University of California considers dropping National Merit program
Concerns over the PSAT’s validity as a predictor of college success and the failure of the selection process to produce racially diverse winners have prompted University of California chancellors at six campuses to consider pulling out of the National Merit Scholarship program. Last month, a UC faculty leadership council voted unanimously for the campuses to leave the program, as UC Berkeley and two other UC schools already have done. Los Angeles Times
<p>all hail the UC system!!!</p>
<p>whooooooooooooooooooot!</p>
<p>... why're you guys so happy about that?</p>
<p>lol I just hate idea that standarized testing defining in anyway college success</p>
<p>I love the UC system. =)</p>
<p>exactly what vtran said</p>
<p>i hope uc will stop using any sort of testing. First should be SAT and SAT IIs...standardized testing obviously sucks, so why should they use any of it? i mean, GPA...what's that prove? It's just a grade based on a lot of testing and busy work. Extracurricular activities...just a bunch of bs that people do to get into college. It's not like volunteering at the library indicates that you will be successful in college. Course difficulty? Schmorse difficulty, that's what i have to say. It should all be based on whether or not the applicant considers him/herself capable of succeeding in college...forget all this unnecessary "applying" and "unbiased indicators"</p>
<p>So, slip....if I understand you, you're saying it would be 'first come, first served'?? Schools would just accept people in the order they applied until the school reached the max. number of freshmen it could handle?</p>
<p>LOL all of this after college board went through the trouble of changing SAT so UCs wouldn't trash it. Hahah i love those uc people, they keep delivering deserved slaps to the face of the college board!</p>
<p>You people do realize it has nothing to do with the actual SAT - they're just dropping National Merit Scholarships based off the PSAT for the people who qualified.</p>
<p>Right, and the NM Scholarships don't really play into the college admissions decision... if you've got high test scores, I don't think being a semifinalist (or whatever) when you apply to college really counts as new and helpful information above and beyond those test scores... so all this is doing is taking money away from people who scored really well on the PSAT and SAT and who choose to go to a UC. And considering that it's not even that much money, and that people get so many scholarships for so many other stupid things, I don't think it's something to be celebrating.
...But oh well. These people can still theoretically get money from the NMS people [if they still make it], just not from the college that they're attending. I just think it's silly to be excited about it.</p>
<p>It doesn't have anything to do with SAT, but it does have a lot to do with the college board.</p>
<p>as always, UC schools show the most progressive actions. more so than any ivy league. the ivy leagues still take the old SAT for pete's sake!</p>
<p>the UC's are the best schools in the world.</p>
<p>berkeley 1</p>
<p>Ew, ew, ew. No offense to anyone.</p>
<p>slipstream99, how are colleges supposed to determine who gets admitted?</p>
<p>"I think I can handle the work at MIT, so go ahead and let me in...Good thing it doesn't matter I barely passed calculus!"</p>
<p>Yeah right</p>
<p>Reform is coming. Did you know that there is a bit of a buzz among education reformers that the application process should include a "presentation" portion? Maybe a digital portfolio of some sort? Maybe live presentations, business plans, musice videos, who knows what the possibilities are? The purposes would be to address the FACT that standardized tests do not accurately predict college success, acknowledge the FACT that the tests are economically and culturally biased and give applicants the opportunity to present themselves in a way that more authentically represents who they are and what they are capable of.</p>
<p>UC! URM blind. SAT blind coming soon. </p>
<p>Ahem... please excuse the rant. I really don't know quite where that came from, but I'm not erasing it. Post quick reply. click.</p>
<p>i love UC...</p>
<p>So much for the CollegeBoard cash cow.....too baaaaaaad.</p>
<p>For those that didn't catch it, slip was sacarastic. </p>
<p>I agree with what slip said though. I mean the SATs are really the only measurement of unbiased strenghts.</p>