University Of California Reaches Final Decision: No More Standardized Admission Testing

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This really would have hurt me. I was a great student, but I know that my score of 1500 on the SAT is what got me into my top college.

But you don't know that. You were already a great student. You probably had great letters of recommendation. You probably wrote well. Did they REALLY need the SAT to tell them you were qualified/competitive/etc?

This is the legit question. Are there people who are terrible in all these other areas (rigor, grades, letters, essays), but who are admitted because of an SAT? No way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ll just state the obvious....consideration of standardized tests doesn’t yield the desired color composition of incoming classes so it had to be eliminated. The cal system will continue to tinker with admissions criteria until it admits exactly 12% blacks because that’s proportionate with the population. Forget the merit of applicants, the overriding consideration is race. MLK is rolling over in his grave.

You sound absolutely ridiculous. As if colleges have always been about merit when they were only letting in white males, and then whites in general, and then only desirable non-whites. To suggest colleges have been meritocracies until now is intellectually lazy.

Yup

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This really would have hurt me. I was a great student, but I know that my score of 1500 on the SAT is what got me into my top college.

But you don't know that. You were already a great student. You probably had great letters of recommendation. You probably wrote well. Did they REALLY need the SAT to tell them you were qualified/competitive/etc?

DP.. SATs also help if you are applying from OOS. GPA will only tell part of the story. If you got straight As and 4+ on several AP tests, then I think SAT is not necessary. But, not all HS have 10+ AP courses/exams offered, so SATs becomes an equalizer. It's the only thing that is the same between schools. Someone else could write your essay for you; you could've cheated your way through HS; but it's much harder to have someone take the SATs for you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it's fantastic. Study after study after study has confirmed the high correlation between family income and parental education and SAT and ACT scores. Generally speaking, high scores were born on third base. It doesn't make them any smarter.

Have you ever heard of IQ tests? What do you think SAT and ACT measure, if not IQ? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6963451/

That's interesting because my son with an IQ of 158 scored poorly on SAT. Likely due to ADHD and Autism but it doesn't make him any less smart. His 4.9 GPA still stands.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think UC just has better data on kids then they did before. Who needs a Nielsen box for rating TV shows when you have Netflix monitoring every moment? SATs are Nielsen box. Naviance is Netflix.

Great analogy. I think you’re right.

Thanks kind DCUM poster! I think UC has the added ‘bonus’ of a PR win...when in reality they have more data then they know what to do with on these kids!

What data do they have? You mean GPA and transacript (and essays, often written with help of parents, teachers and other adults?)

They have longitudinal data about how graduates of every HS did in their school down to the fraction of a GPA and also classes they took. They can look at years of data on prior graduates from the HS in their own school and see how they did.

[Anonymous]

My parents didn't finish high school. It never occurred to me or them that I should prep in any way for the SAT, so I didn't. I got an average score and ended up at a college that nobody ever heard of. I did very well and decided to apply to law school. So I took the LSAT cold, like the SAT. No prep courses. No practice tests. Nothing. Having no mentors and no understanding about these things, I simply assumed that that's how you did it.

Despite scoring below the 70th percentile on the LSAT, I got into a law school where the average score was the 90th percentile -- presumably because of my college GPA. I finished my 1L ranked first in the class. The second ranked student was an Ivy League grad with a perfect LSAT score.

My kids all took expensive prep courses for the SAT, all scored hundreds of points better than I did, and all got into highly ranked colleges that when I was a kid would have never even occurred to me to apply to.

Does this really mean that my privileged progeny are all smarter than me?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it's fantastic. Study after study after study has confirmed the high correlation between family income and parental education and SAT and ACT scores. Generally speaking, high scores were born on third base. It doesn't make them any smarter.

Have you ever heard of IQ tests? What do you think SAT and ACT measure, if not IQ? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6963451/

That's interesting because my son with an IQ of 158 scored poorly on SAT. Likely due to ADHD and Autism but it doesn't make him any less smart. His 4.9 GPA still stands.

SAT can't measure "slow thinker" intelligence. It only measures "quick thinker" intelligence. These are very different. Some of the most brilliant minds we have are slow thinkers, but they would do badly on the SAT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How will they distinguish among white or Asian kids who all have the same grades?

