Continuing lack of integrity in int'l SAT testing

<p>FWIW, Here’s what I wrote about this back on 10/5/11, in post #328 on this thread re: the SAT cheating scandal:</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1106338-long-island-sat-cheating-ring-great-neck-22.html#post13288730[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1106338-long-island-sat-cheating-ring-great-neck-22.html#post13288730&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>I really would be interested in seeing TCB separate out the statistics on international students from the U.S. high school students in their public annual reports. Fat chance, I know. Someone correct me if I am wrong, but until they take the international students out of the aggregate data, the test score change trends as reported in the 2011 reports cannot be wholly attributed to the U.S. high school test taking population.</p>

<p>I agree with clandarkfire. I read somewhere it costs around $250,000 to create a new sat. I don’t see how that’s possible. I could probably create an entire math section in a few days and maybe less.</p>

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<p>xiggi: no colleges are not naive. </p>

<p>“Inconsistent” test scores have been known for years…take the TOEFL taken by grad students. Some students show up with really high scores but have trouble with middle school-level English.</p>

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<p>Actually, they do. The mean scores of Internationals are 490/587/507. (CR/M/W) The mean numbers for US citizens are 503/511/493.</p>

<p>Table 11.</p>

<p><a href=“http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/cbs2011_total_group_report.pdf[/url]”>Higher Education Professionals | College Board;

<p>The colleges are better off ignoring the standardized tests altogether. The level of incompetence in administering them in US or abroad no longer makes these tests a standard bearer of identifying a good student.</p>

<p>^ OK, Thanks Bluebayou. I guess what I was referring to was the public analysis of the scores, of which this article is a representative piece:</p>

<p><a href=“Average Scores Slip on SAT - The New York Times”>Average Scores Slip on SAT - The New York Times;

<p>Maybe it’s sloppy reporting on the part of the NYT to not correct the opening sentence of this article “Average scores on the SAT fell across the nation this year” to add the fact that there was a sizeable percentage of international students in “the nation this year”. TCB is quoted in this article referencing the “increasing diversity” of the test taking pool, but there is no specific reference to the nationality of those diverse students. Others in the press seized the political opportunity to opine that the “decline” in overall test scores were evidence of a clear negative outcome of our national policy of teaching to the test.</p>

<p>GMT:

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<p>You don’t even know how to spell TOEFL correctly (twice). So obviously you don’t know its value while you claim that you have expericence with education in numerous countries.</p>

<p>Both the TOEFL and the SAT-I measure the English proficiency (although the SAT is a little bit harder), so there is no point to ask foreign students to take the SAT-I.</p>

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<p>You seem to be oversensitive with what I said about American BS where you and your family are educated (and disdain public schools). Where is my bitting-sounding statement? I never suggest American BS give FA to foreign students. I only said top BS with high endownment don’t court foreign students while the shrinking ones are desperate for foreign students. You would fail the TOEFL test if you interprete what I wrote that way.</p>

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<p>Don’t you send your kids to private BS to get a better chance in college admission because they have dedicate counselors to help your kids?</p>

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<p>Is that a serious question? LOL</p>

<p>Most journalists in most news outlets don’t have a clue about what they write.</p>

<p>coolweather, I only know that TOEFL (one-F) is a test for non-Anglophones to assess their level of English proficiency. The verbal portion of the SAT is primarily geared towards assesing the English mastery of American-lingo Anglophones. </p>

<p>And, YES, I do send my kid to an elite BS in the U.S. because of the inadequate local offerings in the country where we now live. We move internationally a lot; consequently, my kids have attended different int’l schools. I actually think my BS kid has a lower shot at getting into an elite university now because of the intense competition at the BS-- very, very difficult to stand out in a crowd of all high achievers.</p>

<p>And, no, I don’t disdain public school. I am the product of public school.</p>

