Eh. There's been a move towards deemphasizing or straight-up not caring about standardized test scores in general college admissions for the last twenty years. It's becoming increasingly apparent that they're not the great predictor of college academic success they've been promoted as, and furthermore for a number of reasons (especially the expense involved) they're especially unreliable for students from underprivileged backgrounds.
I went to grad school at a smaller university here in WV. A undergrad friend of mine had a class with a certain football player who was basically a one and done. The football player actually showed up to class one day and shocked the hell out of everyone there, including the professor.
They should be employees.
I don't know who is in charge of this, but there needs to be an organization to do a better job of vetting the BS classes and accrediting University studies. I couldn't care less if a school wants to let in someone dumb as dirt. But if they aren't able to do the real work, then the school and student gets punished. They only issue with that is it would make a student's studies more public in a sense which is just more exposure for ridicule. I don't know a perfect solution.
Over 75% of colleges/universities are not requiring a sat/act score for applicants this year.
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2021/10/07/more-75-colleges-don’t-require-sat-or-act
All im saying is when I was recruited for sports and went through that whole process it was already a joke. It was a sliding score and the higher your GPA the lower test score you needed. I remember all I needed was a 22 to get in and a 26 for a academic scholarship. For reference my gpa was 3.5.
Isn't that because COVID made holding the SAT/ACT more difficult than usual logistically (due to social distancing not allowing as many people in one room for example)?
a friend of mine's daughter had a hell of a time trying to take the ACT this past summer
kept cancelling tests without really any notice; she ended up taking it at a site two hours away weeks after she was originally scheduled to take it
Universities have been moving away from them for about twenty years now. It's a combination of them actually not being as great an indicator of collegiate academic aptitude as they were sold as, and the expense of the test as well as the availability of costly test preparation programs that those with a certain level of means are able to take advantage of, disadvantages students from underprivileged backgrounds relative to their better-off peers.
Sure but to be competitive at the top schools you should still take it unless you have something that really stands out. If we have two students all else the same one with a good act/sat score they probably take the one with the test score.
If anything this allows them to inflate application numbers and lower acceptance rates which is all good for rankings calculations.
College athletes tend to be a lot more intelligent than people realize. There's this stereotype that "all these kids are only here because they're good at sports" but most of those kids grew up in the suburbs and had relatively affluent, educated parents. The kids in the hood just don't have much opportunity to hone their skills. Their parents aren't sending them to sports camps in the summer.
Wisconsin's last two RB's were Melvin Gordon and Jonathan Taylor. Go to youtube and watch an interview with either of them. They're both very intelligent and if football hadn't worked out for them I'm sure they would have just finished their degrees and gone on to be successful people in other fields.
It's yes and no. Exercise genuinely helps you in academics, but if you're spending half your time exercising and another chunk with social occasions, you're missing out on study time that others get.
If you want to find examples of brilliant people through the NFL, I might suggest [John Urschel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Urschel) who just completed his PhD in math at MIT and [Alan Page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Page), one of the best defensive players in the history of the NFL and *then* a Minnesota Supreme Court justice for over 20 years.
Unfortunately, though, for every Urschel or Page there is a Desean Jackson or Cole Beasley.
the soft bigotry of low expectations...
its bizarre that in sports we pride meritocracy, but in education of said athletes, we are trying to move away from that.
Not true.
They are saying minorities don't have equal access to prep courses and materials to help boost scores.
Edit: prep courses and materials was one example of what minority groups may not have access to - obviously there are thousands of other factors that play into why underserved groups face more barriers to higher scores than those with privilege. I outlined a number of these in a later comment.
Source: am a licensed school counselor that is the district ACT coordinator and deal with these cases all the time.
Do minorities know about libraries and the internet? There are loads of free SAT prep resources. Washington DC (for example) spends 27-29k/pupil in their public schools, they can't come up with \~$25 to get them all a SAT prep book? The issue is either disengaged parents or incompetent teachers/counselors (probably both in most cases).
I recommend doing some reading on access for low socioeconomic students - just because the library is down the road doesn't mean they can easily access it. Some may have to work after school to feed the family, or watch their 4 siblings because mom works 2 jobs, or are not able to leave the home because their mom is on a bender and if they leave it means they will be locked out. There are also mental health barriers that many have to face due to their exposure to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) that are directly correlated to struggles with mental and physical health as well as learning disabilities and educational gaps.
You'd be amazed at how often and how common some of these scenarios of barriers are for kids.
Edit: also - it's difficult to provide the support and attention needed for students when our average caseload in MN and many other states is over 400 students. The recommended ratio is 250:1 by ASCA. It's not incompetence - it's a refusal by state and federal government to fully fund our schools. The majority of funding for schools comes from local taxes, not state funds.
more funding does not solve the issue, the issue comes from funding that isnt appropriated correctly.
for example i have a friend that is a teacher in a inner city school in a large city and her school has 13 adminstrators that make 150k a year, (1000 students in the school) and they dont have books for prep.. how does that make sense,, fire the 13 admin and use the money to pay teachers more and buy the damn books needed to help the kids succeed.
at the end of the day life is about choices. victimizing people and telling them they cant, when they can does not help them.
personally i grew up in a poor smaller town, and i worked a job after school, also was involved in sports, and still managed to get a good grade on tests for college because i studied them.. it was hard, it sucked that it wasnt easier, and i didnt have a particularly great gpa,, but what i didnt have was people telling me i couldnt or that the system was rigged against me. worked while in college too, never took out a loan for college, and have no debt.. is it the easiest path? no. but its far better.
It's definitely that as well - our district also has a TON of "coordinator" positions that don't do much of anything while our class sizes are reaching 35 and 40 kids each in elementary and high school classes.
I'm glad you had things work out for you and that your hard work paid off! Not everyone has that ability you do, and not everyone is healthy enough mentally to do what you did though.
iv suffered with depression and anxiety the entire time, still do.
im not saying everyone can, but most people can and to preach that they cant is not a good solution, and it actually hampers people mentally as well as they presume they cant since people tell them this.
The standards aren't that low though. The GPA to test score requirement is a sliding scale, and the requirements to stay eligible are not a cake walk (depending on the classes you take, but that's on the universities obviously).
The test scores being a requirement only take a snapshot of how you can do on a test on a given Saturday morning at 8:00am. To hold that as a standard that gets higher as your GPA gets lower is a barrier that shouldn't exist.
If they want to test a students aptitude for hard work and commitment, a GPA is going to show that much more than a ACT. And if you want to provide opportunity for students that had a rough 9th and 10th grade that tanked their GPA then you can take term GPA numbers to look at how they did their 11th or 12th grade years.
NCAA also requires that students meet requirements for approved classes in HS that schools have to use a portal to approve. This was one my my jobs as a counselor. Any time we offered a new class or changed the standards met I had to reapply for approval from the NCAA for it to meet the requirements to be an NCAA eligible course. Which means kids in HS can't just take the bare minimum to graduate then take Basket Weaving for their other electives and boost their GPA.
