some of us

[sjbe]

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.

Re:It helps some of us

[painandgreed]

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.

Re: It helps some of us

[Type44Q]

Fair point but the fact is we're not going to turn illiterate motherfuckers into literate motherfuckers by relaxing the standards. At the end of the day, this is more bullshit like "No Child Allowed Ahead" or whatever it's called.

Needs fixing at School-level

[Roger W Moore]

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.

You're kind of glossing over

[rsilvergun]

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?

Video Interviews have nothing to do with race

[rsilvergun]

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.

Wrong

[rsilvergun]

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.