Didn’t Asian parents feel the same way about Harvard? I haven’t really followed the story but any time holistic admissions is involved nothing is clear.
Your earlier posts stated the following about eliminating any impediment increasing portion of admits who are low SES. If you no longer feel this way and think it is only the greater impairment, then it is close enough to my view that I see no reason to continue the discussion.
All admission criteria (other than hooks and tips) are, by definition, impediments to admissions, particularly to low-SES applicants. If any one of them, whether it’s standardized testing, essays or ECs, is relaxed or removed, we should expect to see a greater proportion of admits who come from low SES.
elimination (or relaxation) of any admission criterion/impediment, not just testing, will make the student body more representative of the population
Hmmm, it sure seemed like you were suggesting that efforts to increase low SES enrollment were going to backfire, but I guess I must have misunderstood you when you wrote that, while universities claim that “whatever mud hut of an admissions process they made up was a big step towards social justice,” the “logical outcome of the process is going to be exactly the opposite of what those that designed the process claimed it will be.”
Regardless, let’s focus on this notion that the UC system is squeezing the middle class by going test blind.
As @Data10 points out, the major flaw in this theory is that the kids at the higher SES schools are much more likely to have test scores that are even higher than would be predicted by their grades. In other words, considering the test scores is much more likely to bolster the advantage of the rich kid rather than put that middle class kid "back in contention.” You are right that the deck is stacked in favor of the rich, but the trump card is test scores, and in this regard the rich kids at fancy schools might as well be shooting the moon.
Except they are not directly competing against "kids of the rich,” at least not in the manner you suggest. UC does not engage in a “mud hut of an admissions process.” It is aware that top kids at top schools generally have marginally higher grades, and it is aware of the reasons why. It considers grades in the context of what the school has to offer. This is true for low SES kids, for mid SES kids, and for high SES kids.
Is that why the prep schools are so effective at feeding T20 schools? Because the colleges are all aware of what is going on at each high school?
Maybe I define social justice more broadly than you do. I believe that any process that clearly favors privilege is a big step away from social justice. Others seem to believe that conflating their position with social justice means that their position is actually a step towards social justice. Different strokes for different folks.
Data10’s cited study looks back decades. As I said earlier, it might as well be from the 19th century.
One of the challenges with this discussion is that the anti-test people simply ignore clear problems with going TO or test blind. The fact that TO and test blind is so transparently an effort by the top schools to solicit more applications in order to drive acceptance rates down that US News has removed acceptance rate from its ranking criteria. The fact that the corollary of making the top schools appear more exclusive is that the bottom schools, which serve a much larger portion of the population, are now struggling for students because the top schools have successfully sold a big chunk of the market on “T20 or Bust”. The fact that anti-test people would have to believe that high school administrators were consistent, objective, rational assessors of students’ capabilities when giving grades while at the same time willing to ignore the obvious self-interest they have for inflating grades. The fact that when 25% or more of a high school class is bunched up at the top in a tiny corner of the grade distribution, then differences between students’ grades become meaningless for the purposes of comparing students. The fact that the anti-test people refuse to acknowledge the obvious logical conclusion of their position, which is that a 3.8, 1000 SAT is a better candidate than a 3.7, 1500 SAT. The fact that the U of C’s own faculty opposed this position. None of these things matter or are even considered in this discussion.
The anti-test position is absolute, and not open for compromise. No tests. The pro test position is for AO’s to use the test if it helps or ignore it if they want. It is a sign of the times we live in that the more rigid position is increasingly an acceptable one.
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You are wrong about this. It is a common misconception, so understandable. May have been that way historically, but it isn’t anymore. Instead of going off on that tangent, though, I invite you to read the multiple threads discussing it.
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I’m not sure what you think this has to do with the topic at hand, but the main reason prep schools are “so effective at feeding T20 schools” is that, like top 20 schools, many of these prep schools engage highly selective admissions practices. They admit kids who fit the top 20 profile; academically excellent, great test scores, top athletes, legacies, ability to pay, etc.With regard to test scores in particular, the result is that some of these prep schools have a significantly higher average SAT score than UCLA or Berkeley, and much more so than the rest of the UCs.
