Make American Test Optional Again

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Entitled parents sending their kids to SAT prep courses perpetuates inequities and only serves to widen the racial achievement gap. Wealthier students have unfair access to test preparation resources overall, which leads to unearned higher scores. This only heightens unearned white privilege and diminished access to education for BIPOCs.

Sorry the internet has made high quality test prep available to all. Glad to see TO becoming less prevalent. Only valid reason for it was closures in 2020-2021.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Entitled parents sending their kids to SAT prep courses perpetuates inequities and only serves to widen the racial achievement gap. Wealthier students have unfair access to test preparation resources overall, which leads to unearned higher scores. This only heightens unearned white privilege and diminished access to education for BIPOCs.

And yet standardized testing is thought to be less influenced by wealth than high school attended, extracurriculars, jobs/internships, legacy and of course, donations.

As a UC parent I can honestly tell you we can buy our way into any private high school, the most unique ECs, and the most convincing essays. But prep after prep DC cannot get a 1300+ in sat. I genuinely wish every school is test blind so we could have more options.

I hear this a lot. People keep perpetuating the lie that 1500 scores are common and bought by test prep. No. It’s the smart immigrant kids getting 1500.

At a certain minimum, the sat has nothing to do with intelligence but how much effort you want to put into the sat. Our DD went from a 1300 to a 1590, and it was just because she studied for the damn thing.

Imagine, studying for an important exam.

The SATs measures academic aptitude. It's not an IQ test.

[Anonymous]

We analyze admissions and transcript records for students at multiple Ivy-Plus colleges to study the relationship between standardized (SAT/ACT) test scores, high school GPA, and first-year college grades. Standardized test scores predict academic outcomes with a normalized slope four times greater than that from high school GPA, all conditional on students’ race, gender, and socioeconomic status. Standardized test scores also exhibit no calibration bias, as they do not underpredict college performance for students from less advantaged backgrounds. Collectively these results suggest that standardized test scores provide important information to measure applicants’ academic preparation that is not available elsewhere in the application file.

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w33570/w33570.pdf

Could be why more and more top colleges are requiring test scores.

[Anonymous]

Test prep is very cheap compared to paying for extra-curriculars over many years.

So nationally standardized testing is actually not as socio-economically unfair as judging applicants based on what they did outside of school, which is what most colleges do in the US.

I can't believe some of you are still parroting the myth that testing is inequitable.

Stop it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Test prep is very cheap compared to paying for extra-curriculars over many years.

So nationally standardized testing is actually not as socio-economically unfair as judging applicants based on what they did outside of school, which is what most colleges do in the US.

I can't believe some of you are still parroting the myth that testing is inequitable.

Stop it.

+1 My kids used all the free Khan academy videos and one SAT prep book. One kid got 1580 (one and only test), and the other got 1440 (second try, but they also didn't prep as much as DC#1).

MC high achieving kids are the most screwed by TO. They can't afford the expensive, time consuming ECs which require a lot of parental support.

Lower income kids don't need to have the same type of package that MC/UMC/wealthy kids do. It's unfair to expect the same level of EC achievement from MC kids compared to wealthy/umc kids.

[Anonymous]

MC high achieving kids are the most screwed by TO. They can't afford the expensive, time consuming ECs which require a lot of parental support.

This really depends. It is true for some ECs but not others. My kids were never big into sports, they did academic-related school based ECs that I had little involvement in and that didn't start until middle/high school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Entitled parents sending their kids to SAT prep courses perpetuates inequities and only serves to widen the racial achievement gap. Wealthier students have unfair access to test preparation resources overall, which leads to unearned higher scores. This only heightens unearned white privilege and diminished access to education for BIPOCs.

And yet standardized testing is thought to be less influenced by wealth than high school attended, extracurriculars, jobs/internships, legacy and of course, donations.

As a UC parent I can honestly tell you we can buy our way into any private high school, the most unique ECs, and the most convincing essays. But prep after prep DC cannot get a 1300+ in sat. I genuinely wish every school is test blind so we could have more options.

I hear this a lot. People keep perpetuating the lie that 1500 scores are common and bought by test prep. No. It’s the smart immigrant kids getting 1500.

