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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I”m all in favor of those who don’t test well deciding not to take the SAT or ACT. [b]But I think colleges should require th3 scores for any test taken.[/b] I think Georgetown has it right - require all scores. That still leaves the decision with the student and his/her parent. But also allows the colleges to have the most complete information available to make decisions.[/quote]

But that works against social engineering the class, which is what the schools want.  They want URMs and first generations AND the high test scores that can be reported to USNWR. [/b] Viola! [b]that is the system we have but no one wants to admit it.[/quote]

What is this, Twelfth Night?   Why do people care so much about whether colleges do this?   In GPAs, millions of kids get retakes/corrections in their regular classes.  Are they “hiding” things?  It’s just a fact that SAT/ACT are somewhat correlated to first year college grades (and moreso to HHI) but they have very weak correlation to overall college performance. Which makes sense, they are essentially a “preparedness” test, not aptitude or IQ.   If they were really that accurate,  colleges would have every incentive to rent in them.  I mean who wouldn’t want to use something so predictive?   All this conspiracy nonsense about social engineering is for the tin foil hat crowd.  [/quote]

They DO want to use them. The threat of litigation and the distorted interests of political actors like Janet Napolitano are WHY they don’t use them.[/quote]

It’s amazing how you can divine what admissions offices really want. What a gift you have. [/quote]

Well, we do know what the faculty who were asked to research standardized testings effectiveness in the UC system wanted; they recommended keeping standardized testing because it was the single best predictor of college success across all income and racial groups.  Better than GPA.  Test scores predicted equally well across SES groups as well.  In other words, a 1300 for a poor kid predicts as well as a 1300 from an UMC kid.  A better predictor is obviously standardized test scores along with grades.

Janet Napolitano eliminated standardized testing against the recommendation of the task force her organization commissioned to look into it.  While nobody can read minds, this looks much more like someone acting in a political manner vs following the data.
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Your summaries severely distort the report. They recommended keeping scores because the admissions office was renorming scores by cohort. It wasn’t using a single yardstick as an arbitrary cutoff.  So, regarding your utopian ideal of everyone scoring at or higher than what your kid scored getting admitted that’s not what the study says should happen.

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No, my summary is accurate.  I have no idea where the strawman argument you put up came from.  I'm not saying there should be some threshold that's set at "my kids" score.  What I actually said was:  "A better predictor is obviously standardized test scores along with grades.".  There's one side that wants to throw out data points that have consistently been shown to predict some level of success in college; the other side is simply arguing that all predictive data should be used.

From the report: "Analyses of the relationship between standardized tests and college success show that standardized tests add value to the prediction of college outcomes beyond HSGPA alone."

I think table 6 illustrates this the best:  https://www.ucop.edu/institutional-research-academic-planning/_files/sat-act-study-report.pdf

For kids in the top 4.23-4.61 bucket (I.e. excellent HS grades) the 4 year graduation rate is 57% in the lowest SAT band and 83% in the highest SAT band.  And this doesn't even take into account the majors the kids are in.  Why on earth would anybody who honestly was trying to assess kids for college readiness throw out standardized test scores?

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The report you cited (which is just a summary of the actual report that I read) doesn’t even agree with you.

It just says it adds value. HSGPA is a better predictor of first year retention, graduation rate and graduation GPA. It is equal to test scores for first year GPA.

The main takeaway is that they are moderate predictors of GPA and weak predictors of student retention and graduation.  So it’s better but it’s like saying you are the best C student in your class.

The other point is that the report is aimed at using standardized test scores not for admissions but primarily to identify students who may need academic support.

Suffice to say this thread is only about people wanting a system they think will benefit their kids in college admissions so it’s disingenuous to use this report to support those assertions. [/quote]

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