Stanford - test required announcement

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The elephant in the room that nobody wants to acknowledge is paying for test prep. Affluent families who pay big money for someone to help their kids with test prep give their kids a huge advantage in this test required world. Until someone figures out how to normalize for that, the whole system is still going to be messed up - test optional, test required, or whatever else! Maybe scores should be reduced by 0.1 point for every dollar you pay for test prep (pay $1000 your score gets reduced 100 points) and require a legally binding agreement that if you lie about your costs you forfeit your acceptance

Same with getting extra time. Head of learning specialty center reports 1/3 of the private school has extra time for various reasons yet psychologists will tell you much less than 1/3 of students have true disabilities requiring extra time. Keep in mind said school tests students to get accepted and one must have 85th%ile or above on WISC /ssat unless one is a teacher’s kid or a legacy and the vast majority secure the necessary score years before the parents secure them extra time on the SAT or ACT. No way 1/3 of this population has true learning disabilities needing extra time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The elephant in the room that nobody wants to acknowledge is paying for test prep. Affluent families who pay big money for someone to help their kids with test prep give their kids a huge advantage in this test required world. Until someone figures out how to normalize for that, the whole system is still going to be messed up - test optional, test required, or whatever else! Maybe scores should be reduced by 0.1 point for every dollar you pay for test prep (pay $1000 your score gets reduced 100 points) and require a legally binding agreement that if you lie about your costs you forfeit your acceptance

Why can’t they add questions to their application process such as: did you use an SAT/ACT tutor? Some of these problems are not so difficult to solve.

Why? If asked:
-to know if family can afford test prep/tutoring (presuming tutoring/test prep) leads to better scores.
-you think they will honestly answer anyways?

The interesting thing is that scores predict success pretty much the same across all racial and income groups. If you can get the score (no matter how) it corresponds to success in college. The prep argument is also much less relevant than it used to be; almost everyone has the ability to prep, and free prep (khan academy) is quite good. Who actually preps is also somewhat surprising; Asians prep the most (not surprising), followed by blacks, then Hispanics and lastly whites. This holds for all types of prep. Eliminating all prep wouldn’t “eliminate” gaps, and might make them worse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The elephant in the room that nobody wants to acknowledge is paying for test prep. Affluent families who pay big money for someone to help their kids with test prep give their kids a huge advantage in this test required world. Until someone figures out how to normalize for that, the whole system is still going to be messed up - test optional, test required, or whatever else! Maybe scores should be reduced by 0.1 point for every dollar you pay for test prep (pay $1000 your score gets reduced 100 points) and require a legally binding agreement that if you lie about your costs you forfeit your acceptance

No different than getting a tutor to help boost grades; college counselor to help write college essays; private coaches to help become a D1 athlete.

💯
All are signs of privilege and all are accepted by colleges….

And there is plenty of free quality prep available for SATs, unlike all the other stuff rich people pay for. I am glad many colleges have regained their sanity and are requiring tests again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Another one bites the dust.

+1. told you. All of the schools are caving. one by one

They look weak if they don’t. Lower standards

+1 bingo

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The elephant in the room that nobody wants to acknowledge is paying for test prep. Affluent families who pay big money for someone to help their kids with test prep give their kids a huge advantage in this test required world. Until someone figures out how to normalize for that, the whole system is still going to be messed up - test optional, test required, or whatever else! Maybe scores should be reduced by 0.1 point for every dollar you pay for test prep (pay $1000 your score gets reduced 100 points) and require a legally binding agreement that if you lie about your costs you forfeit your acceptance

Same with getting extra time. Head of learning specialty center reports 1/3 of the private school has extra time for various reasons yet psychologists will tell you much less than 1/3 of students have true disabilities requiring extra time. Keep in mind said school tests students to get accepted and one must have 85th%ile or above on WISC /ssat unless one is a teacher’s kid or a legacy and the vast majority secure the necessary score years before the parents secure them extra time on the SAT or ACT. No way 1/3 of this population has true learning disabilities needing extra time.

