UCs are considering reinstating SAT and ACT tests for admission

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

My kid is at UCLA and surprised by how few Black students there are. Meanwhile, being on campus feels like you are in Asia.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Wrong, California voters passed prop 209 in 1996 which banned affirmative action in UC admissions and is directly responsible for reducing the numbers of blacks and hispanics at Cal and UCLA. Right now the policy that is impacting is "early local context" which identifies the top 9% from every high school in the state. Those students disproportionately get into Cal and UCLA, it is not an unreasonable policy.

[Anonymous]

What is completely messed up is that in years past UC's would target the brightest students in the poorest neighborhoods to provide tutoring and outreach. Schools in poor areas also would cluster together the highest performing students so they were able to be challenged.

This changed a few years back and UC's and other grant programs changed to "open-access" programs where anyone who wanted to attend could. The shift became everyone should go to college so it isn't fair if only the brightest, hardest working, highest performing students at a poor school get singled out to get something that would help them prepare for a top UC. Everyone should have access to it. So the smartest kids get pushed aside.

Then at the same time schools started discontinuing honors classes and created "honors for all" classes. This really affects poor smart kids because now they are with the loser kids who don't even want to be in school and constantly disrupt class. They are often used as in class peer helpers for the lowest kids.

The worse offender is UC San Diego. UCSD created a high school called "The Preuss School UC San Diego" which is on the campus of UC San Diego designed to take low income students and help them prepare for rigorous colleges. Their math program is awful. They don't offer honors math classes. They don't even offer AP calculus - not even AB. Only a calculus class that isn't classified by the UC's as an honors level class. None of their math classes are. And the school starts in 6th grade. After the third year of being educated there only 13% of 8th graders can score advanced on the Smarter Balanced Test (the standardized test all CA public school students take). In 11th grade it is only 25%.

[Anonymous]

Leave it to California to totally screw up what was once a crown jewel in education.

[Anonymous]

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.

I'm pretty sure it is more than 100-150. More like 800ish

All 1600 scores, perhaps. One and done 1600 scores? Less than 150 each year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

My kid is at UCLA and surprised by how few Black students there are. Meanwhile, being on campus feels like you are in Asia.

The Black population of California high school students is only 5%. California's low scores in high school are from the increased number of Hispanic students.

[Anonymous]

Re all the hand wringing over tests being required: if your kid isn’t a good test taker, they will just drop down a notch or 2 in the level of colleges they get in; it doesn’t mean they won’t get to attend college at all.

[Anonymous]

Are they expecting enrollment numbers to rise to reinstate requirement of submitting test scores?

[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.

+1

[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.

I'm pretty sure it is more than 100-150. More like 800ish

All 1600 scores, perhaps. One and done 1600 scores? Less than 150 each year.

Do you have a cite for that?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I’d say any UCs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is completely messed up is that in years past UC's would target the brightest students in the poorest neighborhoods to provide tutoring and outreach. Schools in poor areas also would cluster together the highest performing students so they were able to be challenged.

This changed a few years back and UC's and other grant programs changed to "open-access" programs where anyone who wanted to attend could. The shift became everyone should go to college so it isn't fair if only the brightest, hardest working, highest performing students at a poor school get singled out to get something that would help them prepare for a top UC. Everyone should have access to it. So the smartest kids get pushed aside.

Then at the same time schools started discontinuing honors classes and created "honors for all" classes. This really affects poor smart kids because now they are with the loser kids who don't even want to be in school and constantly disrupt class. They are often used as in class peer helpers for the lowest kids.

The worse offender is UC San Diego. UCSD created a high school called "The Preuss School UC San Diego" which is on the campus of UC San Diego designed to take low income students and help them prepare for rigorous colleges. Their math program is awful. They don't offer honors math classes. They don't even offer AP calculus - not even AB. Only a calculus class that isn't classified by the UC's as an honors level class. None of their math classes are. And the school starts in 6th grade. After the third year of being educated there only 13% of 8th graders can score advanced on the Smarter Balanced Test (the standardized test all CA public school students take). In 11th grade it is only 25%.

My white low income son was not accepted into a college readiness program for FGLI students despite meeting the criteria. A Hispanic program manager took his time to think about it and decided against it. Some bullshit about lack of demonstrated interest was given.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I'm pretty sure it is more than 100-150. More like 800ish

All 1600 scores, perhaps. One and done 1600 scores? Less than 150 each year.

Do you have a cite for that?

Here’s a cite to the most recent report since the exact count is never disclosed as a raw number …

https://reports.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/2025-total-group-sat-suite-of-assessments-annual-report%20ADA-v0.2_0.pdf

Approx. 2M administrations …

The standard used to be one 1600 every 3,000 to 4,000 tests, and one one-and-done 1600 every 15,000 - 20,000 tests.

ACT used to be (at least in 2024) more like ~ 3,400 composite scores of 36 across 1,350,000 tests (per congratulations letter sent), with ~ 1,000 - 1,250 one-and-done tests each year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is completely messed up is that in years past UC's would target the brightest students in the poorest neighborhoods to provide tutoring and outreach. Schools in poor areas also would cluster together the highest performing students so they were able to be challenged.

This changed a few years back and UC's and other grant programs changed to "open-access" programs where anyone who wanted to attend could. The shift became everyone should go to college so it isn't fair if only the brightest, hardest working, highest performing students at a poor school get singled out to get something that would help them prepare for a top UC. Everyone should have access to it. So the smartest kids get pushed aside.

Then at the same time schools started discontinuing honors classes and created "honors for all" classes. This really affects poor smart kids because now they are with the loser kids who don't even want to be in school and constantly disrupt class. They are often used as in class peer helpers for the lowest kids.

The worse offender is UC San Diego. UCSD created a high school called "The Preuss School UC San Diego" which is on the campus of UC San Diego designed to take low income students and help them prepare for rigorous colleges. Their math program is awful. They don't offer honors math classes. They don't even offer AP calculus - not even AB. Only a calculus class that isn't classified by the UC's as an honors level class. None of their math classes are. And the school starts in 6th grade. After the third year of being educated there only 13% of 8th graders can score advanced on the Smarter Balanced Test (the standardized test all CA public school students take). In 11th grade it is only 25%.

My white low income son was not accepted into a college readiness program for FGLI students despite meeting the criteria. A Hispanic program manager took his time to think about it and decided against it. Some bullshit about lack of demonstrated interest was given.

What does this have to do with anything. Is he a first gen student? That is hard to even believe a white low income first gen parent is posting from California. The previous post was how awful CA education is for bright students in the lowest ranked schools, which almost all of them are composed of low socio-economic minority students.

[Anonymous]

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.

+1