Who said anything about not accepting the test?
It presumes people have APs based on which colleges should judge them. It would be inherently unfair to have a hidden agenda to expect APs to judge people by while not asking for them at all.
Schools are stating that they expect kids take an SAT or ACT. That is what they are choosing to judge everyone by as a stated policy.
I don’t like APs. May be I should just state that everyone should be judged by AAMC tests because that actually shows if kids are any good in Math or their olympiad scores.
Actually, what is “ridiculous” is to assert something that is not true.
(Hint: Of course, a student can be assessed with all kinds other factors. No one says otherwise. It’s just that colleges want SAT/ACT. Does it really matter, why?)
On a thread spawned by someone’s book questioning testing, “does it really matter why?” is an excellent closing point for the discussion.
(I will retreat to my “rebel base.” 
)
Mom2physicsgeek: I don’t think anyone disputes the notion that other tests could supply information on an individual student’s ability. But the article being discussed was about the SAT being unfairly used by Harvard to admit the 1% over poor students. The point many are trying to make to you is that AP classes and AP tests are not at all accessible to those on the lowest socio-economic rungs. Those kids may not have access to even a single AP class at their high school and can’t afford a test. In some cases there may be an AP class, but the content is so poor that the student has no shot at a 5. Most certainly do not have parents that will find them a seat at some random school to take an AP test that is not offered at their high school. Also, many kids do not take many APs until senior year so the tests are not available at the time of application.
Harvard and other elite schools are looking for ways to choose among a vast array of applicants. There are many different AP classes. Trying to figure out if Suzy’s 4 on AP Bio is as good as Billy’s 5 on AP Stats is much more difficult than comparing a 2400 vs a 2000 SAT score.
Do share, Mom2aphysicsgeek. I’m a rebel, too, even though, LOL, others on CC claim that I must represent the college administrations. What’s the thread? or the book?
"The point many are trying to make to you is that AP classes and AP tests are not at all accessible to those on the lowest socio-economic rungs. Those kids may not have access to even a single AP class at their high school and can’t afford a test. "
Thank you for stating it succinctly.
Whether or not they should be–the national aggregate of those scores is also used to get a rough idea of how well US US high schools in the aggregate are preparing their students. (For roughly 30 years in a row, the median SAT scores of US high school students declined. That’s a good part of the reason the SAT had to be recentered.) Results by state are reported; this is useful data for those involved in educational assessments on the state level. Here for example, is a link to data for each state. http://research.collegeboard.org/programs/sat/data/cb-seniors-2014
The data is also used to study such things as the difference in the performance of different ethnic groups.This is important information, IMO. It is used in determining educational policy.
As I said before, requiring all college applicants to take one of these tests also creates a data bank with at least some info about virtually every high school in the US. If the “higher end” kids could opt to skip the SAT/ACT in favor of APs and SAT IIs, the median SAT scores of their high schools would decline, since the best high school students wouldn’t be taking them. *We’d lose the “snap shot” of the high school the median SAT and ACT scores provide. * (As it is, the scores of the poorest schools are probably inflated since a higher percentage of their students take neither the SAT nor the ACT. )
I’m certainly not saying that these tests are the be all and end all, but I think the accumulation of data year by year is valuable.
I agree with her that the elites are catering to the rich and powerful. That is their bread and butter and they are only looking after their institutional interest. Her position on standardized testing is all wrong, imho. This is the tool that gives the middle class a fighting chance against the 1%, and the “test optional ” movement is an attempt to take that away. The poor? The have been and always will be a sideshow.
Before we get any further, we have to know what standardized testing can and can not do:
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/04/what_do_sat_and_iq_tests_measure_general_intelligence_predicts_school_and.html
Is the Sat an IQ test?
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/media/releases/2004/pr040329.cfm
I suspect they want to change it not because it is not doing a good job but because it is doing too good a job…
This morning I found sample questions for the redesigned test that are now available on CB’s website. https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/sample-questions
I am really surprised. The test reads far more like a CAT (achievement test) than what I am used to for the SAT or the ACT. No test taking strategy involved. Just straight-forward questions which can be answered with base knowledge. It will be interesting to see what the actual Blue prep books show in June.
Oh god, canuckguy, everything is class warfare with you.
I don’t normally agree with canuckguy on anything, but I think he makes the valid point that holistic admissions is a much easier tool to mold a college class to your preferences than reliance on standardized testing. Now, I think Harvard uses holistic review to admit lower-scoring URMs and others, and that (except for people wealthy enough to be development cases), richer kids tend to have higher scores–but also tend to have more of everything else the college is looking for, except diversity (and, maybe, having overcome obstacles).
I think somebody made a good point upthread–that we shouldn’t really be talking about Harvard here, anyway. Harvard’s unhooked admits pretty much all have high scores, high grades, and very impressive other achievements. Even its hooked admits mostly have at least two out of three. Looking at results for Harvard, Yale, et al. over a number of years now suggest to me that a difference of 50-100 points on the SAT is not a big deal for those schools. It’s the whole package that matters.
A better question is, what are colleges a few notches below Harvard doing? I think there are many, many college applicants who probably look pretty darn similar–good high school grades, good involvement in high school activities, but no big awards or achievements outside the school. It must be pretty nice to have some nationwide standardized test to help sort those applicants.
For Harvard, the SAT is probably a mostly unnecessary extra–they probably like having it, but could do without it.