Both my kids have ADHD (it runs strongly in our family) and were diagnosed in elementary school. They attend top private schools. Their IQs at age 4 were exceptionally high (145+) which definitely helps with Pre-k and kindergarten admission into these schools. My understanding is that ADHD doesn’t show up on these early IQ test because the tests for younger kids doesn’t accurately test processing speed. Once they re-take the IQ test in 2nd or 3rd grade, the huge processing speed discrepancy appears and they are diagnosed with ADHD. IQ numbers drop at this point because the processing speed is really low. I have been through this a lot. Many, many ADHD kids are very smart. I don’t think 1/3 of the population has ADHD, but I am just explaining how a high IQ test can get you into a top school at a young age and can’t really screen out ADHD. Sometimes behavior linked to ADHD is easy to see at a young age (extreme inability to sit still or class disruption), but these things can show up a bit later (2nd grade) when expectations for academic performance and attention shift.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Overdue. The “testing is dead!” people deserve all the mockery headed their way.

Dartmouth, the University of Texas, Stanford, and others are finally starting to accept reality. Georgetown and - good lord - Florida schools had it right all along.

We now need the UCs to join the party.

The UCs will not likely "join the party".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The UCs will remain test optional as long as they hold the line at 20% max OOS. It is the left’s compromise between equity and taxes.

There is no perfect. But the advantage they hold is sheer numbers and the likelihood of taking the cream off the top, regardless of the mextrix of measurement.

Cal and UCLA are so desirable, I think they will be able to do this for a long time. Not sure it’s correct, but it definitely is what it is.

I say this as a moderate lefty originally from the Bay Area. And before you have a pissing contest, ask yourself which state’s taxes are powering the country. If only because you need a rational lens before attacking.

I would like to see the return of testing. But I’m pretty sure their bet to ignore it won’t harm their standing/research/rankings. No matter how much it pisses off the East Coast (as defined by either DC to Boston, or Florida to Maine, per the recent argument on a different thread.)

They have no need to look at test scores. They get so many excellent applications both In-STate and OOS they can easily maintain their levels.
And why should they accept more than 20% OOS? They are state schools, funded by state taxes, so they can choose to limit OOS. However, many states allow more OOS, as it's a huge money maker---50K for tuition vs 20K. That extra 30K helps fund the low in-state price tag

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The elephant in the room that nobody wants to acknowledge is paying for test prep. Affluent families who pay big money for someone to help their kids with test prep give their kids a huge advantage in this test required world. Until someone figures out how to normalize for that, the whole system is still going to be messed up - test optional, test required, or whatever else! Maybe scores should be reduced by 0.1 point for every dollar you pay for test prep (pay $1000 your score gets reduced 100 points) and require a legally binding agreement that if you lie about your costs you forfeit your acceptance

Same with getting extra time. Head of learning specialty center reports 1/3 of the private school has extra time for various reasons yet psychologists will tell you much less than 1/3 of students have true disabilities requiring extra time. Keep in mind said school tests students to get accepted and one must have 85th%ile or above on WISC /ssat unless one is a teacher’s kid or a legacy and the vast majority secure the necessary score years before the parents secure them extra time on the SAT or ACT. No way 1/3 of this population has true learning disabilities needing extra time.

Both my kids have ADHD (it runs strongly in our family) and were diagnosed in elementary school. They attend top private schools. Their IQs at age 4 were exceptionally high (145+) which definitely helps with Pre-k and kindergarten admission into these schools. My understanding is that ADHD doesn’t show up on these early IQ test because the tests for younger kids doesn’t accurately test processing speed. Once they re-take the IQ test in 2nd or 3rd grade, the huge processing speed discrepancy appears and they are diagnosed with ADHD. IQ numbers drop at this point because the processing speed is really low. I have been through this a lot. Many, many ADHD kids are very smart. I don’t think 1/3 of the population has ADHD, but I am just explaining how a high IQ test can get you into a top school at a young age and can’t really screen out ADHD. Sometimes behavior linked to ADHD is easy to see at a young age (extreme inability to sit still or class disruption), but these things can show up a bit later (2nd grade) when expectations for academic performance and attention shift.

