slightly off topic, but Berkeley Law (they dropped the Boalt moniker) has long favored GPA over LSAT. (and is one of the few T14 to place much greater weight on grades)
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Why is the burden of proof on me? Most of the anti-test ādataā consists of self-serving statements from universities claiming that whatever mud hut of an admissions process they made up is a big step towards social justice. I guess we can wrap any process in a social justice blanket and suddenly it is morally superior. Even if the obvious, logical outcome of the process is going to be exactly the opposite of what those that designed the process claimed it will be. There is no logical reason why eliminating standardized tests is necessary to increase URM enrollment. One is not a necessary precursor to the other, and for the universities to claim otherwise is deceptive.
One other BIG problem with relying on GPA is that high school grade inflation has pushed an increasing percentage of every student body, and by extension the nationwide applicant pool, into the far right portion of the distribution. With so many students nationwide with almost perfect grades, very slight differences take on an importance far beyond the proportional difference in the results. The difference between a 3.8 and 3.7 can be a couple of tougher teachers than another student got, but when there is no other benchmark for comparison, suddenly that difference is insurmountable.
GPAās are subjective. Over time, as more and more grades are aggregated, they will be directionally accurate, but not with a level of precision that makes them valid as effectively the sole academic basis for comparison of applicants. Especially when some schools have 20-25% of their student body with grades of 3.7 or better.
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If SAT/ACT serve any purpose, they serve an academic purpose, not a political purpose. Do you want the Faculty Senate or a group of political appointees to determine whether something serves an academic purpose?
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To make a convincing claim that goes against existing evidence, one needs to show some kind of support for that claim. If no evidence is available to support the contrary claim, at least something to suggest how you came to the contrary conclusion. Given that kids who apply/matriculate test optional are more more likely to be lower SES + URM and many colleges have had a noteworthy increase in these lower SES + URM groups after going test optional, why will going test optional/blind lead to enrolling āthe wealthiest among every ethnic and gender subset of applicantsā?
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Bottom line is adults are totally failing many of Californiaās K-12 kids and itās a tough problem to solve. The pandemic (and some District Board management or lack thereof) only made things worse. In our district and state the following is being considered: āequity gradingā, removal of calculus from high school, elimination of honors track level courses. Kids who didnāt attend school or do assignments are able to take no credits on their gpas.
Until there is a systemic public education overhaul, reduced power in the teachers unions, and greater accountability and support for students I suspect UC admissions will continue to be controversial, unpredictable and unfair, including to many of the the top 9% kids they are supposed to serve. The volume of applications due to test blind policy will only exacerbate that state of affairs.
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No burden, but Iām sure you understand why some might not give your assertion much credence absent any evidence or explanation. And while you are free to mock the āmud hutā admissions process, at least these AOās have attempted to explain their reasoning.
Interesting. Now that you mention it, I seem to recall that this practice goes way, way back, although maybe not to the same degree. Yet Berkeley has still managed to continue to graduate top attorneys. Go figure?
It is debatable the degree to which these tests āserve an academic purposeā or how closely tailored they are to meeting the academic goals of the UCs. Regardless, the UC system has a broader mission than simply gathering together the students who are most likely to succeed academically, no matter their circumstance, and the Board of Trustees has to deal with broader concerns, such equity, fairness, lawsuits, and whether the UC is serving its broader purpose for the whole state. So I donāt think it is clear cut who should be making the call. Further, the Faculty Senate Report was far from a full-throated endorsement of standardized tests. It was more of an attempt to kick the can down the road until more information could be gathered and other alternatives explored.
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It sounds like youāre saying that the decision should be political. If we turn an education issue into a political one, we have no one but ourselves to blame when politics are injected into other educational issues all over the country. Weāre already a divided country at the moment. Iām not sure we need another divisive issue.
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Education has long been a political issue. Indeed, it would be surprising if admission policies at more than minimally selective public universities did not get frequently politicized, and cost and financial aid policies also. More broadly, public education of any kind is based on political ideas of what education all or some people should have the opportunity to try, and not all people agree on what that should be or what rationing decisions should be made if there are limited government resources to spend on education.