And whatever may be happening at other T20 schools, UC Is well aware of what is going on at each California high school. It understands that the deck is stacked at College Prep, Harvard Wsstlake, Castilleja, Gunn, Cate, etc. it knows that at these places test scores are a trump card, so it is trying change the game.
The real irony here is your insistence that kids at these schools would somehow benefit if tests aren’t considered. Some of these schools have more Nat’l Merit Semifinalists than entire States and a 1540 SAT is considered a meh score.
You weren’t talking about your definition of “social justice.”
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The are a variety of contributing factors, but in my opinion the biggest contributing factor is that the prep schools with highest admit rate generally have highly selective admissions based on a similar criteria to what colleges look for. In short, kids attending the selective prep school are pre-selected to be the type of kids that are likely to have a good shot at T20 type colleges. The kids who are not competitive at T20 type colleges generally don’t get accepted to selective prep HSs.
If you mean that SAT has a much higher correlation with income than GPA, I don’t have anything more recent than 2011 for the UC population. Do you have anything to suggest the contrary? i do not mean a news story talking about grade inflation – I mean anything to indicating HS GPA is more correlated with income than SAT/ACT scores? And if HS GPA really is more correlated with income than GPA scores, then why do you think all of UCs had an increased portion of lower income kids when they increased relative weight on GPA upon going test blind?
That’s a new theory that I haven’t heard before. USNWR had been weighting acceptance rate at 1% for years, then dropped it from 1% to 0% at some point well before COVID-driven test optional. USNWR claimed they dropped it to make room for other new metrics. You believe the drop from 1% to 0% was to prevent test optional colleges from gaming the rankings?
So you believe that a large portion of students have a “T20 or bust” attitude and will choose to not attend any college, if they do not get accepted to a T20 college, and somehow test optional caused this? Have you ever met or heard of a student who has ever had this attitude of either get accepted to T20 or choose to not attend college… or read any publication that mentions such students? Or are you instead ignoring the explanations listed in the article you quoted about why fewer students are enrolling in community college in recent years, and instead assuming it is due to a “T20 or bust” caused by test optional?
There is some irony with you criticizing others for “refusing to acknowledge,” when you keep bringing up the same statements over and over, seemingly refusing to acknowledge the valid criticisms. Nobody has suggested admitting based solely on GPA in isolation at any highly selective college I am aware of, including test blind UC.
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I see the test-blind policy as a tool used by the UC regents to increase the proportion of URMs at UCLA and Berkeley, and to promote the “lesser” UCs. Such UCLA-Berkeley rejects (large number of whom will undoubtedly be Asian and Whites), would be invited to consider other campuses. Perhaps the Asian-American students in California should just gather up their marbles and play somewhere else (goal posts have been moved again), at say, UC-Merced and prosper there, thus causing the regents to once again limit the number of Asians at Merced when that happens.
Chinese-Americans students were banned from attending public schools with other White students in California until the late 1920s; once allowed into the mainstream, they have done well, in fact so well, that in the early 1970s, efforts were put forth to limit the number of Chinese-American students at the admission-by-tests Lowell High School in San Francisco, which had recently adopted the admission-by-lottery policy. It is rather enlightening that almost 100 years after the repeal of the school segregation law described above, Asian-Americans are facing similar challenges and road blocks.
I’m not sure our views are “close enough”. I think we differ on what we think will happen with the elimination of the standardized testing requirement. Correct me if I’m wrong but you seem to think that the weight that was given to standardized testing will be shifted completely, or almost completely, to HS GPAs/transcripts, which you believe are less of an impediment to low SES students than test scores. I, on the other hand, believe HS grades/transcripts aren’t going to be discriminating enough now, and will become even less discriminating for reasons I posted earlier, for the colleges. As a result, admission evaluation will be weighted more heavily toward other (and more subjective) criteria. Those other criteria are even bigger impediments to low-SES students, IMO.
Colleges that have been often cited to have increased enrollment of certain demographic groups have all targeted these groups using standardized test scores. None of them uses HSGPAs to target these students, because they know test scores, rather than grades, are what make many of these disadvantaged students stand out.
