UCs are considering reinstating SAT and ACT tests for admission

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If US News ranking considered student qualifications, this will change quickly.

US News cares more about equity than merit. That's why UC Merced is ranked close to be a top 50 college in the country.

If thousands or UCSD students can't do middle school math and UC Berkeley students are deficient in Algebra and Trig and reading, imagine what the student body at UC Merced is like? It has over a 90% acceptance rate, yield under 10%, pre-test banned average SATs of 1070.

The UC system use to be the envy of the country. Now it is a joke.

Envy of the country is a massive stretch. The pre pandemic test scores at all the UCs weren’t that great.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DS had a 790 on the math SAT and 750 RW SAT and didn't get in. Only UC he got into was UC Santa Cruz.

Meanwhile he got into Williams, Tufts, Carleton, Wesleyan, WashU and more.

Same SAT score for my son. He did get into a “higher” UC, but not Cal or UCLA.

Let me guess Bay Area or the very white wealthy areas in La Jolla or Poway/ Del something? My kid is at Davis and will be the first to say UCs should use the SAT because he thinks he would have gotten into Cal with his scores. (He loves Davis though and frankly it’s a much nicer campus, super safe, friendly kids, opportunities to lead and excel but no stress or shaming of kids that aren’t driven to hustle. ) The lower stat kids don’t detract from his experience. Some are his friends and he helps them as he did a ton of tutoring in high school.

He does think it sucks that so many of his really well prepared, extremely smart, equally high stat friends from high school were shut out of all UCs other than Merced. A few decided to do it as Merced gave them merit scholarships where it’s completely free. UC did invest in putting good faculty there. They are in a top group in the engineering program, hang out in the lab/area and get more interaction with faculty than at other schools. One is already a TA, though not solo teaching. One is participating in research. They are from the Bay so they have great internships this summer. They all have enough AP and DE credits to finish in 3 years. UC profs don’t dumb down their exams, they just curve either up or down. They’ll have a great GPA and great recs for grad school etc. Even though they hate the area and the rest of the school is meh, they are getting a great academic experience in their STEM program for free.

I really, really doubt the UC AOs at other schools couldn’t distinguish these kids from kids at lower performing, predominantly Hispanic kids just because they didn’t have SAT scores. UC wants to force top stat kids into the lower tiered UCs. The upper and mid tiers need a certain % of hispanicc kids. Requiring or not requiring SATs is not changing this. It will just piss people off more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DS had a 790 on the math SAT and 750 RW SAT and didn't get in. Only UC he got into was UC Santa Cruz.

Meanwhile he got into Williams, Tufts, Carleton, Wesleyan, WashU and more.

My kid had a 1560 and was NMSF and got into Cal and UCLA, your DCs gpa might not have been high enough when compared to those that got in from him school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How will the SAT change the amount of pages students can read?

The purpose of SAT is not to do what you said. It is to increase the likelihood that students who can read well are admitted to UCs. At a poorly resourced high school in California, two 4.0 students with the same ECs can have fairly different math/reading ability that isn't reflected in their GPA due to grade inflation. By being test blind, schools have no way to tell their ability apart, potentially leading to the weaker 4.0 student getting admitted over the stronger one. This weaker student is the source of UC professors' complaint. By removing test blind, the schools can now better assess their math/reading ability and make a more informed decision. At the end of the day, the poorly resourced high school still has one student admitted. It is not losing its spot to an affluent high school. It just sends the stronger student to the UCs.

+1000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DS had a 790 on the math SAT and 750 RW SAT and didn't get in. Only UC he got into was UC Santa Cruz.

Meanwhile he got into Williams, Tufts, Carleton, Wesleyan, WashU and more.

Same SAT score for my son. He did get into a “higher” UC, but not Cal or UCLA.

I really, really doubt the UC AOs at other schools couldn’t distinguish these kids from kids at lower performing, predominantly Hispanic kids just because they didn’t have SAT scores. UC wants to force top stat kids into the lower tiered UCs. The upper and mid tiers need a certain % of hispanicc kids. Requiring or not requiring SATs is not changing this. It will just piss people off more.

The test blind policy is already pissing off most STEM/Econ faculty.

