University System of Maryland moves toward removing SAT/ACT requirement

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can we go back to removing most AP courses so kids can have less stressful high school years and take courses that interest them - instead of what looks good on a transcript.

And instead of getting rid of ACT and SAT scores - get rid of super scores and unlimited retakes that wealthy and upper middle class can afford to do.

Make Fall junior year the SAT test day and Spring Junior year the ACT test day Everyone gets one shot at both. Taken in your school on the same day. No retakes. You can submit either one to colleges.

I like 🥰

My kid was sick the day of the PSAT and missed NMSF by one point. She thought she would be sick to her stomach the whole time. Well who really cares about NMSF its just one more thing. If it were your only shot at the SATs, it would be a real issue.

And let’s have suicide rates like they do in China where kids jump off the building after they take their standardized test. A one chance no retakes is a horrible idea.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can we go back to removing most AP courses so kids can have less stressful high school years and take courses that interest them - instead of what looks good on a transcript.

And instead of getting rid of ACT and SAT scores - get rid of super scores and unlimited retakes that wealthy and upper middle class can afford to do.

Make Fall junior year the SAT test day and Spring Junior year the ACT test day Everyone gets one shot at both. Taken in your school on the same day. No retakes. You can submit either one to colleges.

Yeah, the only place where there are some standards that can't be controlled by the school district. Great idea!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can we go back to removing most AP courses so kids can have less stressful high school years and take courses that interest them - instead of what looks good on a transcript.

And instead of getting rid of ACT and SAT scores - get rid of super scores and unlimited retakes that wealthy and upper middle class can afford to do.

Make Fall junior year the SAT test day and Spring Junior year the ACT test day Everyone gets one shot at both. Taken in your school on the same day. No retakes. You can submit either one to colleges.

Many students haven't even gotten through algebra 2 by fall of junior year. If you want this to occur, the SATs should be offered in the spring of junior year to give everyone the best chance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So, when applying to UMD a candidate can send the SAT score (if that's good enough) or not. The acceptance criteria don't take into consideration that score at all, right? If that's the case, how do they decide who's academically fit? High School grades?

Maybe middle school.

They know what they need to see and have realized that kids who prep for a 4 hour test and do well are not the kids who do well over the course of 4 years. Add in a good essay and extra curriculars and suddenly the standardized tests don't mean much.

Look up information about Wake Forest and why they don't use it.

Yup, useless skill. No relevance to GMAT, LSAT, MCAT, bar exam, medical boards, CPA exams, etc.

Those will go away too. Maybe not a bar exam or other licensing tests but lsat, gmat etc are already not required at some schools.

Huge difference between a licensing test and a matriculation exam

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can we go back to removing most AP courses so kids can have less stressful high school years and take courses that interest them - instead of what looks good on a transcript.

And instead of getting rid of ACT and SAT scores - get rid of super scores and unlimited retakes that wealthy and upper middle class can afford to do.

Make Fall junior year the SAT test day and Spring Junior year the ACT test day Everyone gets one shot at both. Taken in your school on the same day. No retakes. You can submit either one to colleges.

I like 🥰

My kid was sick the day of the PSAT and missed NMSF by one point. She thought she would be sick to her stomach the whole time. Well who really cares about NMSF its just one more thing. If it were your only shot at the SATs, it would be a real issue.

And let’s have suicide rates like they do in China where kids jump off the building after they take their standardized test. A one chance no retakes is a horrible idea.

give me a break. It is once test. The reason kids make it so important is because their parents do. Parents like you that force their kids to take both tests 5 times with tutors and test prep in-between. THAT is more stressful than taking it once and done.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can we go back to removing most AP courses so kids can have less stressful high school years and take courses that interest them - instead of what looks good on a transcript.

And instead of getting rid of ACT and SAT scores - get rid of super scores and unlimited retakes that wealthy and upper middle class can afford to do.

Make Fall junior year the SAT test day and Spring Junior year the ACT test day Everyone gets one shot at both. Taken in your school on the same day. No retakes. You can submit either one to colleges.

Love this idea - move both tests to Spring though. This would even the playing field so much more. And the person complaining about being sick - of course there would be a make-up day. Stop the drama

[Anonymous]

Please don't get rid of AP courses. The honors classes at Whitman are horrifically boring.

[Anonymous]

My AP classes by far were my most interesting classes. Don’t force kids to take them if they don’t want to. But I will take AP Art History with me to the grave!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So, when applying to UMD a candidate can send the SAT score (if that's good enough) or not. The acceptance criteria don't take into consideration that score at all, right? If that's the case, how do they decide who's academically fit? High School grades?

Maybe middle school.

They know what they need to see and have realized that kids who prep for a 4 hour test and do well are not the kids who do well over the course of 4 years. Add in a good essay and extra curriculars and suddenly the standardized tests don't mean much.

