When schools admit by GPA alone, as UT does via GPA-based class rank, this is what happens:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/magazine/who-gets-to-graduate.html?_r=0
Students w high GPAs from low rigor HSs, needing remedial education to stay afloat. But the MOST IMPORTANT thing is that the colleges get to meet their SJW diversity goals.
“Test optional” is the emperor wearing no clothes.
@GMTplus7 Did you actually read this article thoroughly from first word to last. That is not the focus of the article and does not support your position at all.
In fact, thank you for pointing out an article that further supports my position.
This is what the article is about:
The article is about the disparity in performance between students from different socioeconomic backgrounds as defined by family income. Regarding SAT scores the author observed that the most reliable predictor of performance in college was not SAT scores, but rather family income. SAT scores being equal, the students from poor families are more likely to perform poorly. That’s all. Following this the article goes on to observe that these students perform poorly largely not due to lack of ability, but the feeling that they ‘don’t belong’. They are also more inclined to internalize and identify with their failures and with other negative messages and experience strong self-doubt.
The programs set up for these students at the University of Texas, Austin were anything but remedial. In fact they were successful because they were not. Students who were profiled to be at risk were required to complete courses of the same rigor. The reason for this is that if students who were channeled into remedial classes lost even more self-esteem and were more likely to drop out. The programs worked because the students were given the message that their feeling of not belonging was temporary and that it would pass, and the expectation that they complete courses of the same rigor was interpreted as a signal that others believed in them. The profile used to predict the need for intervention was an algorithm with 14 variables of which SAT score was but one.
A quote regarding the intervention program:
“What I like about these interventions is that the kids themselves make all the tough choices,” Yeager told me. “They deserve all the credit. We as interveners don’t. And that’s the best way to intervene. Ultimately a person has within themselves some kind of capital, some kind of asset, like knowledge or confidence. And if we can help bring that out, they then carry that asset with them to the next difficulty in life.”
My very brief summary of some main points does not do the article justice. You should read it.
This is how the article ends:
" … the United States now ranks 12th in the world in the percentage of young people who have earned a college degree. During the same period, a second trend emerged: American higher education became more stratified; most well-off students now do very well in college, and most middle- and low-income students struggle to complete a degree. These two trends are clearly intertwined. And it is hard to imagine that the nation can regain its global competitiveness, or improve its level of economic mobility, without reversing them.
To do so will take some sustained work, on a national level, on a number of fronts. But a big part of the solution lies at colleges like the University of Texas at Austin, selective but not superelite, that are able to perform, on a large scale, what used to be a central mission — arguably the central mission — of American universities: to take large numbers of highly motivated working-class teenagers and give them the tools they need to become successful professionals. The U.T. experiment reminds us that that process isn’t easy; it never has been. But it also reminds us that it is possible."
From NPR:
Why Are Colleges Really Going Test-Optional? http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/09/03/436584244/why-are-colleges-really-going-test-optional
How does Burd know that’s the No. 1 reason for all test optional colleges? He doesn’t say. It’s completely illogical to assume knowledge of the intricacies of all admissions policy changes at all colleges. Who did he speak with at each college to get this information? The consequence of an action does not prove the motive. It’s also a fallacy to identify such a motive as a reason why choosing to eliminate the SAT requirement wouldn’t lead to a better pool of admitted students.
It speaks volumes that the schools at the top of the prestige & ranking pecking order-- schools that don’t need to fish for applicants-- still require standardized tests.
As it relates to the topic, test optional schools appear to add about 50 points to their reported averages (CR + M). Test flexible schools may add about 20 points.
So what? Are you inferring this is the result of the ACT/SAT?
I’d suggest that testing has nothing to do with college admissions in total, since there are plenty of colleges every May still seeking to fill a class.
(Hint: don’t you think out 50% dropout rate in urban high schools-- pre testing – contributes towards students not going to college?)
See, here’s the thing: all colleges are test optional, but optional for admissions. In other words, if HYPS wants a kid bad enough, they can and will ignore their scores. (Well, the sports side of the Ivy League does have some formula, but if the applicant is not a sports star, but otherwise, hooked, admissions can accept him/her with any score that they have.)
Testing companies already do this. Such a discussion is easy to find on CB’s website. But anyone who took AP Stats would immediately realize the fallacy – that the good researchers in Harvard’s Educ school failed to recognize: just bcos the whole testing pool may only move xx points on a retake, there are some students – albeit rare – that can jump 300 points. So, by following this stupid recommendation, they are limiting such students.