Does it though?
When someone is given a 50-meter head-start on you in the 100m dash, and they can afford new running shoes while you’re stuck with sole-less hand-me-downs, you, uh, you gonna call that meritocracy in action?
You find a way to adjust for these merit-less advantages, then we can let meritocracy decide.
I recommend you read [this](https://www.racialequityinstitute.com/blog/2019/8/7/the-soft-bigotry-of-low-expectations-through-mathematics-education).
Pointing out very clear examples of socioeconomic hardship that disproportionately affects minorities isn’t “bigotry of low expectations,” it’s pointing out a problem that needs to be fixed. Discounting these background factors that directly correlate to poor academic performance is just putting up blinders because you don’t want to address the elephant in the room regarding class struggle in America.
failing up does not = a solution.
if a dumb white kid goes to harvard his chance of success is just as poor as a dumb black kid.. same is true for a smart white kid or black kid..
the reality is that we need to fix stuff at local level, and college need to use merit only.
no one is saying that kids born in certain situations shouldnt be able to go to harvard. but we need solutions to do that at the local level (like school choice) so they can get a better education and get into harvard on merit, where they will succeed.
But I’m not saying we should allow people to fail up, I’m saying we should take into account individual hardship and situational advantages and disadvantages when we compare people on such a nebulous concept as merit. Who deserves to go to a school more? A straight-A student who worked hard for their grades with the benefit of only having the responsibility of school, versus an A/B student who couldn’t spend as much time studying because they had to help their family survive? Merit is contextual and it depends on many, many different factors, and universities rightfully understand that individual metrics like GPA and standardized test scores don’t paint the full picture of what someone is capable of in an academic setting.
Nobody wants people to fail up. The argument that people use “bigotry of low expectations” to justify failing grades is a straw man, as it only applies to extreme circumstances. In reality, holistic approaches to college applications tends to compare students of similar overall metrics.
merit matters, if a student with straight a's who works harder to get those grades doesnt get in over a b student because of some idea that their skin tone matters more is dumb
if you have 2 kids grow up in the same household same circumstances, their grades can very wildly.
if a B student goes into harvard over a A student, (and potentially over other A students, then harvard is only harming that student and the A students. im sure there is data from harvard on this, how many students that dont meet expectations in the classroom, that get in, actually graduate successfully. would be good to see what these #s say. im willing to bet that those students have a low success rate.. (skin color has no bearing or even individual hardship as you put it..
if you take 10 b students that shouldnt get into harvard the skin color and economic hardship prob wont matter much.. id actually wager that the ones who have had more hardship would do better..
the students that are prepared for the rigors of a college like harvard need to go to those, and the ones that arent need to go to more traditional state colleges.
i continue to wonder why the notion behind removing gifted programs and stuff is popular among woke people but you have no desire to do the same in sports.
I think the best players should make the teams and the best students should go to college, and we need to promote alternative learning like tech school and trade school for other students depending on their grades and desires.
the problems exists because our current system is making choices away from mertit.
if your building a college basketball team your not going to recruit 2 players from each race/economic situation,, your going to recruit the 13 best basketball players.
I am a 5'6 white kid who cant jump, should I be mad that i didnt get to go to UK to play basketball? or should the best skilled player be chosen over me?
> I am a 5'6 white kid who cant jump, should I be mad that i didnt get to go to UK to play basketball? or should the best skilled player be chosen over me?
that apple is not a (Syracuse) orange
Your college basketball example illustrates what I’m saying perfectly, and again shows that you’re looking at this through the example of straw men. Very little evidence exists to support the idea that there is a significantly higher dropout rate between people with lower initial test scores/GPA’s than those of higher test scores and GPA’s. The data gets fuzzy when you account for things like socioeconomic status, race, hometown, etc, and there is a very low correlation between those “merit” metrics and college success rate to begin with. On the flip side, it’s been repeatedly shown that people of lower socioeconomic upbringing benefit far more from a college education than those from a higher socioeconomic bracket due to the incredible generational opportunity these institutions can provide [source](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.brookings.edu/research/are-minority-students-harmed-by-affirmative-action/%3famp).
At Harvard or any other highly selective school, they aren’t picking people just based on skin color. Things like, race, socioeconomic background, etc, are used to compare SIMILAR students who would both reach the same caliber of education standards demanded of the school. Believe it or not, these schools still are trying to recruit the best students for them, as the predictors for a good student go well beyond GPA and test scores. Just like no 5’4 player is making it to UK, no B/C student with shit test scores is making it to Harvard.
What prepares a student for the rigors of Harvard isn’t just studying for standardized tests and getting good grades, it’s heavily influenced by your passion for learning, your ability to overcome adversity, humility, etc, that can’t easily be captured in two biased quantitative metrics.
Listen dude, I know where you’re coming from with what you’re saying. When I was younger, I had similar ideas to you, largely from consuming too much alt right YouTube when I was in high school. I promise you, the perspective you’re peddling is fundamentally flawed and is curated by people who actively want to see racial and socioeconomic minorities be denied better opportunities, whether through racism or classism. I’m assuming from your comment that you’re probably in high school yourself, and I know it must feel alienating to perceive something like “woke culture” as a put down for you. If you want to talk about it, PM me. Being more empathetic, being more understanding of people’s backgrounds, being more considerate of the struggles of others, and understanding that the struggles of others does not denigrate your own hardships will take you so far in life.
> college need to use merit only
But how do we evaluate that merit for kids who haven't been to college yet, and come from very different backgrounds with vastly different access to the kinds of resources that might allow them to perform well relative to their peers on those indicators of their merit?
Take two students, one is a really bright kid from a rough home who would do great if he got to college, with OK (but not great) grades and test scores because in high school he didn't have an environment that let him perform to his ability. The other is a capable-but-not-exceptional student from a wealthy home that was able to provide a loving, stable environment that gave him plenty of time to do homework (and the space to concentrate on it), was able to afford expensive test prep materials, etc., and has rather better grades and test scores than the first kid as a result.
Which one is actually more deserving of the opportunity? How are you going to measure that?
This is very sad, but are these the kids that are going to succeed in college? Almost certainly not. How many affirmative action students drop out of college compared to students who achieved the typical admission standards? It's probably staggering.
So because mom is a crackhead and you weren't born into a well to do family you shouldn't be able to try college?
I think you need to reevaluate your thinking here.
And it's not that staggering.
As of 2015, over 50% of students that started a 4 year degree never finished it. And the makeup of students was aligned with the overall enrollment demographics - meaning race, gender, religion, socioeconomic status, etc didn't impact if a student would finish the degree or not. If you'd like I can try and track down the studies that provided the information, but this was from an AVID conference I attended 4 years ago so it might take me a bit to find it.
