“Students can attend whatever discipline they want. They just have to take a placement test that is tough and subject specific. It is possible to design such tests. It has been done in other countries.”
So what happens if you want to change your major? I’m assuming your proposed system would make that much harder if not impossible. For the most part, in this country we don’t expect 16-18 year olds to commit to a major and a career for life. So not only can they often change majors easily in college, they usually take lots of courses not in their major. If you’re only admitting people based on being good at one subject, it seems like you’d largely eliminate the possibility of switching. It also seems likely that you’d end up with students who were really good in one area but not anywhere else. So you then have kids in gen-ed classes who perform terribly because they’re only good at their one subject.
Many of the countries that have tests such as you describe have students specializing much more in college, not taking classes outside the major. And often specializing more before college as well. So it’s not just a matter of designing a test. The test works within the context of a system that isn’t much like ours.
Medical school placements are different because they occur farther along the educational career path. Our system simply is not currently set up for that kind of specialization early on. For the most part–some schools and majors do work that way for initial college admission, particularly with some pre-professional type majors as well as fine arts type programs.
It seems to me that the OP is conflating two different things here:
You, OP, want to end preferential admissions for race, legacy, gender, geography, need, and athletes. (correct me if I’m wrong – not meaning to put words in your mouth). OK fine, many people voice this opinion. But this could be implemented overnight if there was will to do so – just a memo from the University President or a court order could eliminate those preferences. But even if that happened, colleges could still keep ECs, essays, interviews, portfolios, auditions, etc as part of the admissions process. You wouldn’t necessarily have to go to your rigid test proposal.
Your second argument seems to be that there can and should be a purely objective way to measure ‘academic excellence’ and then accurately rank all applicants and divvy up slots. This, many of us feel, is not realistic. Stem fields and memorization disciplines can be tested to a fair degree of accuracy. But how about artistic or creative fields, or leadership or writing?
This leaves some of us unclear whether you consider art, poetry, drama to be ‘academic fields’ (if so, how will you test for them) or if you would drop such studies from the top institutions (which would totally change the flavor of higher education)?
In some cases, because they couldn’t cut it in their home country. It is easier to get into an Ivy in this country than it is to get into some of the schools in some of these countries. They have acceptance rates of 1.5% in some cases. For these kids Ivy is a safety school. I Think there was a 60 minute episode on this once.
Most are rich kids who like the US for other reasons. The economy, the freedom, the flexibility in choosing majors, etc etc. It is very difficult for poor kids from other countries to come here. Rich kids in some of these countries can’t cut it under the strict academic system in their home countries. This directly contradicts claims that some have made here that “rich kids” do better in tests. In some of these foreign countries, poor and lower middle class kids, eat the rich kids lunch in academic exams. The rich kids thus come here
All those who believe that rich kids don’t have an advantage when it comes to testing, high-calibre ECs, and admissions to elite colleges, say Aye. …crickets…
These things are already true, and holistic admissions ideally aims to make them less true. And I 100% refute your claim that Ivies are a safety school for rich foreign kids. You are joking.
@VeryLuckyParent, I think you’re NBA analogy is flawed. In your example, you say that you want to play in the NBA, but are not qualified to do so. In the case of elite schools, and completely forgetting about extracurriculars for a minute, 75% or so of the applicants ARE academically qualified to attend, so they use the extras only as a deciding factor. I think it’s splitting hairs to give someone who scored a 2380 preference over a 2370; they’re essentially the same.
Maybe a compromise solution would be to implement a much more difficult standardized exam (one like the Chinese gaokao exam) as an alternative to act, sat, sat iis. and still keep holistic admissions. The standardized exam can be given more weight than the current ACT, SAT, AP exam scores. The fact is that to a certain section of top academic performers, current standardized tests are ridiculously easy. That subset of perfect scorers or close-to-perfect scorers apply to top colleges and find it difficult to stand out among themselves.