I believe your kids have ADHD. My kids do too (though they are at a public school). The issue is that getting the diagnosis can cost thousands of dollars (I believe it was about $3500 for the neuropsych testing), especially if it's mainly inattentive ADHD. Schools are less likely to pick up on this form of ADHD in elementary school and sometimes they don't pick it up at all because the kids are not disruptive. They just don't perform as well as they should. Furthermore, it's more common in girls. So, less affluent kids with ADHD--and girls with ADHD in particular--are going to be much, much less likely to get accommodations on test.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The elephant in the room that nobody wants to acknowledge is paying for test prep. Affluent families who pay big money for someone to help their kids with test prep give their kids a huge advantage in this test required world. Until someone figures out how to normalize for that, the whole system is still going to be messed up - test optional, test required, or whatever else! Maybe scores should be reduced by 0.1 point for every dollar you pay for test prep (pay $1000 your score gets reduced 100 points) and require a legally binding agreement that if you lie about your costs you forfeit your acceptance

Why can’t they add questions to their application process such as: did you use an SAT/ACT tutor? Some of these problems are not so difficult to solve.

Why? If asked:
-to know if family can afford test prep/tutoring (presuming tutoring/test prep) leads to better scores.
-you think they will honestly answer anyways?

The interesting thing is that scores predict success pretty much the same across all racial and income groups. If you can get the score (no matter how) it corresponds to success in college. The prep argument is also much less relevant than it used to be; almost everyone has the ability to prep, and free prep (khan academy) is quite good. Who actually preps is also somewhat surprising; Asians prep the most (not surprising), followed by blacks, then Hispanics and lastly whites. This holds for all types of prep. Eliminating all prep wouldn’t “eliminate” gaps, and might make them worse.

Can you share where you found this data?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The elephant in the room that nobody wants to acknowledge is paying for test prep. Affluent families who pay big money for someone to help their kids with test prep give their kids a huge advantage in this test required world. Until someone figures out how to normalize for that, the whole system is still going to be messed up - test optional, test required, or whatever else! Maybe scores should be reduced by 0.1 point for every dollar you pay for test prep (pay $1000 your score gets reduced 100 points) and require a legally binding agreement that if you lie about your costs you forfeit your acceptance

Same with getting extra time. Head of learning specialty center reports 1/3 of the private school has extra time for various reasons yet psychologists will tell you much less than 1/3 of students have true disabilities requiring extra time. Keep in mind said school tests students to get accepted and one must have 85th%ile or above on WISC /ssat unless one is a teacher’s kid or a legacy and the vast majority secure the necessary score years before the parents secure them extra time on the SAT or ACT. No way 1/3 of this population has true learning disabilities needing extra time.

The accommodations game is a big racket, again gamed by parents with financial resources.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The elephant in the room that nobody wants to acknowledge is paying for test prep. Affluent families who pay big money for someone to help their kids with test prep give their kids a huge advantage in this test required world. Until someone figures out how to normalize for that, the whole system is still going to be messed up - test optional, test required, or whatever else! Maybe scores should be reduced by 0.1 point for every dollar you pay for test prep (pay $1000 your score gets reduced 100 points) and require a legally binding agreement that if you lie about your costs you forfeit your acceptance

Why can’t they add questions to their application process such as: did you use an SAT/ACT tutor? Some of these problems are not so difficult to solve.

Why? If asked:
-to know if family can afford test prep/tutoring (presuming tutoring/test prep) leads to better scores.
-you think they will honestly answer anyways?