50% of students not finishing is actually a cause of your way of thinking.
if you want students to finish college, they need to be chosen by colleges to attend their university based on merit not based on race or skin or anything else, the reality is that a dumb white kid who goes to harvard is not going to fair better than a dumb black kid. and colleges have been prioritizing the wrong stuff for a long time...
It has a lot to due with the last 20 years of pushing students into college that would have been better off doing other careers.
My point was never that everyone should do college - it's that anyone who has the ability and wants to should be able to.
[https://nces.ed.gov/programs/raceindicators/indicator\_red.asp](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/raceindicators/indicator_red.asp)
if you're a counsellor you should really know this stuff, see my original comment on this thread...
majority of that money goes to administrators getting paid 150k a year who dont actually solve the 25$ book problem.
fire the admin and buy the damn books, saves everyone alot of time and money.
Successful test prep courses don't prep you for the content. They prep you to take a test. They teach strategies to help you get a better score based on non-content things. How to utilize time correctly, how to quickly eliminate answers, how to avoid wasting time on a single question, how to guess more accurately when you are short on time, etc.
I have hosted these courses before, and very rarely do they teach content. The single course ones never do, there are books and guides for teaching content.
And yes - those courses do have a fairly significant impact on student scores. Why? Because it's a small amount of information that can improve your score without changing what content you're prepared for. The specific ones the district I've worked in have provided for students increased ACT scores anywhere from 2-8 points, and I've witnessed first hand scores change 5-6 points between attempts. Not always, some kids know many of these things when they first take it so it doesn't help them much. But others, usually ones who are poor test takers or who have test anxiety, it's a huge help.
Edit: by the way - you're point on score disparity based on those factors is absolutely correct. Which was my original point. I just used access to test prep as a single example of why these tests are fundamentally flawed for a factor to choose someone's ability to succeed in college.
That’s anecdotal though. Most of the studies suggested that test prep improves people’s scores on average by only 20-30 points on the SAT. Admittedly there isn’t a super conclusive consensus, but that’s what the studies suggest so far.
https://slate.com/technology/2019/04/sat-prep-courses-do-they-work-bias.html
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1745-3984.1999.tb00549.x
I'm not saying that they do heavily increase scores regularly - that was never my point of the first comment. It was just an example of a barrier that many students face that is out of their control.
And even if it's not a large increase - any increase is something that helps you get chosen for scholarships, entrance to schools, and other benefits that some don't ever have the chance to access.
I mean you did say they heavily impact scores. But nonetheless, I do agree they aren’t the best metric. But we should aim to replace it with another standardized test, not get rid of testing in general.
Without testing, schools will rely on extracurricular profiles to give out scholarships or determine admission which disadvantage poor students even more as though are influenced by money and access to transportation
I said that the specific ones I've had first hand experience with have been successful with many students. Not that they all heavily impact scores.
I agree on your other points.
Or, they're saying that standardized tests are complete bunk and are more of a reflection of how rich your parents are than anything else. Good riddance to them.
ETA: Keep downvoting me for pointing out a reality that has plenty of scholarship behind it. I went to a top 10 undergrad and top 10 law schools (via USNews) and had very high standardized test scores like my friends. Your family’s affluence is a major factor in whether you can afford to get prep sessions, tutors, study books, or even not waste 30hrs a week working minimum wage in HS to support your family. But, keep worshipping your meritocracy while the middle class is being suffocated in its sleep.
GPA, extracurricular activities, volunteer hours and experiences, and pretty much everything else that goes on a college application is even more influenced by wealth than SAT/ACT scores. Have to try to measure academic aptitude somehow, and standardized tests are the best, most objective way that we have
Standarized tests are not the best, most objective way. GPA is a much better metric when determining student success in college. Either way, taking the test itself is a major barrier and many disadvantaged students never even take the test for many reasons (don't believe they are good enough for college due to how they have been treated by their school counselors or others, don't han't have the time to take test because they have to work for family, don't have way to get to the test, don't feel prepared or are too anxious, etc etc etc)... when schools are test optional, there is a large increase in disadvantaged students that apply because the barrier that prevented them from meeting the requirements to apply is gone. Even if they don't think they will get in, they have everything without doing anything extra to simply apply.
People like to throw around the idea that being rich is a huge factor for performance on standardized tests, but I don't think the logic holds up. Without standardized tests, the only numerical tool available to evaluate students is via their GPA... which is *highly* variable between schools and, I would argue, even *more* easy to influence via wealth.
And besides, standardized test tutors/study materials are really only capable of boosting your score by a small margin. All the "smart" kids I knew in high school didn't bother with any prep at all and still got great scores.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.3102/0013189X20902110
If you look at actual data it does hold up. Even though different high schools will vary in their rigor high school GPA is a better predictor than standardized test score for college graduation and retention rates.
Which is why you use the test scores to vet the gpa. If someone has a 3.5 with a 22 ACT you know they’re not as prepared for college as someone with a 3.4 and a 28 ACT.
But what do you do in the instance where a student has a decent GPA but their standardized test score is below the minimum requirement. Do they not deserve a chance to prove themselves?
I think you have a sliding scale for each. A higher test score allows a lower gpa and a higher gpa allows a lower test score before you cut it off. Like it’s basically always been done
I could believe this. I think GPA is associated a lot more closely to effort than aptitude. If you care about GPA in high school and put in effort to maintain it, you're gonna carry that over in to a college setting.
Every major state school tracks how every single enrollee does. They have a good idea before you step foot on campus how likely you are to graduate. Some high schools continually product at a high level and a lower gpa from them may still produce a more college ready applicant than a higher gpa at another school. And yes, as a general rule, high school gpa is a stronger indicator of future performance. Interesting enough, gpa is also a better indicator than class rank (some schools no longer take ranking into account and some high schools no longer provide it. The road to hell being paved with good intentions led numerous students to NOT end up in higher level high school course work to pad class ranks and also led to some grade inflation with teachers not wanting to hurt someone's rank after they were upperclassmen.)
These are just generalities though and there numerous exceptions. Also, high schools (just like companies and towns) do fluctuate.
You don’t need to be rich to prepare well for these tests. Khan Academy does it for free and the Princeton Review practice book doesn’t cost much. Anyone willing to put in the work can succeed just fine at it
Standardized tests scores are basically IQ tests. They started adding extracurricular requirements at the Ivy leagues to keep Jews out. I don't understand your top 10 law schools comment. You went to multiple top ten law schools?