Everyone in my state is required to take the ACT. There are a few high schools with an average ACT score of below 14. The average doesn’t tell us how many high scorers there are in such a school, but I think it is a reasonable guess they are few and far between. And yet these schools give out just as many A’s and B’s as the schools with an average ACT of 23.
I would submit that someone with a 16 on the ACT isn’t going to be able to do rigorous college work, regardless of how high their high school grades are. That’s why the best predictor of college performance is test scores combined with test scores.
On the other hand, subject matter tests (like SAT subject and AP tests) are likely better predictors of college performance than SAT reasoning and ACT.
^^agreed, but not a realistic substitute since some high schools still can’t/don’t even offer AP’s, and/or, might be primarily limited to seniors, so the scores are not available in time. Our local HS, for example, offers quite a few AP’s, but only the top students can take them as Junior, and then generally only ~2: APUSH/Euro, Science, or perhaps Stats. (Eng Lit and Calc is generally reserved for Seniors.)
An example of HS grade inflation that awards participation rather than mastery. A valedictorian who failed the math portion of her state exit exam FIVE TIMES.
F Is For Valedictorian
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2003/08/17/f-is-for-valedictorian.html
An 11 ACT is equivalent to SAT CR+M 530. Don’t SAT test takers automatically get 400 points for having a pulse?
That is why SAT subject tests were the other example given.
I find it interesting that of all areas of social sciences, you choose to criticize the most robust by far-standardized testing.
Sternberg’s Triarchic theory has been soundly rejected by his peers for lack of empirical evidence, which led him to try his hands on college administration. It is interesting to note that Tufts, where he was Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, continues to use standardized testing to this day, as far as I know. In short, not all opinions are equal.
You may like this Slate article better:
I predict the next frontier will be in molecular genetics, and I suspect we will like the results even less.
[quote]
Canadian universities do not appear to need external standardized tests for their domestic applicants, probably because high school courses and curricula are more standardized and “trustworthy”, at least at the province level.
[quote]
Education is not a Federal area of responsibility, but the rest of your statement is correct.
Kid1 graduated from a good public school in the district with the highest test scores in the province. She scored 94% (A=80%) in calculus and had the highest score on Waterloo’s Euclid math competition among female students in the school that year.
She attended an extremely competitive business program and was deeply humbled. While she was holding her own in most areas, she was unable to keep up with the best of her classmates in accounting, and even more obviously so, finance.
In hindsight, the difference can be easily predicted by the high school grades in calculus, that “invisible schieve”. Those top students in her program were scoring 97% and above, which translates into As vs Cs in those college disciplines.
The accuracy of those high school teacher evaluations is nothing short of amazing.
Except that is really the same issue, which I thought was obvious, and is why I ignored it.
Taking a ST in conjunction with the AP course make the ST relatively ‘easy’. “Uuuuuggggeeeee” unfair advantage to kids in top high schools and prep schools, who can offer AP’s in Soph and Jr year.
Heck, even Math 2 depends on the HS curriculum. Our HS, for whatever reason, holds out one section of precalc trig for the opening sequence of Calc BC. When my son took M2 in spring of his Jr year, he said there were a couple of questions on which he had absolutely no idea, since he had not seen the concepts before. But come September, those concepts were covered in the first week. Voila, aced the retake of M2 in Senior October. Yes, it was in time for college apps, but to get to BC by a senior, one has to be tracking from middle school. (And yes, our HS could esily move that math segment to Junior year; haven’t the faintest idea why they don’t.)
But the fact is that a typical College Prep course will not cut it for the ST’s anymore, at least for those desiring a score that starts with a 7 or 8.
That’s the beauty of the SAT. It only covers math up to Alg II, and only a handful of questions on Alg II. So it does not disadvantage kids in ‘regular’ urban high schools.
(ACT Math includes trig, btw, so a strong score requires knowledge of trig.)
Back when I was in high school, I took achievement tests (what are now SAT subject tests). I did not find them hard after just the regular high school (non-AP) courses in the subjects (and no prep besides the high school courses), and got over 700 in all of them (800 in math level 2, which about 12% of that test’s takers got back then). The (public) high school was not elite; only about a third of graduates at the time went on to four year colleges.
Students on the non-accelerated math sequence who take the SAT subject tests can take math level 1.