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That might just indicate that the TOEFL doesn’t actually measure what it’s supposed to measure. I took the TOEFL iBT five years ago when I was applying to US colleges. I scored 113 points out of 120, well above the 100 points required by the most selective programs. Yet I could barely keep up an everyday conversation. It took me several weeks before I could follow lectures in English and almost a year before I could read my textbooks (or write papers) without a dictionary. </p>

<p>Let me assure you that I did not cheat on my exam, nor did I put much effort into preparation. (I think I took half of the free practice test I got at registration, before I got bored and decided to ditch the rest.)</p>

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Foreign universities do this too. For example, foreign applicants to German universities need to pass an academic achievement test unless their own high school credential is approved as equivalent to the German Abitur. (The IB, British A-levels and the French Baccalaureate count; an American high school diploma does not.) </p>

<p>One major difference between the American and most foreign school systems is that college entrance exams are separate from the secondary school curriculum in the US. That makes it reasonable to ask foreign applicants to take the same exams that American applicants take. That’s not so easy in countries with a multi-year standardized curriculum and integrated standardized testing.</p>

<p>b@r!um - The application process includes lots of things: transcripts, essays, letters of recommendation, personal letters of recommendation, midyear reports, interviews,… not just tests. We are talking about developing countries that cannot help students to satisfy these holistic application requirements here. Only few schools can meet these requirements. And only few US elite colleges can have resources to verify what they receive from the foreign students. The other colleges cannot have what they want.</p>

<p>The only document that is reliable from the development countries is the high school diploma.</p>

<p>Regarding the TOEFL: This test is just a basic tool to access the ability of students to communicate during the first couple months in the US. Students must continue to improve English when they arrive. Many students in developing countries who apply to colleges in other countries like Japan, Germany, France, Russia, Spain,… did not learn any language of those countries. They just spend one year to study the language in the new country before taking college classes and they are still successful. Similarly for US students studing abroad.</p>

<p>No, for U.S. students studying in universities abroad, the expectation is that the student already has proficiency in the language of the country of interest, so when the student enters university in that country they can “hit the ground running” in the classroom, as a fully participating student. Generally, the student acquires the foreign language proficiency in high school.</p>

<p>It’s true that the majority of US students already has some language proficiency before going to foreign universities. And of course, in order to take classes at a foreign university, an American student must be proficient in the language of the foreign country. However, it does not mean American students cannot go to a foreign country to study the language first then apply to the foreign college as long as the students can demonstrate the language proficiency at the application time. This usually happens when the languages of the foreign universities are not taught in American HS. I doubt that the American students must be proficient in the Arabic or Japanese languages before they can study in the Middle East or Japan. Furthemore, the college application process in many countries don’t take the whole year. Unlike in the US, HS students in many countries cannot apply to college until they pass the HS exam at the end of the 12th grade and the application process would not take more than two months.</p>

<p>Coolwater, the focus of this thread (I think) is about int’l students cheating on U.S. college entrance exams for the intention of matriculating immediately into college, and displacing a more ready and qualified candidate. If a student wants to take the TOEFL and come to the U.S. to learn English outside of college, then more power to them!</p>

<p>Oh BTW, both university-level Arabic and Japanese are offered at my kid’s highschool.</p>

<p>^ I don’t think we derail from the topic. Cheating is the problem but what are the causes?
We need to look at both sides of the same token.</p>

<p>I agree it’s best for foreign students to come to the US to learn English first then apply to college. Learning English in a country that does not have educational resources can do some harm to the learner. I am an example of this. I took me some time to correct my pronunciation after I came to the US because I learned English from some teachers who learned English from British English textbooks not written by British educators. I learned the deformed English and my pronunciation was totally screwed up.</p>

<p>It’s not easy for foreign students to come to the US to learn English before being accepted to a college though. The simple reason is they cannot easily get visa. The US does not want many people to come to the US with college education reason this way. A lot of people applied for visa to learn English to prepare for college but they never studied at a real college here. They just came here to stay and work. Some foreign parents try to overcome the visa difficulty and to have a better way for their kids to prepare for college by sending their kids to US boarding schools. That’s why many boarding schools are recruiting students in Asia now.</p>