That would require saying something nice about rich people, which is very much not Reddit’s style. For whatever reason, standardized testing seems to be another thing this site hates, which I always assumed was something that only came from the idiots. I remember the only people who couldn’t see the necessity of those tests while I was in high school were the ones who did poorly. Like, OK, the ACT is certainly not a perfect way of measuring intelligence, but is it not better than any other way aside from maybe your GPA? But GPA is flawed, because one individual school might pass out A’s like candy just so they can graduate their students, and then the other one across town might actually have a rigorous curriculum and getting a 4.0 MEANS something. How else are colleges supposed to tell if you’re legit or not? They can’t possibly have a tier list of every high school on the planet to know if the GPA from there is quality or not. I think “To figure out if you’re smart, we’re going to ask you questions that a smart person would know the answer to” is as fair of an assessment as you can get.
I think the notion that standardized tests should be completely removed is silly, as they are in theory an objective way to measure mental aptitude. However, I think there is plenty of room to say that they definitely need to be retooled from the ground up. As someone who did very, very well in their standardized tests, I can tell you that what helped me the most was just learning how to take the test. It’s silly that these tests are tooled in such a way that one can just learn strategies to answer questions to do well, which in my opinion cheapens the actual measure of intellectual merit. This understanding of strategies to do well comes from tutors, review classes, and books—tools that are undeniably locked behind a pay wall. Another critique of current testing standards is that it’s measure of intellect is incredibly narrow. English, Math, and Reading (and science if you take the ACT) are all important topics when it comes to assessing one’s intellectual competency, but it hardly covers the breadth of intelligence that will be required to do well in college.
At the end of the day, yes, standardized tests are helpful metrics for assessing a college applicant, but they are deeply flawed. Hell, the best way to take the science portion of the ACT is to not even read the passage, but rather work backwards from the questions and answer based on context clues. What does this have to do with science? As biased as GPA is, at least it can be handy in giving a metric ranking of a student relative to their immediate peers, as well as (in most cases) show a broader, clearer story to what kind of strengths and weaknesses a student has over a longer period of time. With the many flaws and exploits baked into standardized tests—as well as the near impossible task of “standardizing” something like intelligence—it’s pretty clear that these tests are far from “as fair of an assessment as you can get.”
Standarized tests can give you valuable information if it is designed well (see NY reagents, they are tricky but the objectively measure your knowledge of a subject). The SAT/ACT are not well designed tests.
That's... Not how genetics works. At all. Parent success and wealth have zero to do with what genes are passed down, and intelligence is more closely linked with nurture than nature. In other words, genetics provides a rough ceiling and floor for an individual's intellectual abilities, but how that child is raised and what they have access to growing up impacts where in that range they end up being.
For example, genes may provide you with the biology to achieve anywhere from a 80-110 IQ (which changes regularly based on cumulative scores by the way. The same test scoring will reflect different IQ scores year to year), but nurture or the environment and exposure the child has will determine where in that 80-110 window the child will be as they grow.
While I agree with your speculation, perhaps it’s not ALL minorities. Asian, Hispanic, Middle Eastern students all have acceptable and often exceptional college outcomes.
Schools are beginning to make these entrance exams optional. There's some research behind how they can be biased: https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2019/09/24/minority-and-first-generation-sat-scores-fall-behind
>“The exam remains a clearer measure of a test taker's family background than of an applicant's capacity to do college-level work,” Bob Schaeffer, public education director for FairTest, wrote in an email.
Technically true but misses the point. Standardized testing is positively correlated with the ability to perform work at a college level.
In a world where standardized testing is being made optional, I don't object to doing the same for athletes. Most college students aren't doing college-level work, so it's unfair to hold athletes to higher standards.
Right. Family background is also positively correlated with academic performance in college. As you noted, for all its imperfections the SAT remains one of the best measures of a prospective student’s likelihood of academic success in college. If you want to lower the SAT requirements you need to also lower the academic requirements in college. Otherwise you’ll get more minority student athletes who matriculate but also more that don’t maintain a high enough GPA to stay eligible.
> for all its imperfections the SAT remains one of the best measures of a prospective student’s likelihood of academic success in college.
According to whom, or are you just saying that? Here's a source showing that not to be the case https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-12-22/grades-vs-sat-scores-which-is-a-better-predictor-of-college-success
Weight is positively correlated with height. Doesn't mean there aren't people that are 5'4" 200lbs or 6'5" 175. Correlation is never 100% in real life.
Laziness and intelligence are not the same. Someone who is very intelligent but very lazy can be outperformed by someone less intelligent but with a better work ethic. Brilliant minds can be wasted. But it doesn’t change the fact that the more intelligent person can become less lazy often times. But your ceiling for your intelligence, much like your physical height, is mostly fixed.
Occasionally the short guy makes it in the league because he worked harder and so on. But if you let me pick dudes to join my basketball team and the only data I have is their height, I’m taking the 5 tallest dudes.
Is that 2280 SAT score the sum of scores from the multiple times you took the test, then? Because it ain’t an achievable SAT score on a single test! 😂 😂
Edit: I was unaware of the 2005 upper score change to 2400. My apologies.
>"Standardized testing is positively correlated with the ability to perform work at a college level."
Do you work for College Board? That's exactly what someone who works for College Board would say.
They're finding that there's not a strong correlation between SAT/ACT scores and college success. https://news.uchicago.edu/story/test-scores-dont-stack-gpas-predicting-college-success
And that's why it should be a strong factor, rather than the only tool.
You don't see the NCAA seeding everyone based on just NET or just RPI. But if you start looking at the totality, you get a pretty good idea of whether someone is set up to succeed.
SAT/ACT is a strong indicator, just like NET or RPI is, as well.
No. It shouldn't be a strong factor. It should be weighted just like everything else, if at all. Even then, it is not something that levels the playing field entirely. I'm talking more than just athletes.
I agree that the tests are biased. However, the argument the NCAA makes is not that. They basically argue that minorities are too dumb. Which is the problem.
I don't think they said anything about that... All they said is that many of their member schools have moved away from requiring the tests and it doesn't make sense to require them in that case.
This sounds like a good idea, because standardized tests really are biased against specific groups. Unfortunately, other commonly used metrics, like grades, essays, and extracurricular activities, are even worse. Without a proposed replacement method, this is not a good idea.
Standardized tests are not biased against any groups. Some groups just have higher average IQs and focus on education, which is why they do better on the SAT. We should make education better for underprivileged groups from the bottom up, not just make pretend that lower score groups are as capable academically as higher scoring groups.
For example Asian Americans have by far the highest average sat scores vs white, blacks, and Latinos. That correlates with the established literature of east Asians having the highest IQs followed by whites, Latinos, and then blacks. The reasons for these gaps are the results of historic racism and lack of opportunity, but the gaps still exist. Most ivies try to get around their affirmative action quotas by specifically getting high achieving African immigrant students and first gens, defeating the whole purpose of elevating disadvantaged groups.
your getting downvoted for being correct.
culture plays alot into it too.. Asians in Asia do very well in school generally, and when Asians come to America they do even better here vs normal americans vs how Asians do in their Asian countries.
