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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.
When we eliminate objective means of measuring performance, we increase our control of the process. We increase our power.
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.
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".
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Not everyone is made for college.
Not everyone who's made for college is made for a standardized test.
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.
There are limited seats at university. Of course there should be an entrance filter to accept the most viable 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.