You may or may not agree with any particular political viewpoint, but it is not like education is non-political.
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Sounds like you are creating a false dichotomy between the āacademicā and āpoliticalā goals.
The mission of the UC system has always been shaped by factors which you dismissively term āpolitical.ā
- For example it has long been a mission of the UC system to provide educational access across the entire state, thus the top 9% local eligibility rule.
- The automatic enrollment of qualified Community College students is another policy aimed at increasing the reach of the university into underserved and underrepresented demographics.
In other words, goals you might try to dismiss as "political " are core to the UC systemās academic mission. For example, compare UCLA to the other āeliteā institutions, public and private (per Economic diversity and student outcomes at U.C.L.A. - The New York Times):
- Despite being in one of the richest states, UCLA has the highest percentage of students from the bottom 20% income bracket of any āeliteā college in the nation.
- UCLA also has the lowest percentage of students whose families are from the top 20% income bracket.
- Despite the school being sandwiched between some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country, the parents of UCLA students have the lowest average income of any āeliteā school in the country.
- UCLA is also tops in mobility, meaning that a higher percentage of UCLA students move up at least two income quintiles compared to any other āeliteā school.
These things arenāt coincidental. They are by design. The UC system is the premier system in the nation in part because of policies which allow students from across the state and from various backgrounds a chance at a world class education. And these policies have tremendous academic value. To try to dismiss such decisions as merely āpoliticalā is to defy reality and ignore the tremendous academic accomplishment of the UC system.
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Politics is supposed to be the art of governing. But it seems to be the art of division right now. Yes, education has become a political issue unfortuantely, as we have witnessed in the recent elections. Politicians figured out how to gerrymander and how to divide the electorate in order to win elections. The issue of standardized testing, for example, is going to, at the minimum, pit one group of minorities against another. It will have consequences in many parts of the country, even in California.
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Education hasnāt become any more āpoliticalā that it has always been. And underhanded maneuvering to control elections isnāt new either. (Ever hear of Jim Crow?)
And regarding standardized tests, while some are desperately trying to turn groups of minorities against each other for their own political gain, they may not end up being as successful as you apparently expect.
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Political leaders get to set the goals, but competent political leaders rely upon subject matter experts on how to achieve those goals.
What the Regents did is not only decide upon the goals, but declared themselves the experts on how to achieve those goals. An analogy would be the President not just deciding upon a military option, but declaring himself the expert on which guns are best used for that military option.
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Iām not sure you understand how important the issue of education is to some groups. Why do you think Asian Americans are overrepresented in elite schools (private or public) across the country? The biggest reason is that they value education more than almost any other ethnic group. For many of them, this is the single biggest issue that overrides almost any other issue.
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You sure have a lot of mistaken ideas about what I do and donāt āunderstand.ā
You are also making thus far unsubstantiated assumptions about how test blind admissions will impact the UC system.
What would that look like? And who would be eligible? Can underperforming students get extra-credit (boost) if they perform better than expected? Should high performing students suffer a penalty if they benefit from inequitable advantages? Imagine an āequity gradingā GPA being introduced.
Fascinating (and disturbing) that we obsess over the symptoms rather than addressing the root causes.
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Harrison Bergeron provides a solution on how to solve that problem:
Weāre suffering from a mistaken understanding of ādiversityā. Diversity isnāt proportionality. Diversity is an inherent and essential property of nature. Itās what allows the process of natural selection to take place since the beginning of life on this planet. Some crops grow better in some regions and some other crops grow better in some other regions. Some people are more talented in some areas and some other people are more talented in some other areas. Nature itself will ensure that we continue to diversify in a broad sense. The natural process will inevitably go out of equilibrium from time to time, and sometimes may seem far out of equilibrium, but the very nature will also inevitably restore that equilibrium. The farther out of equilibrium it is, the faster the restoration.
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Speaking of evolution-related subjects ā¦ itās pretty clear this thread has devolved into the closing lane.
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Great referenceā¦
And so it goes.
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