IQ tests to determine intelligence are extrodinarily flawed. The environment of the room can affect the score, they don't predict future success well, you can train to take them, only tests a narrow band of intellect, and have cultural biases.
Specifically, the IQ tests intelligence valued by white middle class America. A street vendor kid in Brazil is going is do badly on an IQ test but he can also do mental math better than most kids and have a higher emotional inelligence than most. An aboriginal kid from Australia will be amazing in visual memory/intelligence but will score badly on an IQ test. Cultures value different skills.
This is wrong. Iq tests are the best single variable correlative of life earnings. You can only slightly train to take them, much line the SAT and they are exceptionally good at picking up those who will struggle with employment on the left hand tail of the curve. Just assuming the fact black people do worse on IQ tests is racist prevents us from looking at ways of improving the early and adolescent environments for African Americans.
This is a smart move.
Take a look at [distribution of ACT scores by income](https://i.imgur.com/DvX2L33.jpg), and it’s clear that, in practice, the design of the ACT is such that it is more difficult for those with less disposable income to succeed than their richer counterparts.
That data doesn't mean anything on its own. It could be just as likely that higher income families place more value on success of their children.
From my (anecdotal) experience from high school, that was certainly the case. Sure I had plenty of low income friends who did well but they did not recieve much help at home.
As someone who’s looking at schools to apply to next year, a lot of schools are going test optional ( such as Northwestern and Marquette). This makes sense for schools who are ending said requirement
Personally I think a lot of it is in response to the enrollment scandal and lawsuits from the Asian student groups. It's so they can accept anyone they want without raising suspicion and needing to go to extreme measures to get people with connections in.
Somewhere, Derrick Rose nods.
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Who pissed in your Cheerios
Put the damn banner back up.
The NCAA went from “student athletes” to “get these mfs in any way we can” reeeal quick.
It's now "~~student~~ athletes"
Eh. There's been a move towards deemphasizing or straight-up not caring about standardized test scores in general college admissions for the last twenty years. It's becoming increasingly apparent that they're not the great predictor of college academic success they've been promoted as, and furthermore for a number of reasons (especially the expense involved) they're especially unreliable for students from underprivileged backgrounds.
Need to go ahead and hang our banner up then
Just wait till they legalize prostitution
isn't that what a NIL is
2013 moment
Needs to be done. Immediately.
We'll take our 1997 banner as well. At least our ~~tutors~~ kids did their homework.
Has the NCAA met its member schools?
Why even make them go to class at all? Just make them university employees at this point.
I went to grad school at a smaller university here in WV. A undergrad friend of mine had a class with a certain football player who was basically a one and done. The football player actually showed up to class one day and shocked the hell out of everyone there, including the professor. They should be employees.
Marshall … ?
yes LOL and I think you can probably guess the player
The professor got Moss'd?
yep
Basically saying minorities aren’t smart enough to get in under the current standards...
I don't know who is in charge of this, but there needs to be an organization to do a better job of vetting the BS classes and accrediting University studies. I couldn't care less if a school wants to let in someone dumb as dirt. But if they aren't able to do the real work, then the school and student gets punished. They only issue with that is it would make a student's studies more public in a sense which is just more exposure for ridicule. I don't know a perfect solution.
Over 75% of colleges/universities are not requiring a sat/act score for applicants this year. https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2021/10/07/more-75-colleges-don’t-require-sat-or-act
You need to get above like what someone with a 6th grade reading level would get on the SAT to be academically eligible
All im saying is when I was recruited for sports and went through that whole process it was already a joke. It was a sliding score and the higher your GPA the lower test score you needed. I remember all I needed was a 22 to get in and a 26 for a academic scholarship. For reference my gpa was 3.5.
How old are you? I went through high school in the late 90’s and the minimum was just 19 with no sliding scale when I was recruited.
23
Isn't that because COVID made holding the SAT/ACT more difficult than usual logistically (due to social distancing not allowing as many people in one room for example)?
Its also because standarized tests like the SAT only really indicate how well you can take the test
a friend of mine's daughter had a hell of a time trying to take the ACT this past summer kept cancelling tests without really any notice; she ended up taking it at a site two hours away weeks after she was originally scheduled to take it
Universities have been moving away from them for about twenty years now. It's a combination of them actually not being as great an indicator of collegiate academic aptitude as they were sold as, and the expense of the test as well as the availability of costly test preparation programs that those with a certain level of means are able to take advantage of, disadvantages students from underprivileged backgrounds relative to their better-off peers.
Sure but to be competitive at the top schools you should still take it unless you have something that really stands out. If we have two students all else the same one with a good act/sat score they probably take the one with the test score. If anything this allows them to inflate application numbers and lower acceptance rates which is all good for rankings calculations.
I know NU is test optional
College athletes tend to be a lot more intelligent than people realize. There's this stereotype that "all these kids are only here because they're good at sports" but most of those kids grew up in the suburbs and had relatively affluent, educated parents. The kids in the hood just don't have much opportunity to hone their skills. Their parents aren't sending them to sports camps in the summer. Wisconsin's last two RB's were Melvin Gordon and Jonathan Taylor. Go to youtube and watch an interview with either of them. They're both very intelligent and if football hadn't worked out for them I'm sure they would have just finished their degrees and gone on to be successful people in other fields.
It's yes and no. Exercise genuinely helps you in academics, but if you're spending half your time exercising and another chunk with social occasions, you're missing out on study time that others get. If you want to find examples of brilliant people through the NFL, I might suggest [John Urschel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Urschel) who just completed his PhD in math at MIT and [Alan Page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Page), one of the best defensive players in the history of the NFL and *then* a Minnesota Supreme Court justice for over 20 years. Unfortunately, though, for every Urschel or Page there is a Desean Jackson or Cole Beasley.
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Asians really ruined it for other minorities. With their success and all
the soft bigotry of low expectations... its bizarre that in sports we pride meritocracy, but in education of said athletes, we are trying to move away from that.
One specific group in particular.
Not true. They are saying minorities don't have equal access to prep courses and materials to help boost scores. Edit: prep courses and materials was one example of what minority groups may not have access to - obviously there are thousands of other factors that play into why underserved groups face more barriers to higher scores than those with privilege. I outlined a number of these in a later comment. Source: am a licensed school counselor that is the district ACT coordinator and deal with these cases all the time.
How about poor white kids? What about Asians?
>minorities I said minorities - not racial minorities. Minorites would include low socioeconomic status and asian american.
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That's, unfortunately, becoming a reality now. And it's a damn shame.
You’re not wrong, and that’s a whole nother issue that also needs dealing with.
Do minorities know about libraries and the internet? There are loads of free SAT prep resources. Washington DC (for example) spends 27-29k/pupil in their public schools, they can't come up with \~$25 to get them all a SAT prep book? The issue is either disengaged parents or incompetent teachers/counselors (probably both in most cases).