I get how this allows them to pick minorities. But there will be spots who go to white/Asian kids. And a very large percentage of these kids will have almost identical grades--I know my kid and all of his friends have the same grades
Retake and lax grading makes it almost impossible to not do well in many publics (DCPS for sure).
I get that extracurriculars are one thing--but again, most kids will have a very, very similar version of these as well. And it's not Harvard--we're not looking for kids to split to atom to get into UCSD or even UCLA.

Same as how they do it now. Most kids who have similar grades from similar HS also have very similar standardized test scores.

Not at all. in my child's very socioeconomically diverse school, which doesn't offer class rank, allows endless retakes/resubmissions, the "top" GPAs are quite compressed due to grade inflation. Like many kids near 5.0. But a couple of those kids got 1500s on their SATs, a couple got 1400, and a couple got 1300, while the vast majority scored 1100-1200, despite their top grades. You think these students are all equally capable of succeeding in the most challenging college and professional endeavors just because they are near "straight A" students?

Do you think kids who are good test takers are equally capable of succeeding in the most challenging college and professional environments?

DP. What do you mean by “good test taker”? Being a good test taker as in you have high working memory? There are lots of very good test takers who have bad grades. A really high standardized test score reflects IQ, not anything you prep for.

DP. Disagree. I was a great test taker and I can attest that scoring well on standardized tests is a skill that some people have that isn’t necessarily related to intelligence. My DC is highly intelligent and makes great grades, but didn’t “get” standardized tests the first time through. With a minimal amount of tutoring, he raised his composite score three points on the ACT. One or two tutoring session’s focus on the English section raised his score from a 30 to a 35, and another session raised his science score from a 31 to a 36. He is obviously a smart kid to begin with, but his test scores went from middling to great because he had a parent willing to fork over the $$ to make it happen. Prep *can* absolutely make a difference.

Of course prep can increase score. But if you gave all kids the same amount of prep, you'd still get a range of scores that very likely correlate to the intelligence of the kids.

“If” is doing a lot of work here. Kids don’t get the same amount of prep. The point is that prep can improve your score, so it’s not a measure of pure intelligence.

And pp said it’s purely IQ and “not anything you prep for,” so there are people who clearly disagree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think UC just has better data on kids then they did before. Who needs a Nielsen box for rating TV shows when you have Netflix monitoring every moment? SATs are Nielsen box. Naviance is Netflix.

Great analogy. I think you’re right.

Thanks kind DCUM poster! I think UC has the added ‘bonus’ of a PR win...when in reality they have more data then they know what to do with on these kids!

What data do they have? You mean GPA and transacript (and essays, often written with help of parents, teachers and other adults?)

They have longitudinal data about how graduates of every HS did in their school down to the fraction of a GPA and also classes they took. They can look at years of data on prior graduates from the HS in their own school and see how they did.

They also have data on the high schools themselves. It’s why Blair Magnet gets 14 kids into MIT yet Wootton only gets UMD college park. (Unless their is a feel good ‘story’ there for the one Princeton entry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This really would have hurt me. I was a great student, but I know that my score of 1500 on the SAT is what got me into my top college.

But you don't know that. You were already a great student. You probably had great letters of recommendation. You probably wrote well. Did they REALLY need the SAT to tell them you were qualified/competitive/etc?

This is the legit question. Are there people who are terrible in all these other areas (rigor, grades, letters, essays), but who are admitted because of an SAT? No way.

The uc system’s own study showed that adding test scores to high school gpa materially increased their ability to forecast how a student would perform in college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think UC just has better data on kids then they did before. Who needs a Nielsen box for rating TV shows when you have Netflix monitoring every moment? SATs are Nielsen box. Naviance is Netflix.

Great analogy. I think you’re right.

Thanks kind DCUM poster! I think UC has the added ‘bonus’ of a PR win...when in reality they have more data then they know what to do with on these kids!

What data do they have? You mean GPA and transacript (and essays, often written with help of parents, teachers and other adults?)

They have longitudinal data about how graduates of every HS did in their school down to the fraction of a GPA and also classes they took. They can look at years of data on prior graduates from the HS in their own school and see how they did.

