So if it can all be faked, how should college admissions work?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

yes, who cares? when an institution plays such a huge role in society it should be forced to play by the rules that are beneficial to it. of columbia pictures wanted to play porn in the movies the feds would be involved. except that this is many times more destructive.

no, it's not the indignity of UMD that is the problem - it's the rat race created by the possibility of joining the harvard country club through merit. this sets the crazy race that starts in K for kids to get one of those slots where they can "make connections" to join the rich on wall street. this is all the more destructive because the rate race is not based on actual merit but rather a nebulous combination of achievements that keeps the opportunity dangling.

my solution would be to strip the title "university" and "college and even "school" - and obviously all federal grants of any kind - from every college which bases admission on anything else but grades and entrance exams. not sats and similar crap should be allowed. then those country clubs can admit whom they want for the reason they want to create whatever member body they want.

It's only a rat race because you decided it is.

You haven't answered the question if private employers should be required to assign jobs by test scores.

no I didn’t decide that - my kids will go to college abroad. Not in a million years would i allow them through this insanity. nevertheless the system is extremely destructive for American society. It doesn’t really matter whose fault is that - just what can be done about it. These so called elite instructions of learning - in reality hedge funds and country clubs with a smidgen of scholarship - needs to be drastically reformed and quickly.

employers should not be required to hire by test scores, except for maybe government. There are jobs that need to be done. Universities merely issue certificates and the way the system is set now these certificates are misleading.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How has it become so difficult to get into selective schools in the last 25 years? I'm not talking about Yale and Harvard but places like UVA. According to my school most students need a 1440 SAT to get in. Did kids need that kind of score years ago?

In 1985 there were 11 million kids in college.
In 2017 there are 19 million kids in college.

In 1985 there were 10,800 kids at Yale for example.
In 2000 there were 11,000 kids at Yale.
In 2017 there are 12,000 kids at Yale.

those extra 8 million are bottom feeders - they are not going to yale.

PP--No human being is a bottom feeder, except probably the one you see when you look in a mirror.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think there has to be other pathways for success. No need for amassing degrees that you will not use. College education should be for specific career paths and teaching should be amongst the highest paid profession and should take the academically strongest students.

That’s why the US needs to look at the German or Finnish schooling systems.
The US needs good quality technical schools where students learn in demand trades with guaranteed job placement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think there has to be other pathways for success. No need for amassing degrees that you will not use. College education should be for specific career paths and teaching should be amongst the highest paid profession and should take the academically strongest students.

That’s why the US needs to look at the German or Finnish schooling systems.
The US needs good quality technical schools where students learn in demand trades with guaranteed job placement.

The US economy is too different. There are no "guaranteed jobs" here.

[Anonymous]

For starters fix the SAT. They took a sharp instrument and made it *duller* rather than *sharper* so colleges can't differentiate top students. The kids with the highest verbal ability are indistinguishable from other kids who prep because they dumbed down the verbal portion. That would be a start.

[Anonymous]

Bring back vocational education. There are able students who are not interested in college, and trade jobs without enough candidates.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For starters fix the SAT. They took a sharp instrument and made it *duller* rather than *sharper* so colleges can't differentiate top students. The kids with the highest verbal ability are indistinguishable from other kids who prep because they dumbed down the verbal portion. That would be a start.

How does it compare to the SAT in the 90's? I took it and got a 1260 but didn't do prep, study, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bring back vocational education. There are able students who are not interested in college, and trade jobs without enough candidates.

Vocational educations never went away.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bring back vocational education. There are able students who are not interested in college, and trade jobs without enough candidates.

So .... you do know there is tons of vocational education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It's only a rat race because you decided it is.

You haven't answered the question if private employers should be required to assign jobs by test scores.

no I didn’t decide that - my kids will go to college abroad. Not in a million years would i allow them through this insanity. nevertheless the system is extremely destructive for American society. It doesn’t really matter whose fault is that - just what can be done about it. These so called elite instructions of learning - in reality hedge funds and country clubs with a smidgen of scholarship - needs to be drastically reformed and quickly.

employers should not be required to hire by test scores, except for maybe government. There are jobs that need to be done. Universities merely issue certificates and the way the system is set now these certificates are misleading.

Now I know you are a troll.