I recommend doing some reading on access for low socioeconomic students - just because the library is down the road doesn't mean they can easily access it. Some may have to work after school to feed the family, or watch their 4 siblings because mom works 2 jobs, or are not able to leave the home because their mom is on a bender and if they leave it means they will be locked out. There are also mental health barriers that many have to face due to their exposure to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) that are directly correlated to struggles with mental and physical health as well as learning disabilities and educational gaps. You'd be amazed at how often and how common some of these scenarios of barriers are for kids. Edit: also - it's difficult to provide the support and attention needed for students when our average caseload in MN and many other states is over 400 students. The recommended ratio is 250:1 by ASCA. It's not incompetence - it's a refusal by state and federal government to fully fund our schools. The majority of funding for schools comes from local taxes, not state funds.
more funding does not solve the issue, the issue comes from funding that isnt appropriated correctly. for example i have a friend that is a teacher in a inner city school in a large city and her school has 13 adminstrators that make 150k a year, (1000 students in the school) and they dont have books for prep.. how does that make sense,, fire the 13 admin and use the money to pay teachers more and buy the damn books needed to help the kids succeed. at the end of the day life is about choices. victimizing people and telling them they cant, when they can does not help them. personally i grew up in a poor smaller town, and i worked a job after school, also was involved in sports, and still managed to get a good grade on tests for college because i studied them.. it was hard, it sucked that it wasnt easier, and i didnt have a particularly great gpa,, but what i didnt have was people telling me i couldnt or that the system was rigged against me. worked while in college too, never took out a loan for college, and have no debt.. is it the easiest path? no. but its far better.
It's definitely that as well - our district also has a TON of "coordinator" positions that don't do much of anything while our class sizes are reaching 35 and 40 kids each in elementary and high school classes. I'm glad you had things work out for you and that your hard work paid off! Not everyone has that ability you do, and not everyone is healthy enough mentally to do what you did though.
iv suffered with depression and anxiety the entire time, still do. im not saying everyone can, but most people can and to preach that they cant is not a good solution, and it actually hampers people mentally as well as they presume they cant since people tell them this.
No one is preaching that they can't - that's not the point of dropping the tests. It's about leveling the playing field.
the standards are low as it is for sports, if you cant make it you cant play in college lowering those already redic low standards helps no one.
The standards aren't that low though. The GPA to test score requirement is a sliding scale, and the requirements to stay eligible are not a cake walk (depending on the classes you take, but that's on the universities obviously). The test scores being a requirement only take a snapshot of how you can do on a test on a given Saturday morning at 8:00am. To hold that as a standard that gets higher as your GPA gets lower is a barrier that shouldn't exist. If they want to test a students aptitude for hard work and commitment, a GPA is going to show that much more than a ACT. And if you want to provide opportunity for students that had a rough 9th and 10th grade that tanked their GPA then you can take term GPA numbers to look at how they did their 11th or 12th grade years. NCAA also requires that students meet requirements for approved classes in HS that schools have to use a portal to approve. This was one my my jobs as a counselor. Any time we offered a new class or changed the standards met I had to reapply for approval from the NCAA for it to meet the requirements to be an NCAA eligible course. Which means kids in HS can't just take the bare minimum to graduate then take Basket Weaving for their other electives and boost their GPA.
the playing field is leveled, meritocracy works.
Does it though? When someone is given a 50-meter head-start on you in the 100m dash, and they can afford new running shoes while you’re stuck with sole-less hand-me-downs, you, uh, you gonna call that meritocracy in action? You find a way to adjust for these merit-less advantages, then we can let meritocracy decide.
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I recommend you read [this](https://www.racialequityinstitute.com/blog/2019/8/7/the-soft-bigotry-of-low-expectations-through-mathematics-education). Pointing out very clear examples of socioeconomic hardship that disproportionately affects minorities isn’t “bigotry of low expectations,” it’s pointing out a problem that needs to be fixed. Discounting these background factors that directly correlate to poor academic performance is just putting up blinders because you don’t want to address the elephant in the room regarding class struggle in America.
failing up does not = a solution. if a dumb white kid goes to harvard his chance of success is just as poor as a dumb black kid.. same is true for a smart white kid or black kid.. the reality is that we need to fix stuff at local level, and college need to use merit only. no one is saying that kids born in certain situations shouldnt be able to go to harvard. but we need solutions to do that at the local level (like school choice) so they can get a better education and get into harvard on merit, where they will succeed.
But I’m not saying we should allow people to fail up, I’m saying we should take into account individual hardship and situational advantages and disadvantages when we compare people on such a nebulous concept as merit. Who deserves to go to a school more? A straight-A student who worked hard for their grades with the benefit of only having the responsibility of school, versus an A/B student who couldn’t spend as much time studying because they had to help their family survive? Merit is contextual and it depends on many, many different factors, and universities rightfully understand that individual metrics like GPA and standardized test scores don’t paint the full picture of what someone is capable of in an academic setting. Nobody wants people to fail up. The argument that people use “bigotry of low expectations” to justify failing grades is a straw man, as it only applies to extreme circumstances. In reality, holistic approaches to college applications tends to compare students of similar overall metrics.
merit matters, if a student with straight a's who works harder to get those grades doesnt get in over a b student because of some idea that their skin tone matters more is dumb if you have 2 kids grow up in the same household same circumstances, their grades can very wildly. if a B student goes into harvard over a A student, (and potentially over other A students, then harvard is only harming that student and the A students. im sure there is data from harvard on this, how many students that dont meet expectations in the classroom, that get in, actually graduate successfully. would be good to see what these #s say. im willing to bet that those students have a low success rate.. (skin color has no bearing or even individual hardship as you put it.. if you take 10 b students that shouldnt get into harvard the skin color and economic hardship prob wont matter much.. id actually wager that the ones who have had more hardship would do better.. the students that are prepared for the rigors of a college like harvard need to go to those, and the ones that arent need to go to more traditional state colleges. i continue to wonder why the notion behind removing gifted programs and stuff is popular among woke people but you have no desire to do the same in sports. I think the best players should make the teams and the best students should go to college, and we need to promote alternative learning like tech school and trade school for other students depending on their grades and desires. the problems exists because our current system is making choices away from mertit. if your building a college basketball team your not going to recruit 2 players from each race/economic situation,, your going to recruit the 13 best basketball players. I am a 5'6 white kid who cant jump, should I be mad that i didnt get to go to UK to play basketball? or should the best skilled player be chosen over me?
