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]

SAT/ACT are not an unbiased tool. Free prep tools are not the same as those that cost $100+/hour (some way more than that).  And average prepping raises scores much more than 30-60 points, unless you are already at a 1500.  My own kid did 4 hours of 1 on 1 test prep and raised their score 150 points to a 1500.  And all future tests and prep tests had them score within 20 points of 1500.  But those initial 4 hours cost me $500. And my kid had to have the time to work for another 3-4 hours outside of those 4 hours.  And we continued doing "prep tests" with 1-2 hours of review in between to ensure that kid was going to score well on the ultimate real SAT.  That is not available to lower income students, or students who have to work 10-20 hr/week in HS to help support their families.

Btw, if my kid had wanted to, we could have paid for another 10-20 hours of intensive one-on-one test prep and likely gotten to 1550/1560.  I am certain that is not an option for majority of college bound students (maybe the top 10%).

[/quote]

Rich people hire tutors and consultants to boost GPA and ECs
They send their kids to private schools which are more advantageous admitting to colleges.
What's the point???
SAT is actually one of the most fair things.[/quote]

I agree the emphasis on EC's is BS and discriminatory against low and middle-income students. You have low/middle-income students working part time jobs in high school instead of participating in $1k+ voluntourism trips in Africa or $1k+ per season sports.

Grades are different though, because students are actually being tested on material their [b]teachers taught[/b].

The AP tests are the fairest testing mechanism for academic achievement. I understand the ACT tries to test students on actual academic material rather than logic puzzles, but the scoring mechanism is terrible. [/quote]

School grades(GPA) fluctuates a lot by schools and even by teachers at the same school.
Probably most unfair measure.  
[/quote]

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