They also have data on the high schools themselves. It’s why Blair Magnet gets 14 kids into MIT yet Wootton only gets UMD college park. (Unless their is a feel good ‘story’ there for the one Princeton entry.

Both these schools are continuing to consider test scores for applicants who submit them.

UCLA currently gets more applications than any other college in the country and gives limited weight to advanced classes. It’s going to be a disaster:

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it's fantastic. Study after study after study has confirmed the high correlation between family income and parental education and SAT and ACT scores. Generally speaking, high scores were born on third base. It doesn't make them any smarter.

Have you ever heard of IQ tests? What do you think SAT and ACT measure, if not IQ? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6963451/

That's interesting because my son with an IQ of 158 scored poorly on SAT. Likely due to ADHD and Autism but it doesn't make him any less smart. His 4.9 GPA still stands.

SAT can't measure "slow thinker" intelligence. It only measures "quick thinker" intelligence. These are very different. Some of the most brilliant minds we have are slow thinkers, but they would do badly on the SAT.

My child, with a diagnosis of slow processing, got a 1500 on the SAT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think UC just has better data on kids then they did before. Who needs a Nielsen box for rating TV shows when you have Netflix monitoring every moment? SATs are Nielsen box. Naviance is Netflix.

Great analogy. I think you’re right.

Thanks kind DCUM poster! I think UC has the added ‘bonus’ of a PR win...when in reality they have more data then they know what to do with on these kids!

What data do they have? You mean GPA and transacript (and essays, often written with help of parents, teachers and other adults?)

They have longitudinal data about how graduates of every HS did in their school down to the fraction of a GPA and also classes they took. They can look at years of data on prior graduates from the HS in their own school and see how they did.

They also have data on the high schools themselves. It’s why Blair Magnet gets 14 kids into MIT yet Wootton only gets UMD college park. (Unless their is a feel good ‘story’ there for the one Princeton entry.

this is exactly what UNC CH does, they have their fave hs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How will they distinguish among white or Asian kids who all have the same grades?

I get how this allows them to pick minorities. But there will be spots who go to white/Asian kids. And a very large percentage of these kids will have almost identical grades--I know my kid and all of his friends have the same grades
Retake and lax grading makes it almost impossible to not do well in many publics (DCPS for sure).
I get that extracurriculars are one thing--but again, most kids will have a very, very similar version of these as well. And it's not Harvard--we're not looking for kids to split to atom to get into UCSD or even UCLA.

Same as how they do it now. Most kids who have similar grades from similar HS also have very similar standardized test scores.

Not at all. in my child's very socioeconomically diverse school, which doesn't offer class rank, allows endless retakes/resubmissions, the "top" GPAs are quite compressed due to grade inflation. Like many kids near 5.0. But a couple of those kids got 1500s on their SATs, a couple got 1400, and a couple got 1300, while the vast majority scored 1100-1200, despite their top grades. You think these students are all equally capable of succeeding in the most challenging college and professional endeavors just because they are near "straight A" students?

Do you think kids who are good test takers are equally capable of succeeding in the most challenging college and professional environments?

DP. What do you mean by “good test taker”? Being a good test taker as in you have high working memory? There are lots of very good test takers who have bad grades. A really high standardized test score reflects IQ, not anything you prep for.

DP. Disagree. I was a great test taker and I can attest that scoring well on standardized tests is a skill that some people have that isn’t necessarily related to intelligence. My DC is highly intelligent and makes great grades, but didn’t “get” standardized tests the first time through. With a minimal amount of tutoring, he raised his composite score three points on the ACT. One or two tutoring session’s focus on the English section raised his score from a 30 to a 35, and another session raised his science score from a 31 to a 36. He is obviously a smart kid to begin with, but his test scores went from middling to great because he had a parent willing to fork over the $$ to make it happen. Prep *can* absolutely make a difference.

Your son is a pretty big outlier with those gains. Not saying it's impossible, but unlikely to be the standard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This really would have hurt me. I was a great student, but I know that my score of 1500 on the SAT is what got me into my top college.

But you don't know that. You were already a great student. You probably had great letters of recommendation. You probably wrote well. Did they REALLY need the SAT to tell them you were qualified/competitive/etc?

DP. Two candiates with equal applications, but one has a 1500 and the other has 1300 - the 1500 is more qualified. This is about chosing between people.