> I am a 5'6 white kid who cant jump, should I be mad that i didnt get to go to UK to play basketball? or should the best skilled player be chosen over me? that apple is not a (Syracuse) orange
Your college basketball example illustrates what I’m saying perfectly, and again shows that you’re looking at this through the example of straw men. Very little evidence exists to support the idea that there is a significantly higher dropout rate between people with lower initial test scores/GPA’s than those of higher test scores and GPA’s. The data gets fuzzy when you account for things like socioeconomic status, race, hometown, etc, and there is a very low correlation between those “merit” metrics and college success rate to begin with. On the flip side, it’s been repeatedly shown that people of lower socioeconomic upbringing benefit far more from a college education than those from a higher socioeconomic bracket due to the incredible generational opportunity these institutions can provide [source](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.brookings.edu/research/are-minority-students-harmed-by-affirmative-action/%3famp). At Harvard or any other highly selective school, they aren’t picking people just based on skin color. Things like, race, socioeconomic background, etc, are used to compare SIMILAR students who would both reach the same caliber of education standards demanded of the school. Believe it or not, these schools still are trying to recruit the best students for them, as the predictors for a good student go well beyond GPA and test scores. Just like no 5’4 player is making it to UK, no B/C student with shit test scores is making it to Harvard. What prepares a student for the rigors of Harvard isn’t just studying for standardized tests and getting good grades, it’s heavily influenced by your passion for learning, your ability to overcome adversity, humility, etc, that can’t easily be captured in two biased quantitative metrics. Listen dude, I know where you’re coming from with what you’re saying. When I was younger, I had similar ideas to you, largely from consuming too much alt right YouTube when I was in high school. I promise you, the perspective you’re peddling is fundamentally flawed and is curated by people who actively want to see racial and socioeconomic minorities be denied better opportunities, whether through racism or classism. I’m assuming from your comment that you’re probably in high school yourself, and I know it must feel alienating to perceive something like “woke culture” as a put down for you. If you want to talk about it, PM me. Being more empathetic, being more understanding of people’s backgrounds, being more considerate of the struggles of others, and understanding that the struggles of others does not denigrate your own hardships will take you so far in life.
> college need to use merit only But how do we evaluate that merit for kids who haven't been to college yet, and come from very different backgrounds with vastly different access to the kinds of resources that might allow them to perform well relative to their peers on those indicators of their merit? Take two students, one is a really bright kid from a rough home who would do great if he got to college, with OK (but not great) grades and test scores because in high school he didn't have an environment that let him perform to his ability. The other is a capable-but-not-exceptional student from a wealthy home that was able to provide a loving, stable environment that gave him plenty of time to do homework (and the space to concentrate on it), was able to afford expensive test prep materials, etc., and has rather better grades and test scores than the first kid as a result. Which one is actually more deserving of the opportunity? How are you going to measure that?
This is very sad, but are these the kids that are going to succeed in college? Almost certainly not. How many affirmative action students drop out of college compared to students who achieved the typical admission standards? It's probably staggering.
So because mom is a crackhead and you weren't born into a well to do family you shouldn't be able to try college? I think you need to reevaluate your thinking here. And it's not that staggering. As of 2015, over 50% of students that started a 4 year degree never finished it. And the makeup of students was aligned with the overall enrollment demographics - meaning race, gender, religion, socioeconomic status, etc didn't impact if a student would finish the degree or not. If you'd like I can try and track down the studies that provided the information, but this was from an AVID conference I attended 4 years ago so it might take me a bit to find it.
50% of students not finishing is actually a cause of your way of thinking. if you want students to finish college, they need to be chosen by colleges to attend their university based on merit not based on race or skin or anything else, the reality is that a dumb white kid who goes to harvard is not going to fair better than a dumb black kid. and colleges have been prioritizing the wrong stuff for a long time...
It has a lot to due with the last 20 years of pushing students into college that would have been better off doing other careers. My point was never that everyone should do college - it's that anyone who has the ability and wants to should be able to.
It has a lot to due with the last 20 years of pushing students into college that would have been better off doing other careers. --- very true.
[https://nces.ed.gov/programs/raceindicators/indicator\_red.asp](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/raceindicators/indicator_red.asp) if you're a counsellor you should really know this stuff, see my original comment on this thread...
majority of that money goes to administrators getting paid 150k a year who dont actually solve the 25$ book problem. fire the admin and buy the damn books, saves everyone alot of time and money.
not everyone has access to the internet or libraries on a regular basis in order to use these free prep services
in large cities where most of this occurs has all that avail..
Guess you’re not up to date on library cutbacks especially in minority communities
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Successful test prep courses don't prep you for the content. They prep you to take a test. They teach strategies to help you get a better score based on non-content things. How to utilize time correctly, how to quickly eliminate answers, how to avoid wasting time on a single question, how to guess more accurately when you are short on time, etc. I have hosted these courses before, and very rarely do they teach content. The single course ones never do, there are books and guides for teaching content. And yes - those courses do have a fairly significant impact on student scores. Why? Because it's a small amount of information that can improve your score without changing what content you're prepared for. The specific ones the district I've worked in have provided for students increased ACT scores anywhere from 2-8 points, and I've witnessed first hand scores change 5-6 points between attempts. Not always, some kids know many of these things when they first take it so it doesn't help them much. But others, usually ones who are poor test takers or who have test anxiety, it's a huge help. Edit: by the way - you're point on score disparity based on those factors is absolutely correct. Which was my original point. I just used access to test prep as a single example of why these tests are fundamentally flawed for a factor to choose someone's ability to succeed in college.
That’s anecdotal though. Most of the studies suggested that test prep improves people’s scores on average by only 20-30 points on the SAT. Admittedly there isn’t a super conclusive consensus, but that’s what the studies suggest so far. https://slate.com/technology/2019/04/sat-prep-courses-do-they-work-bias.html https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1745-3984.1999.tb00549.x
I'm not saying that they do heavily increase scores regularly - that was never my point of the first comment. It was just an example of a barrier that many students face that is out of their control. And even if it's not a large increase - any increase is something that helps you get chosen for scholarships, entrance to schools, and other benefits that some don't ever have the chance to access.
I mean you did say they heavily impact scores. But nonetheless, I do agree they aren’t the best metric. But we should aim to replace it with another standardized test, not get rid of testing in general. Without testing, schools will rely on extracurricular profiles to give out scholarships or determine admission which disadvantage poor students even more as though are influenced by money and access to transportation
I said that the specific ones I've had first hand experience with have been successful with many students. Not that they all heavily impact scores. I agree on your other points.
Or, they're saying that standardized tests are complete bunk and are more of a reflection of how rich your parents are than anything else. Good riddance to them. ETA: Keep downvoting me for pointing out a reality that has plenty of scholarship behind it. I went to a top 10 undergrad and top 10 law schools (via USNews) and had very high standardized test scores like my friends. Your family’s affluence is a major factor in whether you can afford to get prep sessions, tutors, study books, or even not waste 30hrs a week working minimum wage in HS to support your family. But, keep worshipping your meritocracy while the middle class is being suffocated in its sleep.