<p>It’s great you kids’ boarding school offers Arabic and Japanese. How about Polish, Romanian, Czech, Thai,…?</p>

<p>My take-aways from this thread:</p>

<ul>
<li>cheating is occuring at int’l testing locations</li>
<li>College Board is aware of it</li>
<li>U.S. colleges are aware of it, but look the other way & admit the cheaters</li>
<li>it’s about money</li>
<li>are you really surprised?</li>
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<p>example of blatant cheaters admitted by U Delaware:
<a href=“The China Conundrum - The New York Times”>The China Conundrum - The New York Times;

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Are you using the term “developing country” in reference to economic conditions or just to avoid naming any individual country? I understand that it’s not easy for foreign applicants to go through the American application process. I’ve been there myself. My teachers had never written a single letter of recommendation in their lives, the culture did not encourage organized extra-curricular activities and my school was certainly hesitant to “certify” anything as official that was not printed on the standardized (German!) forms supplied by the state department of education. However, none of this had anything to do with the economic status of my country. (Germany is not considered a developing country these days, I believe.)</p>

<p>I grant that the college application process would be much easier for international students if it was based on transcripts and standardized tests only; but that would give foreigners even more incentives to cheat, which seems like the problem that we were trying to address in the first place. Dropping the SAT requirement for international students does not seem like a good idea either. American colleges can’t even evaluate the academic strength of a domestic applicant from their high school transcript without the use of other aids (school profiles, SATs, recommendations, etc). How would they even begin to make sense of a foreign transcript? (This is easier in countries with a standardized curriculum, but that’s not the case everywhere either.)</p>

<p>I believe the cheating problem associated with foreign students is vastly exaggerated. It affects mostly universities and colleges at the low end of the food chain. In the past few years these universities have been fed on crack, mostly in the form of cash-rich Chinese students. But it is just a temporary blip. Chinese students have been flocking to the US for less than 5 years and their numbers are growing at the rate of over 50% per year which is not sustainable for long. International students from other countries including India have been declining and the numbers from China will eventually stabilize.</p>

<p>Until recently, international undergrads in the US were few and far between and the overwhelming majority of internationals students came over to the US as graduate students and they are still the majority. I came to the US in 1979 to study at MIT and had to take the TOEFL and the GRE. But in the end the tests did not matter to MIT: they knew my undergraduate university very well (A French Grande Ecole) from a steady flow of prior students and could easily check my credentials. They now use the same approach with international undergrads. They recruit heavily in China especially to find math and science phenoms who dominate the international competitions. They can interpret original Chinese transcripts and they also use Chinese MIT alumni to steer and interview the top candidates: chances of an unqualified applicant slipping through the cracks are slim to none. Other top colleges are similarly well equipped to screen Chinese applicants. </p>

<p>Right now, as GMT pointed out, you have a game of fools where second-rate Chinese applicants and second-rate US colleges scam each other. In exchange for a welcome shot in the arm in the form of a big check, colleges look the other way when reviewing the applicants credentials. The downside is pretty low: the average Chinese applicant may take some time to be conversant in English, but he is typically overqualified in terms of math and science. Chinese high school students are the best in world in terms of general knowledge by the time they graduate from high school. They can pretty much slumber through the first two years of college in the US and still graduate at the top of their class.</p>

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<p>That would require a pretty liberal definition of general knowledge, and surely one that does NOT correspond to a western view of advance general knowledge. As advanced as those students might be in a number of disciplines, they show glaring deficiencies in more than basic English. </p>

<p>As far as graduating at the top of their class, it better be at a school or in a program that does not expect students to understand or write a basic post such as yours. Because believing that the STEM stars would be able to do such a simple task requires quite a leap of faith.</p>

<p>bookmarked…</p>