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Gunn is a neighborhood public school, not a school that admits by test scores. But its neighborhood includes places where Stanford faculty live, so it had a “good school” reputation for decades. Of course, that attracted people with money bidding up the house prices.
You are saying a lot of inflammatory things in this post, which are difficult to respond to without fanning the flames more. I do have a sincere question, though, which I hope will be received in the spirit it was intended- to figure out an assumption underlying your post.
Why does it follow that qualified Asians won’t be recognized for their talents just because SATs go away? The brilliant, hard-working, community-oriented students regardless of race still will have great GPAs and ECs and rigor, etc.
Boiled down, the problem being addressed is that there are too few spots for all of the qualified students. If one metric used to fill those slots can be gamed, as clearly the SAT can be and is, then stands to reason that metric will come under fire, and admissions policies recalibrated. I don’t see why that process is inherently racist.
Your “take all their marbles” comment confuses me. The UCs are overflowing with qualified students, especially in impacted majors. Merced is well on its way reputationally and no booby prize. Merced is what the solution to “not enough spots, too many qualified applicants” looks like in real time. It is at the point now that there aren’t spots to redirect students to at Merced. And your comment sounds like there is a problem with UCs redirecting, which I don’t follow. Seems inconsistent to accuse the UCs of something nefarious when they are addressing the underlying problem of overflowing schools in a concrete way. Why is that inherently racist?
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I wonder what the venn diagram of CC posters who are anti-test and pro-prep school looks like. I bet it is close to a perfect circle.
Edit: I typed the post too quickly the first time.
I wouldn’t be so sure.
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Nope, not even close.
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"It is at the point now that there aren’t spots to redirect students to at Merced. "
Are you sure about that? Per IPEDS, UCM has an 85% acceptance rate, and I’d bet that most of those rejections were applications that were auto-rejects due to not fulfilling a-g requirements. (Many students apply to UC with the plan to complete the a-g requirements senior year – coursework and/or grades – but are unsuccessful, so are ineligible for UC.)
As an aside, UCM, a research University, has lower test scores than our local Cal State.
(Assuming you mean SAT/ACT scores from before both UC and CSU went test-blind.)
Do you live in or near San Luis Obispo, San Diego, Long Beach, or (maybe) San Jose or Pomona?
No, I don’t. I probably stated that admissions will not be solely based on HS GPA in a dozen different posts in this thread, including in the final sentence of my most recent post from last night. I have also gone in to detail about the about the number of different criteria and relative weighting. If you search for “Hout”, there are some comments specific to relative weighting of different criteria at Berkeley. I’ve also gone in to detail about what existing non-score criteria has the most overlap with the information gained by test scores and could best replace scores with different relative weightings (it’s not GPA in isolation).
That may be your opinion, but if you look at who gets admitted with and without submitting test scores at test optional colleges, it doesn’t support your opinion. Without exception, at every test optional college that reports this stat (includes dozens of colleges), admitted kids who submit scores always average higher income than admitted kids who do not submit scores and are instead admitted based on the non-score criteria. Low-SES students as a whole are more likely to be admitted based on the non-score criteria that in your opinion are bigger impediments to their admission. Perhaps you are underestimating the degree of correlation between score and income. Some numbers from the Chetty study (more recent one, published in 2020) are below:
1500+ SAT Kids – 67% have top quintile income, 84% have top 2 quintile income, 2% have bottom quintile income
1400+ SAT Kids – 59% have top quintile income, 79% have top 2 quintile income, 3% have bottom quintile income
You lost me. Maybe you are referring to the Harvard lawsuit comments about Harvard sending mailers based on PSAT score and having different score thresholds for sending a mailer, depending on race? In any case, colleges can and do use other methods besides test scores to increase enrollment of URMs, including going test optional. See the previously linked Ithaca study for a more detailed discussion. When trying to increase enrollment of low SES, changing financial aid is often relevant.
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negative
Alternate ending . . .
None of them uses HSGPAs to target these students, because College Board sells licenses to use test scores, not HS transcripts.
I am curious as to why you think that parents of kids who generally perform well on standardized tests would be uniformly against using such tests for admissions?
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Forgot to mention Fullerton.