<p>Here are some quotes from the first few items of google search.</p>
<p>An item chosen by Madville from “The Rouge Forum”, the organized body engaged in beating the fascists in schools, that called Brigham a racist and fascist. </p>
<p>Items not chosen by Madville are</p>
<p>“Originally, the SAT was designed to make the elite universities and colleges in America accessible to students based on standards of intelligence, not privilege.”</p>
<p>“The SAT, once known as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (now just referred to as the SAT reasoning test), was originally developed in the early 1900's by Carl Brigham. It was developed for use in several northeastern states to allow students from any socioeconomic background a chance to get into a college (before the test students were only allowed into colleges based on their parents status in college!)”</p>
<p>“Nicholas Lemann, who documented the history of the SAT in his book The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy, writes the first chapter. Lemann discusses the origins of the SAT as an aptitude test that James Bryant Conant, who was president of Harvard University in the early 1900s, hoped would allow more capable students to attend college, irrespective of their academic experiences.” </p>
<p>This shows the caliber of Madville's opinion.</p>
<p>"If you examine the questions the SAT asks, you should realize that high school juniors and seniors should know the answer to most of them. If they can't answer most of them correctly to obtain a high score, why should they be admitted to one of the nation's top colleges where they will likely have a miserable experience?"</p>
<p>What? When was the last you took the SAT? Of course we know the answers -- they are, for the most part, not that difficult (sometimes a question will stump me for a while, though -- but rarely). It's the time constraint that gets us. "24 questions, 25 minutes, go!" Though that leaves you about a minute/question, it's difficult to get them all done, even if you work fast. Real-life example: I took the SAT and got ~2100. I took a practice test, untimed, and got a 2330. Difference, no?</p>
<p>"But at the same time, I have to recognize certain realities in life..."</p>
<p>Agreed, but who's to say that this reality isn't irrational? The SAT is flawed, as you said. But since it's a life necessity, we shouldn't try to change it? No, because it's flawed, it needs to be changed or eliminated.</p>
<p>kyledavid - true, the time constraint is what gets most people. perhaps that is something they could change, though it would inevitably lead to more people scoring higher. I actually think that would be a good idea though because you usually either know it or you don't. Time got me too, ACT especially. At the same time, tests in college are typically timed as well.</p>
<p>
[quote]
No, because it's flawed, it needs to be changed or eliminated.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Elimination of the SAT could only be accomplished if grading was known to be relatively equal at schools across the nation. Since that will likely never happen, we need something to reflect one's GPA and differentiate between applicants' academic capabilities.</p>
<p>Quote:This shows the caliber of Madville's opinion.</p>
<p>Umm, nice try bomgeedad but swiiiing and a miss! My quote didn't come from the article you are referring to. I would suggest that you look into the objective bios of the gentleman you are referring to and you will find a legacy of racial superiority, bigotry, politcal manuevering, and money making. Not intially against contemporary URM's per se, but of Jews, Italians, other eastern europeans and other "undesirables". If you would like the origin of the quote, I would be more than happy to send you the link. The bottom line is, in it's infancy the SAT was used to separate. Look into the history of Brigham, Conant and others. You can't separate their philosophy from their deeds. They were intertwined.</p>
<p>If you made time constraints more generous you would undoubtedly have to either make the test harder, or tighten the conversion of raw scores to scaled scores.</p>
<p>If you make the test harder you advantage people with more preparation, which is the opposite effect you were going for. If you change the conversion you advantage people who make fewer stupid mistakes and pretty much it becomes a game of luck--who can do a bunch of easy questions without time pressure and make the fewest errors.</p>
<p>SAT can be used to exclude Jewish student? It is getting more and more unbelievable.</p>
<p>From a review of Jerome B. Karabel, The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.</p>
<p>“Karabel views the 1920s as the watershed moment when the current process of discretionary review was institutionalized. Harvard, Princeton, and Yale were all worried that they would suffer from “WASP flight” (which had overwhelmed Columbia and Penn) if they did not find some way to limit Jewish enrollment. All three introduced a system of holistic review that gave their admissions offices discretion to reject applicants with impeccable academic qualifications; no other system could have limited Jewish enrollment at that time.”</p>
<p>markr makes one of the more relevant posts on this thread, which started out as a critique of the USNWR rankings but has moved on to a discussion of the value and limitations of using the SAT as a factor in admissions.</p>
<p>The connection is that, according to the article, the USNWR rankings are basically rankings of schools by freshmen SAT scores. Useful information, but not a comprehensive evaluation of educational quality as it is sold by USNWR.</p>
<p>Bomgeedad, my statements weren't about the effectiveness of stratifying certain groups, it was about the mindset of the individuals who created and implimented the SAT. </p>
<p>Another excerpt;</p>
<p>Then came a Princeton University professor named Carl Campbell Brigham. During the war, he served as an assistant on the Army Mental Tests, which were being used to assign an influx of soldiers into jobs.</p>
<p>The test results, Brigham said, could be used with accuracy to predict a person's innate mental capacity - regardless of social station.</p>
<p>The problem was that the Army Tests were ridiculously slanted, rewarding anyone with a knowledge of brand names, baseball trivia and cuts of beef. When the tests were roundly flunked by recent immigrants and impoverished draftees, Brigham rushed to the conclusion that white, "Nordic" peoples were superior to Jews, Italians, Russians, Poles and Slovaks and African-Americans.</p>
<p>Brigham took his ideas back to Princeton, where he pushed to make undergraduate testing mandatory. In 1925, the College Board - the panel that regulated admission into the Ivy League schools - assigned him to draw up a universal entry exam. The result was the Scholastic Aptitude Test.</p>
<p>I have the book "The Chosen" ,a very good book. When the hypothesis of certain groups being inferior proved to be false and people of Jewish ancestry became "overepresented", then came legacies to stem the tide of Jewish people into the Ivies. Of course that situation has evolved but arguably the admission process is still one that favors those that are wealthy. Standardized testing for various reasons assist in that stratification.</p>
<p>Charisma-
I sympathize with the desire to make the review of data concerning colleges more manageable. Having just gone through it with my son, I found the process to be very inefficient. Unfortunately, when the data used by USNWR is incomplete, misleading and easily manipulated by the colleges and then is further reduced into a numerical ranking that turns education into a homogenized commodity, the only people who are really served are the owners and employees of USNWR.</p>