They can still “force top stat kids into the lower tiered UCs” and admit more Hispanic kids to the upper and mid tiers will a test-required policy. Just be transparent with the scores even if you want to admit low-scoring kids to Cal/UCLA! If anything, studying for the SAT/ACT helps those kids to get better prepared for a top college by building a better foundation in the very basic math and language skills.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If US News ranking considered student qualifications, this will change quickly.

u

The pendulum is swinging back aggressively toward testing and metrics. It will filter down to high schools next and then middle schools.
US news will shift likely VERY soon to care more about tests and student quality: that is what the public wants now. Then high schools will start to care more about preparedness for such tests and middle schools will have to go back to tracking based on academic metrics and academic readiness not diversity. The problem is it should have started from the bottom up long ago. Instead it is backwards. We have elementary schools who recently went to no homework and pushed online learning and yet high schools and colleges who pushed it first have already begun to or swung back the other way.

The schools that comprise the top25 will once again correspond almost exactly to the ones with the highest test score ranges in the new test-required world.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How will the SAT change the amount of pages students can read?

The purpose of SAT is not to do what you said. It is to increase the likelihood that students who can read well are admitted to UCs. At a poorly resourced high school in California, two 4.0 students with the same ECs can have fairly different math/reading ability that isn't reflected in their GPA due to grade inflation. By being test blind, schools have no way to tell their ability apart, potentially leading to the weaker 4.0 student getting admitted over the stronger one. This weaker student is the source of UC professors' complaint. By removing test blind, the schools can now better assess their math/reading ability and make a more informed decision. At the end of the day, the poorly resourced high school still has one student admitted. It is not losing its spot to an affluent high school. It just sends the stronger student to the UCs.

The entire purpose of the SAT was to find the bright kids who didn't have the opportunity to go to Andover, Choate, St. Albans and so on - the usual lame students that glided through Harvard and Yale with gentleman Cs. There really was an attempt in the 80s and 90s to be pretty merit focused. And the SAT was a means to that end.

Obviously, things are different today. Colleges like Berkeley and other universities are going through contortions to dismiss tests as racist. But again. the entire purpose of standardized tests was to find smart kids of every background and get them into the top universities.

I don't know if parents here are just nervous to be honest, but no the SAT is not to normalize the field. We have too many unqualified first gen students with no business going to an elite schools. It is okay for wealthier people to be in better positions and places. That's just life.

If we actually cared about merit, first the college admissions process is entirely too late. Second, we'd look at peer nations with much better rigorous standardized exams. You can get a 750 on the math section of the SAT and be completely unprepared for an engineering major. That's bonkers, but it is how we appease the DEI crowd. The point is there are too many students who shouldn't be at these schools, and that is okay. Hierarchy is not bad.

This sounds utterly stupid. If one can score 750 on the math SAT they understand mathematical concepts well beyond what is needed to study engineering.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Would only help applicants like mine, whose 1600 wasn’t even taken into consideration during the admissions process.

Worked out anyway, but maybe a Regents scholarship would have been the suitable reward for doing something only 100 - 150 of the nation’s nearly 4,000,000 HS graduates pull off every year.

Your kid had 600, not 1600. Quit making things up.

You are so dumb.

Sharp sting of the truth hits home.

[Anonymous]

This is actually a good (if snarky) point: reinstating the SAT won't do much to fix the overall poor level of math preparation of students coming out of high school. It will simply make it harder to unprepared students to be admitted to a UC campus.

Now, I'm not saying that students who can't do middle school math should be on a UC campus. But we should understand that high schools are still going to be graduating students, with good GPAs, who basically can't do anything close to college-level math.

Anonymous wrote:How will the SAT change the amount of pages students can read?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How will the SAT change the amount of pages students can read?

The purpose of SAT is not to do what you said. It is to increase the likelihood that students who can read well are admitted to UCs. At a poorly resourced high school in California, two 4.0 students with the same ECs can have fairly different math/reading ability that isn't reflected in their GPA due to grade inflation. By being test blind, schools have no way to tell their ability apart, potentially leading to the weaker 4.0 student getting admitted over the stronger one. This weaker student is the source of UC professors' complaint. By removing test blind, the schools can now better assess their math/reading ability and make a more informed decision. At the end of the day, the poorly resourced high school still has one student admitted. It is not losing its spot to an affluent high school. It just sends the stronger student to the UCs.