A much more difficult exam that tests all subject areas (maybe like the gaokao but with more interesting problems with various levels of difficulty, e.g. elementary level arithmetic to usamo-level geometry proofs) would be a good way for students to showcase individual strengths. Unlike the Chinese gaokao system which places students into colleges based on net score, this exam could simply serve as a guide for admission officers to understand students’ strengths. That way, the lopsided linguistic genius who struggles with science wouldn’t fall through the holes. Because holistic admissions is still kept, all the benefits of holistic admissions remain.
tl;dr standardized tests are too easy and 2400 sat scores don’t have that much meaning when it comes to elite admissions. A harder test (given more weight to admissions than a plain old act score) + holistic admissions should be implemented.
Respectfully, you have just demonstrated either a lack of knowledge on the subject or purposeful ignorance. Go read the Athletic Recruits section and them come back.
“Just as there is performance criteria for playing sport at the professional level, there should be the same rigor to get into the elite institutions in the US.”
Ha! And isn’t making it to practice, being a team player, not just performing for your own stats and aggrandizement but for the good of the whole, etc, etc, part of what matters in choosing players?
But colleges aren’t allowed to look beyond stats? Competition for slots at the tippy tops is so fierce that, hey, you can choose kids who are academically solid and offer that more that enhances the team.
OP doesn’t seem to like the team part.
And as long as this is meant to be a chance to bat back at our responses, we won’t see much development in OP’s position. One of the qualities tippy tops do look for in candidates is an open-mindedness and ability to grow in their thinking.
The elite schools are more than just elite reading, 'riting & 'rithmetic. Non-academic talent is relevant, too.
That said, except for athletics, other non-academic talents seem not to be judged fairly. Playing the cello or being a champion debater should not be upgraded or downgraded as an EC, on the basis of race.
How would that work exactly? I thought you were using one test to rank everyone, but if students who are interested in engineering have to show proficiency in the sciences and math then it seems like there must be different tests for different types of majors.
So under your system you give your test (or tests) and rank everyone.
Do only the top 2% of scorers in every field get to study that major?
What happens if a kid takes the science exam but ends up wanting to do humanities or vice versa?
Can kids take multiple tests? If so, what happens if their score on one garners them a much better rank than the other test(s)?
How do you determine which major gets first choice at colleges?
How many students do you let choose at once? You have to avoid having too high a yield, I suppose, so maybe you'd have to limit the size of the groups based on how many seats the smallest Ivy has. If you let, say, 2k kids pick at once, what happens when there are 15 seats at Harvard and 1900 people want them?
What happens to average and lower scorers? What fields are open to them?
While this system is used for medical residency matching (but not medical school admission) and university admission and matriculation in some other countries, it would be difficult to make it work for university admission and matriculation in the US, due to the added variable of net price after financial aid and scholarships (in the examples where it is used, the financial aspects of the various choices do not vary as much and are known to applicants beforehand). It is used in a very limited manner in the US by Questbridge National College Match, but all choices within that program are basically full rides, so that the financial aspects vary little and are known beforehand.
If such a system were used in the US generally, universities would have to give binding financial aid reads to pre-applicants (a large burden on their financial aid offices), or applicants would have to state their price limits for each ranked university (so that they will not get matched to a university that they are unable or unwilling to pay for). The former would probably be unworkable except at universities which are willing to do financial aid in an automated way (i.e. their net price calculators); the latter would be seen as unfavorable for applicants in that universities could just offer each applicant his/her maximum net price. In addition, many applicants do not have a firm ranked list, but could have a different rank order based on net price (e.g. applicant likes universities A, B, and C approximately equally, but lowest net price will break the tie), so they would lose the ability to choose among their admissions by net price.
Just not the system we have here, which has been and continues to work.
Btw, more than academic proficiency is needed from engineering candidates. Some arbitrary testing % guideline might make on heck of a mess.
This is because the SAT has been massively dumbed down since 1994. Back then, scores of 800 were difficult in any one section, and there was no superscoring. Score differences of 50 points were meaningful, and the test was difficult to coach.
If colleges wanted to know the real differences between students at the top end, all they would need is the pre-1995 SAT. They don’t want that, apparently.