At a certain minimum, the sat has nothing to do with intelligence but how much effort you want to put into the sat. Our DD went from a 1300 to a 1590, and it was just because she studied for the damn thing.

Imagine, studying for an important exam.

The SATs measures academic aptitude. It's not an IQ test.

Studying for a test: legit.

Taking the same test six times because you don’t like the first five scores: lame.

Name me another academic test you get to take infinite times.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Entitled parents sending their kids to SAT prep courses perpetuates inequities and only serves to widen the racial achievement gap. Wealthier students have unfair access to test preparation resources overall, which leads to unearned higher scores. This only heightens unearned white privilege and diminished access to education for BIPOCs.

And yet standardized testing is thought to be less influenced by wealth than high school attended, extracurriculars, jobs/internships, legacy and of course, donations.

As a UC parent I can honestly tell you we can buy our way into any private high school, the most unique ECs, and the most convincing essays. But prep after prep DC cannot get a 1300+ in sat. I genuinely wish every school is test blind so we could have more options.

I hear this a lot. People keep perpetuating the lie that 1500 scores are common and bought by test prep. No. It’s the smart immigrant kids getting 1500.

At a certain minimum, the sat has nothing to do with intelligence but how much effort you want to put into the sat. Our DD went from a 1300 to a 1590, and it was just because she studied for the damn thing.

Imagine, studying for an important exam.

The SATs measures academic aptitude. It's not an IQ test.

Studying for a test: legit.

Taking the same test six times because you don’t like the first five scores: lame.

Name me another academic test you get to take infinite times.

Yeah, agreed. I think you should get two attempts, and no super scoring.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Entitled parents sending their kids to SAT prep courses perpetuates inequities and only serves to widen the racial achievement gap. Wealthier students have unfair access to test preparation resources overall, which leads to unearned higher scores. This only heightens unearned white privilege and diminished access to education for BIPOCs.

And yet standardized testing is thought to be less influenced by wealth than high school attended, extracurriculars, jobs/internships, legacy and of course, donations.

As a UC parent I can honestly tell you we can buy our way into any private high school, the most unique ECs, and the most convincing essays. But prep after prep DC cannot get a 1300+ in sat. I genuinely wish every school is test blind so we could have more options.

I hear this a lot. People keep perpetuating the lie that 1500 scores are common and bought by test prep. No. It’s the smart immigrant kids getting 1500.

At a certain minimum, the sat has nothing to do with intelligence but how much effort you want to put into the sat. Our DD went from a 1300 to a 1590, and it was just because she studied for the damn thing.

Imagine, studying for an important exam.

The SATs measures academic aptitude. It's not an IQ test.

Studying for a test: legit.

Taking the same test six times because you don’t like the first five scores: lame.

Name me another academic test you get to take infinite times.

Sure, but that's not what you stated initially, and that doesn't mean getting rid of SATs.

Also, no matter how much you study or prep, you will hit a ceiling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Entitled parents sending their kids to SAT prep courses perpetuates inequities and only serves to widen the racial achievement gap. Wealthier students have unfair access to test preparation resources overall, which leads to unearned higher scores. This only heightens unearned white privilege and diminished access to education for BIPOCs.

And yet standardized testing is thought to be less influenced by wealth than high school attended, extracurriculars, jobs/internships, legacy and of course, donations.

As a UC parent I can honestly tell you we can buy our way into any private high school, the most unique ECs, and the most convincing essays. But prep after prep DC cannot get a 1300+ in sat. I genuinely wish every school is test blind so we could have more options.

I hear this a lot. People keep perpetuating the lie that 1500 scores are common and bought by test prep. No. It’s the smart immigrant kids getting 1500.

At a certain minimum, the sat has nothing to do with intelligence but how much effort you want to put into the sat. Our DD went from a 1300 to a 1590, and it was just because she studied for the damn thing.

Imagine, studying for an important exam.

The SATs measures academic aptitude. It's not an IQ test.

Standardized tests only matter for about 75 colleges.

Irrelevant for the rest.

TO is fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Entitled parents sending their kids to SAT prep courses perpetuates inequities and only serves to widen the racial achievement gap. Wealthier students have unfair access to test preparation resources overall, which leads to unearned higher scores. This only heightens unearned white privilege and diminished access to education for BIPOCs.