The entire purpose of the SAT was to find the bright kids who didn't have the opportunity to go to Andover, Choate, St. Albans and so on - the usual lame students that glided through Harvard and Yale with gentleman Cs. There really was an attempt in the 80s and 90s to be pretty merit focused. And the SAT was a means to that end.

Obviously, things are different today. Colleges like Berkeley and other universities are going through contortions to dismiss tests as racist. But again. the entire purpose of standardized tests was to find smart kids of every background and get them into the top universities.

I don't know if parents here are just nervous to be honest, but no the SAT is not to normalize the field. We have too many unqualified first gen students with no business going to an elite schools. It is okay for wealthier people to be in better positions and places. That's just life.

If we actually cared about merit, first the college admissions process is entirely too late. Second, we'd look at peer nations with much better rigorous standardized exams. You can get a 750 on the math section of the SAT and be completely unprepared for an engineering major. That's bonkers, but it is how we appease the DEI crowd. The point is there are too many students who shouldn't be at these schools, and that is okay. Hierarchy is not bad.

The UCs have not given up admitting the truly gifted and brilliant students. These kids still get in to many UCs. The UCs have basically swapped the above average wealthy white smart kid/asian grinder for unprepared , average/below average IQ FGLI Hispanic kids. It’s driving faculty nuts because it’s breaking the curve model. They have a bunch swimming at the top, no one in the middle and a huge clump at the bottom. UC is about research not career readiness. It also drives them nuts seeing all these kids in majors whose career goals aren’t even served by that major while there is a Cal state with a program that teaches exactly to that career goal.

The different UC universities are also bizarre about private schools, some are feeders at one and shunned at another. Some have weird results , many have abysmal results. The same oddities play out in public schools. No idea what this is about or looking to achieve but probably aligned with the big socioeconomic class swap.

[Anonymous]

The UC's own study found that SAT scores are better predictors of college GPAs than are high school GPAs. If minority students have lower SATs, it's probably because they're not being as well educated. Let's fix that problem! Eliminating the SAT simply pretends the problem doesn't exist.

It’s a shit measuring stick. It’s like trying to evaluate if someone should be an engineer by asking them their times tables quickly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How will the SAT change the amount of pages students can read?

The purpose of SAT is not to do what you said. It is to increase the likelihood that students who can read well are admitted to UCs. At a poorly resourced high school in California, two 4.0 students with the same ECs can have fairly different math/reading ability that isn't reflected in their GPA due to grade inflation. By being test blind, schools have no way to tell their ability apart, potentially leading to the weaker 4.0 student getting admitted over the stronger one. This weaker student is the source of UC professors' complaint. By removing test blind, the schools can now better assess their math/reading ability and make a more informed decision. At the end of the day, the poorly resourced high school still has one student admitted. It is not losing its spot to an affluent high school. It just sends the stronger student to the UCs.

The entire purpose of the SAT was to find the bright kids who didn't have the opportunity to go to Andover, Choate, St. Albans and so on - the usual lame students that glided through Harvard and Yale with gentleman Cs. There really was an attempt in the 80s and 90s to be pretty merit focused. And the SAT was a means to that end.

Obviously, things are different today. Colleges like Berkeley and other universities are going through contortions to dismiss tests as racist. But again. the entire purpose of standardized tests was to find smart kids of every background and get them into the top universities.

I don't know if parents here are just nervous to be honest, but no the SAT is not to normalize the field. We have too many unqualified first gen students with no business going to an elite schools. It is okay for wealthier people to be in better positions and places. That's just life.

If we actually cared about merit, first the college admissions process is entirely too late. Second, we'd look at peer nations with much better rigorous standardized exams. You can get a 750 on the math section of the SAT and be completely unprepared for an engineering major. That's bonkers, but it is how we appease the DEI crowd. The point is there are too many students who shouldn't be at these schools, and that is okay. Hierarchy is not bad.

The UCs have not given up admitting the truly gifted and brilliant students. These kids still get in to many UCs. The UCs have basically swapped the above average wealthy white smart kid/asian grinder for unprepared , average/below average IQ FGLI Hispanic kids. It’s driving faculty nuts because it’s breaking the curve model. They have a bunch swimming at the top, no one in the middle and a huge clump at the bottom. UC is about research not career readiness. It also drives them nuts seeing all these kids in majors whose career goals aren’t even served by that major while there is a Cal state with a program that teaches exactly to that career goal.