"I didn't decide it was a rat race" even though I am calling it that

"employers should not be required to hire by test scores, but universities should, because universities are how people "make connections" to join the rich on wall street" Dude then just cut out the middleman and make wall street give out those jobs based on scores. But no, that would be stupid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It's only a rat race because you decided it is.

You haven't answered the question if private employers should be required to assign jobs by test scores.

no I didn’t decide that - my kids will go to college abroad. Not in a million years would i allow them through this insanity. nevertheless the system is extremely destructive for American society. It doesn’t really matter whose fault is that - just what can be done about it. These so called elite instructions of learning - in reality hedge funds and country clubs with a smidgen of scholarship - needs to be drastically reformed and quickly.

employers should not be required to hire by test scores, except for maybe government. There are jobs that need to be done. Universities merely issue certificates and the way the system is set now these certificates are misleading.

Now I know you are a troll.

"I didn't decide it was a rat race" even though I am calling it that

"employers should not be required to hire by test scores, but universities should, because universities are how people "make connections" to join the rich on wall street" Dude then just cut out the middleman and make wall street give out those jobs based on scores. But no, that would be stupid.

you are dumb. what was your SAT again?

wall street is mostly connections with a few smart kids funneled through elite colleges.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So, a lot of you want to eliminate quantifiers?

Not sure how mixing a pool of students could work that way. The top tier would be frustrated and pulled down, the lower tier would be frustrated and not able to keep up.

Students should be measured with what they can do without being overly prepped.

Entrance exams should go back to being one and done. When did all of this change for the worse?

I have friends that tell me that they would not (supposedly, not sure if they are just being humble, could be) be admitted to their top tier university these days, because there are too many applicants. When there are too many (best of the best) students, and not enough slots, therein lies one of the many problems.

I thought I read that many college's are struggling for students? I guess those are just the non-top-tier schools? What I don't understand is all the foreign students we allow in. For example, why would we ever allow Chinese students to come to America, use our university, then go home? It makes absolutely no sense unless there are empty slots that don't have domestic applicants. China has 4 times our population, they need to build 4 times as many colleges instead of depending on America for everything. Same goes for European students. Why don't they have a bigger system?

+1

I agree. The greatest number of international students in the US come from China. The kind of cheating that is scandalous here is rampant and accepted there. Test scores inflated, made-up activities, consultant-written essays. Many of these kids get to US universities and contribute nothing to the classroom discussions or environment--not to mention that many of them are miserable and depressed because they have not developed the skills necessary to do college-level writing and analysis and because integrating into a culture half a world away from home is hard. Colleges want these students because they are full pay, but they are part of what is driving acceptance rates into the single digits. (I'm sure there are exceptions to this sweeping generalization...but I'm hearing about it a lot from the college students I know.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It's only a rat race because you decided it is.

You haven't answered the question if private employers should be required to assign jobs by test scores.

no I didn’t decide that - my kids will go to college abroad. Not in a million years would i allow them through this insanity. nevertheless the system is extremely destructive for American society. It doesn’t really matter whose fault is that - just what can be done about it. These so called elite instructions of learning - in reality hedge funds and country clubs with a smidgen of scholarship - needs to be drastically reformed and quickly.

employers should not be required to hire by test scores, except for maybe government. There are jobs that need to be done. Universities merely issue certificates and the way the system is set now these certificates are misleading.

Now I know you are a troll.

"I didn't decide it was a rat race" even though I am calling it that

"employers should not be required to hire by test scores, but universities should, because universities are how people "make connections" to join the rich on wall street" Dude then just cut out the middleman and make wall street give out those jobs based on scores. But no, that would be stupid.

you are dumb. what was your SAT again?

wall street is mostly connections with a few smart kids funneled through elite colleges.

Lol. You can insult me all you want, it means nothing. I'll stick to the discussion of the points.

Assuming what you say about wall street is true (and it isn't) then answer my question, why not just cut out the middleman and give out those jobs based on scores?

(Since you won't answer, I will. It's because it would be a disastrous failure for any company that did that.)

[Anonymous]

No college athletics except club sports to encourage healthy habits. Zero. The American cult of the athlete is undercutting academics. What other country has athletics as part of secondary education? It now reaches into high school and even middle school admissions. And most of the sports favor and are played by rich kids going to expensive private schools.

[Anonymous]

public schools should have very transparent standards, principally grades and test scores.
privates can basically take anyone they want, so long as they don't discriminate on the basis of race, sex, national origin etc.