EDIT: I just saw that debate4ever said the same thing.
The old SAT was not particularly difficult to coach, at least for those test takers who had deficiencies in test taking skills. But coaching and test preparation back then was not as common as it is now.
The content of the old SAT did not really distinguish between the top end students, unless the goal was to find out who had the largest English vocabulary of sometimes-obscure words (the verbal section then was primarily a vocabulary test, with a few read-the-passage-and-answer-a-few-questions parts). The math section was just lower level algebra and geometry, so top end students typically got top end scores on that.
I’ll answer this from the perspective of a parent: I wouldn’t want my kid to go to a college where all that got them in was a high score on a standardized test. At an elite college, I’d want my kid to be surrounded by creative people, argumentative people, original thinkers…people with different life experiences…people with different paths and ways to get there…people who started fast and people who are starting slowly…
Kids who know how to look at a lesson and absorb it enough to get an A (or a 1600) every time are fine…but I would be looking for much more than that when it comes to giving a college hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In terms of “different life experiences”, those who did not grow up in the top 2-3% SES may find it interesting to encounter such a large concentration of the scions of the top 2-3% SES families (i.e. the half who do not get financial aid).
In terms of “people who started fast and people who are starting slowly”, the elite colleges are mostly filled with those who started fast enough to get straight A or close to that starting in 9th grade. A later bloomer is unlikely to have the academic record to be competitive.
Huh? You can have all these qualities in spades but if you are less than a stellar basketball player, you are not going to be in the NBA. That’s just the reality, because the NBA is extremely competitive with too many folks wanting to play at the professional level and too few slots. Same is true with the NFL. There is very high cut-off in terms of playing ability that is expected. You are deliberately ignoring this obvious fact. The NBA will never accept the notion that a “An Asian or White who can play well enough, should be given a spot on the team, instead of a high performing black player” Talent matters
And btw come on, the NBA definitely has players that are “all about their performances”. Some of them have also led controversial and less than stellar lives. All that is just a distraction though. You have to play at the HIGHEST LEVEL to get into the NBA or the NFL. Just playing “well enough” or “almost as good” is not tolerated.
I am not advocating selection based on a flawed and ridiculous test like the SAT/ACT, which are essentially aptitude tests.
I think students must be tested on what they have learned and the tests should be tough and meaningful, so that the real good students can be isolated from the not so good ones. Designing such tests is not rocket science. IT can be done and it can lead to a much more meaningful tiering of students. based on their command of the material.
But I am advocating that academics should be the single most important criteria for selection in highly selective undergraduate institutions and should trump everything else. This is education at the college level. Excellence in academics should drive selection. We clearly do this at the graduate level, where EC’s and other factors don’t play such a big role. If you disagree with this, then we are starting off with completely different premises and so will reach very different conclusions.
@austinmshauri Many countries do these kinds of tests that really test content. There are model tests like the USMLE (US), LNAT (UK), GATE(India), Gaokao(China). The last one can prove as a starting point on how we do this in the US.
Now I am not advocating that we blindly follow this model. We can make changes to it to fit the US, but this is a very different model from how we do college admissions here. We need to get serious with how we recruit students into our elite schools. These are precious limited resources. Using non academic criteria to fill seats is a long term disservice to our country, specially in this globalized economy.
I strongly believe that if you want to go to a super selective school, with high research output and a lot of resources, you need to be among the best in the country academically. Otherwise there are a lot of other schools that give a good education. You can choose to go there. Right now our ways of measuring academic preparation is severely flawed and based on aptitude tests like the SAT/ACT which are a joke.
Analogous to elite college admissions, pure performance in the sport is not the only factor when teams draft new players or offer contracts to free agents. Within the range of players at the highest level of performance in their sport, the teams also consider such factors as injury tendency (a player is no help if unable to play due to injury, and of limited help if playing is limited due to injury risk), off-field/court behavior (a tendency to get into trouble with the law is not publicity that a team wants, and legal problems can keep the player away from games), being a team player (versus a stat-padder), etc…