Sorry the internet has made high quality test prep available to all. Glad to see TO becoming less prevalent. Only valid reason for it was closures in 2020-2021.

Not quite sure what you mean by “valid,” but a common reason for being test optional is “we would rather enroll rich kids with mediocre scores than poor or middle class kids with great scores.” Chicago and Bates were TO well before 2020, and they’ll stay TO, because they need the money. And now a whole bunch of similar schools will stay TO for the same reason.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Entitled parents sending their kids to SAT prep courses perpetuates inequities and only serves to widen the racial achievement gap. Wealthier students have unfair access to test preparation resources overall, which leads to unearned higher scores. This only heightens unearned white privilege and diminished access to education for BIPOCs.

And yet standardized testing is thought to be less influenced by wealth than high school attended, extracurriculars, jobs/internships, legacy and of course, donations.

As a UC parent I can honestly tell you we can buy our way into any private high school, the most unique ECs, and the most convincing essays. But prep after prep DC cannot get a 1300+ in sat. I genuinely wish every school is test blind so we could have more options.

I hear this a lot. People keep perpetuating the lie that 1500 scores are common and bought by test prep. No. It’s the smart immigrant kids getting 1500.

At a certain minimum, the sat has nothing to do with intelligence but how much effort you want to put into the sat. Our DD went from a 1300 to a 1590, and it was just because she studied for the damn thing.

Imagine, studying for an important exam.

The SATs measures academic aptitude. It's not an IQ test.

Studying for a test: legit.

Taking the same test six times because you don’t like the first five scores: lame.

Name me another academic test you get to take infinite times.

+1

This is the part that makes standardized testing a big racket.

The College Board benefits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Entitled parents sending their kids to SAT prep courses perpetuates inequities and only serves to widen the racial achievement gap. Wealthier students have unfair access to test preparation resources overall, which leads to unearned higher scores. This only heightens unearned white privilege and diminished access to education for BIPOCs.

And yet standardized testing is thought to be less influenced by wealth than high school attended, extracurriculars, jobs/internships, legacy and of course, donations.

As a UC parent I can honestly tell you we can buy our way into any private high school, the most unique ECs, and the most convincing essays. But prep after prep DC cannot get a 1300+ in sat. I genuinely wish every school is test blind so we could have more options.

I hear this a lot. People keep perpetuating the lie that 1500 scores are common and bought by test prep. No. It’s the smart immigrant kids getting 1500.

At a certain minimum, the sat has nothing to do with intelligence but how much effort you want to put into the sat. Our DD went from a 1300 to a 1590, and it was just because she studied for the damn thing.

Imagine, studying for an important exam.

The SATs measures academic aptitude. It's not an IQ test.

Studying for a test: legit.

Taking the same test six times because you don’t like the first five scores: lame.

Name me another academic test you get to take infinite times.

+1

This is the part that makes standardized testing a big racket.

The College Board benefits.

If you’re poor you can get a fee waiver, but only in 11th and 12th and no more than 2 weekend dates per year. An extremely modest proposal would be to restrict everyone to that same testing schedule: no weekend tests until 11th, and then no more than 2 per year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m glad colleges are moving back toward requiring the testing. With all the ridiculous grade inflation going on, this can be a differentiator. Not a huge fan of the superscore approach because I think that leads to the problem you’ve identified.

I agree with you. But I would prefer state subject tests instead. Also, MCPS just changed their grading policy so some grade inflation could decrease.

Great news, New York State has those.

Ah, Regents exams, what a colossal waste of time those were.

I loved them, they saved my poor ADHD riddled ass. Gets C's all year, hyperfocus with a prep guide right before finals and Bam! 95 on the test, A for final grade and graduated 11th in my class. Also crushed the SAT but went to a regional SUNY. Don't mock the Regents!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MAGA youth should be farming and saving their farms. They should not waste money on college.

K-12 schooling should be made into K-14 schools for kids who do not go to college.

Ugh, no. Whatever those kids failed to do in the first 12 grades, they are not going to accomplish in 13 and 14.

If anything, some of these kids need to be let out a lot sooner so they can start working, since that is where they are going to end up anyways.

Vocational training you dim soul......sort of like BOCEs in New York.