“I suspect they want to change it not because it is not doing a good job but because it is doing too good a job…”
They haven 't changed it enough. (Thanks for the link, Mom2physicsgeek) I’ll visit that link now, but I read every word of the long article in the Times last year – his rationale for changing it. The part about the vocabulary made zero sense to me. What does he mean, “obscure words?” Like 1% of the current SAT words are those that a literate high school student would not be running into if he reads widely. The fact is that reading widely is an endangered species in the 21st century, and Coleman should hardly be encouraging the free-fall from literacy to ignorance which some of us in education have been frantically trying to reverse, with little cooperation from the educational establishment, the popular culture, or even parents, to some degree.
With regard to the critical reading and reading, it has not been hard enough, in that it has not required enough free response analysis. Supposedly, according to him, his plans were to move more along the lines of what a college student must do: ‘Here’s a document, now analyze it and apply it to a question I’m going to give you.’ (What Coleman referred to as “evidence-based analysis.”) And the current unhelpfully broad SAT writing prompt is unlike what a student would ever get in college.
IOW, the current SAT is too easy (the writing) too unrealistic (the design), and just right (the vocabulary level). I think it’s only useful in combination with other data on the student. It’s a flawed tool, as I think most standardized tests are. I pray this new version will not be less helpful than what we have now.
Mom2physicsgeek, if it’s like the CAT, that’s not what I could have predicted from Coleman’s words a year ago.
OK. I was right about the essay: It’s analysis, as Coleman promised. That part is a step in the right direction, at least. ETA: I would like to see more sample questions in the other categories:
“The Great Global Conversation and US Founding Documents”; “Analysis in Science and in History/ Social Studies” etc.
I would suggest just the opposite hunt, because as you note,
…and some decent awards – in school or out of school doesn’t much matter.
Remember, we have, what, 30,000 high schools in the US, and thus, 30k Vals, 30k Sals, 30k Student Body Presidents, 100k football captains, and drum majors, etc. Most of these kids “float” across their HS parking lots every day.
The SAT/ACT is an easy way to cull the chaff of the wheat diamonds, among all those similar unhooked kids. 33/2200+ get a second look; 30/2000 go to the back of the line.
bluebayou, it’s my opinion that Harvard doesn’t really need to use SAT to eliminate the chaff, except perhaps at the lower end of scores (and maybe 30/2000 is it for them). They just eliminate all those smart but normal high school students. I’ll bet that for unhooked applicants, after a quick look at grades and scores to see if the person is in the ballpark, what they look at is achievements outside the local high school.
We see questions on CC all the time along the lines of, “Will Harvard care that I’m not in the National Honor Society?” What I want to say to such questions is no, but Harvard will care that you say you are interested in creative writing but have no awards or publications, that you say you are interested in math but have done no competitions, that you say you are interested in Classics but have no Latin awards, etc., etc., etc. This is a tough message for kids who are stars of their local high school.
Not the ones that H takes from our public HS, most of which I knew pretty well. They have all been really smart kids, with a LOT of high school invovlement/ECs (Student Body Pres, captain of a sport, other great leadership, academic awards in a competitive HS, but no ‘wow’ factor stuff outside of HS. In my book, these are just normal, smart kids from our HS off to Cambridge. (The ‘abnormal’ kid, who did not apply to H, got a full ride somewhere and eventually became a Rhodes semi-finalist.)
(btw: And they have a bunch of 5’s, '7’s and 8’s in their test scores, but no 6’s.)
And that is my point: the scores are equalizers for the thousands of high school grading systems, thereby making it real easy to eliminate all “those smart but normal high school student.”
“I’ll bet that for unhooked applicants, after a quick look at grades and scores to see if the person is in the ballpark, what they look at is achievements outside the local high school.”
No need to bet. It’s exactly what they do.
texasapg:
“I don’t like APs. May be I should just state that everyone should be judged by AAMC tests because that actually shows if kids are any good in Math or their olympiad scores.”
AMC/USABio/Phy/Chem/Co - I believe doing well in thes tests has even higher correlation with being rich. There are many
“private factories” here in bay area prepping kids for exactly these tests and it starts from as early as 5th grade.
Winning science fair projects at Intel etc requires collaboration with a university professor AND a school supported
program like at Stuyvessant or TJ or Harker. Just look at the topics of the projects that are winning - I cannot
believe a high school student could come up with these subjects without coaching.
-
[quote]
Harvard will care that you say you are interested in creative writing but have no awards or publications, that you say you are interested in math but have done no competitions, that you say you are interested in Classics but have no Latin awards, etc., etc., etc.
[/quote]
Hunt, at least from my second-hand, anecdotal experience, this is not the case. Most of the kids I know who have been accepted at Harvard in the past decade had few or no achievements outside their school. What they had were teachers saying, “This is the best, most intellectually ambitious kid we have, the one the other kids look to for intellectual validation and leadership.” (Well, a few were in the category of “he’s a top-10 ranked oarsman nationally.”)
- Somewhere, recently, I saw a piece that made an important point that seriously undercuts arguments of the sort Guinier makes. If I recall correctly, the correlation between SATs and family income breaks down at the thin end of the curve. According to Guinier's article, the median SAT for students from rich families is 17-something. As everyone here knows, that's not even in the ballpark for Harvard on an unhooked basis. And apparently, when you do get into the ballpark for Harvard, say somewhere around 2100, the correlation between increased scores and family income goes negative. The really rich are less likely to get 2200-2400 than the middle class (or at least the not-really-rich).