The different UC universities are also bizarre about private schools, some are feeders at one and shunned at another. Some have weird results , many have abysmal results. The same oddities play out in public schools. No idea what this is about or looking to achieve but probably aligned with the big socioeconomic class swap.

This doesn’t make sense. UC campuses at the top are majority Asian.

[Anonymous]

Too late. It has killed the reputation of Cal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How will the SAT change the amount of pages students can read?

The purpose of SAT is not to do what you said. It is to increase the likelihood that students who can read well are admitted to UCs. At a poorly resourced high school in California, two 4.0 students with the same ECs can have fairly different math/reading ability that isn't reflected in their GPA due to grade inflation. By being test blind, schools have no way to tell their ability apart, potentially leading to the weaker 4.0 student getting admitted over the stronger one. This weaker student is the source of UC professors' complaint. By removing test blind, the schools can now better assess their math/reading ability and make a more informed decision. At the end of the day, the poorly resourced high school still has one student admitted. It is not losing its spot to an affluent high school. It just sends the stronger student to the UCs.

The entire purpose of the SAT was to find the bright kids who didn't have the opportunity to go to Andover, Choate, St. Albans and so on - the usual lame students that glided through Harvard and Yale with gentleman Cs. There really was an attempt in the 80s and 90s to be pretty merit focused. And the SAT was a means to that end.

Obviously, things are different today. Colleges like Berkeley and other universities are going through contortions to dismiss tests as racist. But again. the entire purpose of standardized tests was to find smart kids of every background and get them into the top universities.

I don't know if parents here are just nervous to be honest, but no the SAT is not to normalize the field. We have too many unqualified first gen students with no business going to an elite schools. It is okay for wealthier people to be in better positions and places. That's just life.

If we actually cared about merit, first the college admissions process is entirely too late. Second, we'd look at peer nations with much better rigorous standardized exams. You can get a 750 on the math section of the SAT and be completely unprepared for an engineering major. That's bonkers, but it is how we appease the DEI crowd. The point is there are too many students who shouldn't be at these schools, and that is okay. Hierarchy is not bad.

The UCs have not given up admitting the truly gifted and brilliant students. These kids still get in to many UCs. The UCs have basically swapped the above average wealthy white smart kid/asian grinder for unprepared , average/below average IQ FGLI Hispanic kids. It’s driving faculty nuts because it’s breaking the curve model. They have a bunch swimming at the top, no one in the middle and a huge clump at the bottom. UC is about research not career readiness. It also drives them nuts seeing all these kids in majors whose career goals aren’t even served by that major while there is a Cal state with a program that teaches exactly to that career goal.

The different UC universities are also bizarre about private schools, some are feeders at one and shunned at another. Some have weird results , many have abysmal results. The same oddities play out in public schools. No idea what this is about or looking to achieve but probably aligned with the big socioeconomic class swap.

This doesn’t make sense. UC campuses at the top are majority Asian.

For STEM, rocks for jocks or equivalent for those that can't hack it. It's segregation by intelligence level disguised as equity. Similar to public school tracking. 1/2 the school never sees the other 1/2, two different worlds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DS had a 790 on the math SAT and 750 RW SAT and didn't get in. Only UC he got into was UC Santa Cruz.

Meanwhile he got into Williams, Tufts, Carleton, Wesleyan, WashU and more.

Same SAT score for my son. He did get into a “higher” UC, but not Cal or UCLA.

I really, really doubt the UC AOs at other schools couldn’t distinguish these kids from kids at lower performing, predominantly Hispanic kids just because they didn’t have SAT scores. UC wants to force top stat kids into the lower tiered UCs. The upper and mid tiers need a certain % of hispanicc kids. Requiring or not requiring SATs is not changing this. It will just piss people off more.

The test blind policy is already pissing off most STEM/Econ faculty.

They can still “force top stat kids into the lower tiered UCs” and admit more Hispanic kids to the upper and mid tiers will a test-required policy. Just be transparent with the scores even if you want to admit low-scoring kids to Cal/UCLA! If anything, studying for the SAT/ACT helps those kids to get better prepared for a top college by building a better foundation in the very basic math and language skills.

Given the political makeup of the state, there is no way a policy that results in fewer Hispanic students getting into top UC's will ever be implemented.