Reply to University System of Maryland moves toward removing SAT/ACT requirement

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]So, when applying to UMD a candidate can send the SAT score (if that's good enough) or not. The acceptance criteria don't take into consideration that score at all, right? If that's the case, how do they decide who's academically fit? High School grades? [/quote]

Maybe middle school.

They know what they need to see and have realized that kids who prep for a 4 hour test and do well are not the kids who do well over the course of 4 years.  Add in a good essay and extra curriculars and suddenly the standardized tests don't mean much.

Look up information about Wake Forest and why they don't use it.  [/quote]

Please, they have known the whole time that SAT does not measure anything except how much families can pay for prep courses and therefore tuition. You all get that college admissions are actually not a meritocracy?[/quote]

There is a ton research out there showing that SAT scores predict college success; most times better than HS grades.  When the UC system looked into it they found that standardized tests were the single best predictor of college performance.  When you add parental education as a variable, HHI becomes significantly less predictive of standardized test scores.  In other words, HHI is an inexact proxy for parental education.  Free high quality prep is easily available.  Asians prep the most, but both Hispanics and AA prep more than whites do, and there are many studies that show that on average prepping only raises scores 30-60 points.

Bottom line, standardized tests work as intended; they act as a relatively unbiased tool to measure college readiness. They’re almost certainly the most objective measurement currently used for college admissions.  Unfortunately, that does not allow colleges to balance the demographics of their classes as they wish, thus they’re being phased out.[/quote]
Source? And please don't cite the college board or test prep organizations.

I found these:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nickmorrison/2020/01/29/its-gpas-not-standardized-tests-that-predict-college-success/
"Grade point averages are a much better predictor of success at college than standardized tests, according to new research."

https://news.uchicago.edu/story/test-scores-dont-stack-gpas-predicting-college-success
"Students’ high-school grade point averages are five times stronger than their ACT scores at predicting college graduation, according to a new study from the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research."
[/quote]

Feel free to read the UC report.  This was a massive data set, covering all types of students/schools in the UC system.

https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/underreview/sttf-report.pdf

Here's a study by University of Minnesota researchers (again, a huge data set, 150K students) showing that the SAT helped in predicting college success and wasn't substantially effected by SES

https://experts.umn.edu/en/publications/the-role-of-socioeconomic-status-in-sat-grade-relationships-and-i

Here's another from the same researchers showing that the vast majority of the relationship between college performance and test scores was unrelated to SES.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19210051/

Here's a study that shows that test prep by different groups/ses levels.  One of the key findings:
"Black non-Hispanic students are more likely to participate in test prep, and there are also significant interaction effects of race and grade level on prep, with black 11th graders having the highest predicted probability of prep."

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1573-7861.2012.01326.x

Grades are important obviously, but the data is clear that SAT/ACT scores are also important in determining who succeeds in college.  MIT recently added test requirements back in because they were unable to select a class that would do as well at MIT without them.

[/quote]

And despite what you say, the UCs have completely eliminated SAT/ACT tests from the application process. If they were such good indicators, why would they do that? [/quote]

Well, all the professors/researchers involved in the study recommended NOT eliminating the SAT/ACT tests for admissions, so my assumption is that the regents were politically motivated.  [/quote]

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