The interesting thing is that scores predict success pretty much the same across all racial and income groups. If you can get the score (no matter how) it corresponds to success in college. The prep argument is also much less relevant than it used to be; almost everyone has the ability to prep, and free prep (khan academy) is quite good. Who actually preps is also somewhat surprising; Asians prep the most (not surprising), followed by blacks, then Hispanics and lastly whites. This holds for all types of prep. Eliminating all prep wouldn’t “eliminate” gaps, and might make them worse.

Can you share where you found this data?

dp.. here's an article about how SAT and GPA correlate, and how it predicts college success. Note; the link to the charts may have lost the x/y access labels.


https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/07/briefing/the-misguided-war-on-the-sat.html

Likewise, a faculty committee at the University of California system — led by Dr. Henry Sánchez, a pathologist, and Eddie Comeaux, a professor of education — concluded in 2020 that test scores were better than high school grades at predicting student success in the system’s nine colleges, where more than 230,000 undergraduates are enrolled. The relative advantage of test scores has grown over time, the committee found.

Test scores have vastly more predictive power than is commonly understood in the popular debate,” said John Friedman, an economics professor at Brown and one of the authors of the Ivy Plus admissions study.

And regarding test prep:

Consider that other measures of learning — like the NAEP, a test that elementary and middle school students take nationwide — show similarly large racial and economic gaps. The federal government describes the NAEP as “the nation’s report card,” while education researchers consider it a rigorous measure of K-12 learning. And even though students do not take NAEP test prep classes, its demographic gaps look remarkably similar to those of the ACT and SAT.

And regarding grade inflation:

The relationship between test scores and college grades, by contrast, was strong. Students who did not submit a test score tended to struggle as much as those who had lower scores:

WRT race:

Within every racial group, students with higher scores do better in college. The same is true among poor students and among richer students:

[img]https://static01.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2024-01-04-mag-sat-scores/9a519982-994c-4242-88e6-05c7d9157d05/_assets/outcomes-college-hs-600.png[img]

In those charts, look at the data for those missing test scores. That is very telling.

[MIT] But after officials there studied the previous 15 years of admissions records, they found that students who had been accepted despite lower test scores were more likely to struggle or drop out.

Without test scores, Schmill explained, admissions officers were left with two unappealing options. They would have to guess which students were likely to do well at M.I.T. — and almost certainly guess wrong sometimes, rejecting qualified applicants while admitting weaker ones. Or M.I.T. would need to reject more students from less advantaged high schools and admit more from the private schools and advantaged public schools that have a strong record of producing well-qualified students.

“Once we brought the test requirement back, we admitted the most diverse class that we ever had in our history,” Schmill told me. “Having test scores was helpful.”

[Anonymous]

about time. End of this stupid adventure in higher ed in education in the name of DEi

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The UCs will remain test optional as long as they hold the line at 20% max OOS. It is the left’s compromise between equity and taxes.

There is no perfect. But the advantage they hold is sheer numbers and the likelihood of taking the cream off the top, regardless of the mextrix of measurement.

Cal and UCLA are so desirable, I think they will be able to do this for a long time. Not sure it’s correct, but it definitely is what it is.

I say this as a moderate lefty originally from the Bay Area. And before you have a pissing contest, ask yourself which state’s taxes are powering the country. If only because you need a rational lens before attacking.

I would like to see the return of testing. But I’m pretty sure their bet to ignore it won’t harm their standing/research/rankings. No matter how much it pisses off the East Coast (as defined by either DC to Boston, or Florida to Maine, per the recent argument on a different thread.)

Not California. CA is ranked 14 in taxes paid per capita (right behind Nebraska). CA has a big total GDP because it has a large population and real estate values are a significant factor in the calculation. In 2023, DC, NY, MA, and WA had a higher GDP per capita. North Dakota, for heaven’s sake, had a higher GDP per capita in 2022, and is close in 2023. Alaska isn’t too far behind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Another one bites the dust.

'

thank god.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Harvey Mudd, Pomona, CalPoly as well

This is not true. None of the Claremont Colleges require test scores.