Look up information about Wake Forest and why they don't use it.

Please, they have known the whole time that SAT does not measure anything except how much families can pay for prep courses and therefore tuition. You all get that college admissions are actually not a meritocracy?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So, when applying to UMD a candidate can send the SAT score (if that's good enough) or not. The acceptance criteria don't take into consideration that score at all, right? If that's the case, how do they decide who's academically fit? High School grades?

Maybe middle school.

They know what they need to see and have realized that kids who prep for a 4 hour test and do well are not the kids who do well over the course of 4 years. Add in a good essay and extra curriculars and suddenly the standardized tests don't mean much.

Look up information about Wake Forest and why they don't use it.

yep - people who can afford it take classes to improve their score so it just becomes a way to keep the poor down instead of a measure of merit

[Anonymous]

I don't believe that this applies to Asian-American students. For most Asian students staller academic performance (rigor, GPA, APs, SAT, NMS, ECs, Essays, Recommendations, internships, national recognitions etc) matters for all colleges, especially for competitive majors and programs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So, when applying to UMD a candidate can send the SAT score (if that's good enough) or not. The acceptance criteria don't take into consideration that score at all, right? If that's the case, how do they decide who's academically fit? High School grades?

Maybe middle school.

They know what they need to see and have realized that kids who prep for a 4 hour test and do well are not the kids who do well over the course of 4 years. Add in a good essay and extra curriculars and suddenly the standardized tests don't mean much.

Look up information about Wake Forest and why they don't use it.

yep - people who can afford it take classes to improve their score so it just becomes a way to keep the poor down instead of a measure of merit

This is actually not true. I grew up poor, never took a prep class and ended up at Stanford because I could prove my chops on a standardized test. Poor kids now: 1) have Khan Academy and many other on-line resources; 2) can ride a bike to the library to borrow a test prep book; 3) baby-sit for an hour and buy a test prep book; 4) apply for payment exemptions from both the College Board and ACT.

The idea that college is not a meritocracy is not coming from the use of standardized tests, it is definitely other things, including the elimination of all academic standards in the name of equity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So, when applying to UMD a candidate can send the SAT score (if that's good enough) or not. The acceptance criteria don't take into consideration that score at all, right? If that's the case, how do they decide who's academically fit? High School grades?

Maybe middle school.

They know what they need to see and have realized that kids who prep for a 4 hour test and do well are not the kids who do well over the course of 4 years. Add in a good essay and extra curriculars and suddenly the standardized tests don't mean much.

Look up information about Wake Forest and why they don't use it.

yep - people who can afford it take classes to improve their score so it just becomes a way to keep the poor down instead of a measure of merit

This is actually not true. I grew up poor, never took a prep class and ended up at Stanford because I could prove my chops on a standardized test. Poor kids now: 1) have Khan Academy and many other on-line resources; 2) can ride a bike to the library to borrow a test prep book; 3) baby-sit for an hour and buy a test prep book; 4) apply for payment exemptions from both the College Board and ACT.

The idea that college is not a meritocracy is not coming from the use of standardized tests, it is definitely other things, including the elimination of all academic standards in the name of equity.

Plus a lot of free preparation resources and classes offered by MCPS. Just check their website.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Please don't get rid of AP courses. The honors classes at Whitman are horrifically boring.

They can put other courses in that kids would like and need instead of stuffing them with AP Gov freshman year. A class people only take for transcripts

My kids all went to private school with no AP's and had great classes. Don't they have classes by level in high school in public?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So, when applying to UMD a candidate can send the SAT score (if that's good enough) or not. The acceptance criteria don't take into consideration that score at all, right? If that's the case, how do they decide who's academically fit? High School grades?

Maybe middle school.

They know what they need to see and have realized that kids who prep for a 4 hour test and do well are not the kids who do well over the course of 4 years. Add in a good essay and extra curriculars and suddenly the standardized tests don't mean much.

Look up information about Wake Forest and why they don't use it.

Please, they have known the whole time that SAT does not measure anything except how much families can pay for prep courses and therefore tuition. You all get that college admissions are actually not a meritocracy?

The idea that standardized tests don't measure intelligence is absolutely preposterous. They may not be perfect, but they are a damn good indicator. Anyone involved in screening and admitting students at the PhD level knows this well (although the quantitative scores will be a better indicator of intelligence than the verbal scores). Give me thirty minutes to sit down and talk to a PhD applicant and I will guess their GRE score within a few percentile every time. If standardized test scores are not predicting college success, it's not because of "prepping" or a failure of those tests to predict intelligence - it is because either our college courses are so basic that you don't actually have to be intelligent to succeed, or that we have inflated grades so incredibly much on the lower end that it camoflauges the horrendous intellectual ability of the bottom 30% of the class. Spoiler alert, it's option number 2.