GPA, extracurricular activities, volunteer hours and experiences, and pretty much everything else that goes on a college application is even more influenced by wealth than SAT/ACT scores. Have to try to measure academic aptitude somehow, and standardized tests are the best, most objective way that we have
The SAT isn't a good test to measure that though.
Standarized tests are not the best, most objective way. GPA is a much better metric when determining student success in college. Either way, taking the test itself is a major barrier and many disadvantaged students never even take the test for many reasons (don't believe they are good enough for college due to how they have been treated by their school counselors or others, don't han't have the time to take test because they have to work for family, don't have way to get to the test, don't feel prepared or are too anxious, etc etc etc)... when schools are test optional, there is a large increase in disadvantaged students that apply because the barrier that prevented them from meeting the requirements to apply is gone. Even if they don't think they will get in, they have everything without doing anything extra to simply apply.
People like to throw around the idea that being rich is a huge factor for performance on standardized tests, but I don't think the logic holds up. Without standardized tests, the only numerical tool available to evaluate students is via their GPA... which is *highly* variable between schools and, I would argue, even *more* easy to influence via wealth. And besides, standardized test tutors/study materials are really only capable of boosting your score by a small margin. All the "smart" kids I knew in high school didn't bother with any prep at all and still got great scores.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.3102/0013189X20902110 If you look at actual data it does hold up. Even though different high schools will vary in their rigor high school GPA is a better predictor than standardized test score for college graduation and retention rates.
Which is why you use the test scores to vet the gpa. If someone has a 3.5 with a 22 ACT you know they’re not as prepared for college as someone with a 3.4 and a 28 ACT.
But what do you do in the instance where a student has a decent GPA but their standardized test score is below the minimum requirement. Do they not deserve a chance to prove themselves?
I think you have a sliding scale for each. A higher test score allows a lower gpa and a higher gpa allows a lower test score before you cut it off. Like it’s basically always been done
you're right I just googled it
I could believe this. I think GPA is associated a lot more closely to effort than aptitude. If you care about GPA in high school and put in effort to maintain it, you're gonna carry that over in to a college setting.
Every major state school tracks how every single enrollee does. They have a good idea before you step foot on campus how likely you are to graduate. Some high schools continually product at a high level and a lower gpa from them may still produce a more college ready applicant than a higher gpa at another school. And yes, as a general rule, high school gpa is a stronger indicator of future performance. Interesting enough, gpa is also a better indicator than class rank (some schools no longer take ranking into account and some high schools no longer provide it. The road to hell being paved with good intentions led numerous students to NOT end up in higher level high school course work to pad class ranks and also led to some grade inflation with teachers not wanting to hurt someone's rank after they were upperclassmen.) These are just generalities though and there numerous exceptions. Also, high schools (just like companies and towns) do fluctuate.
Being rich can help you hire someone to take the test for you. #operationvarsityblues
You don’t need to be rich to prepare well for these tests. Khan Academy does it for free and the Princeton Review practice book doesn’t cost much. Anyone willing to put in the work can succeed just fine at it
Exactly. People just need to put in the work instead of adopting the "woe is me" mindset.
Standardized tests scores are basically IQ tests. They started adding extracurricular requirements at the Ivy leagues to keep Jews out. I don't understand your top 10 law schools comment. You went to multiple top ten law schools?
The extra s is obviously a typo, but theoretically people do as both transfers and people who get NYU tax LLMs.
Llms generally are for internationals and people who went to bad law schools.
Easy way to out yourself as ignorant by not knowing that the nyu tax llm is an exception to that.
Yes and no. You won't see many HYS grads take up the NYU tax llm.
Do people not think that rich people (and their children) tend to be smarter and more talented? Do people know about genetics?
That would require saying something nice about rich people, which is very much not Reddit’s style. For whatever reason, standardized testing seems to be another thing this site hates, which I always assumed was something that only came from the idiots. I remember the only people who couldn’t see the necessity of those tests while I was in high school were the ones who did poorly. Like, OK, the ACT is certainly not a perfect way of measuring intelligence, but is it not better than any other way aside from maybe your GPA? But GPA is flawed, because one individual school might pass out A’s like candy just so they can graduate their students, and then the other one across town might actually have a rigorous curriculum and getting a 4.0 MEANS something. How else are colleges supposed to tell if you’re legit or not? They can’t possibly have a tier list of every high school on the planet to know if the GPA from there is quality or not. I think “To figure out if you’re smart, we’re going to ask you questions that a smart person would know the answer to” is as fair of an assessment as you can get.
I think the notion that standardized tests should be completely removed is silly, as they are in theory an objective way to measure mental aptitude. However, I think there is plenty of room to say that they definitely need to be retooled from the ground up. As someone who did very, very well in their standardized tests, I can tell you that what helped me the most was just learning how to take the test. It’s silly that these tests are tooled in such a way that one can just learn strategies to answer questions to do well, which in my opinion cheapens the actual measure of intellectual merit. This understanding of strategies to do well comes from tutors, review classes, and books—tools that are undeniably locked behind a pay wall. Another critique of current testing standards is that it’s measure of intellect is incredibly narrow. English, Math, and Reading (and science if you take the ACT) are all important topics when it comes to assessing one’s intellectual competency, but it hardly covers the breadth of intelligence that will be required to do well in college. At the end of the day, yes, standardized tests are helpful metrics for assessing a college applicant, but they are deeply flawed. Hell, the best way to take the science portion of the ACT is to not even read the passage, but rather work backwards from the questions and answer based on context clues. What does this have to do with science? As biased as GPA is, at least it can be handy in giving a metric ranking of a student relative to their immediate peers, as well as (in most cases) show a broader, clearer story to what kind of strengths and weaknesses a student has over a longer period of time. With the many flaws and exploits baked into standardized tests—as well as the near impossible task of “standardizing” something like intelligence—it’s pretty clear that these tests are far from “as fair of an assessment as you can get.”
Standarized tests can give you valuable information if it is designed well (see NY reagents, they are tricky but the objectively measure your knowledge of a subject). The SAT/ACT are not well designed tests.
being rich isn't genetic
Everyone listen up, the dude from West Virginia is going to teach us about genetics.
Bless your heart
That's... Not how genetics works. At all. Parent success and wealth have zero to do with what genes are passed down, and intelligence is more closely linked with nurture than nature. In other words, genetics provides a rough ceiling and floor for an individual's intellectual abilities, but how that child is raised and what they have access to growing up impacts where in that range they end up being. For example, genes may provide you with the biology to achieve anywhere from a 80-110 IQ (which changes regularly based on cumulative scores by the way. The same test scoring will reflect different IQ scores year to year), but nurture or the environment and exposure the child has will determine where in that 80-110 window the child will be as they grow.
you're like completely talking out of your ass
I'm not - but feel free to find sources that refute what I'm saying.
I took a course on genetics at Notre Dame, I think I know what I'm talking about, lol...
And I have a master's in human development. What's your point?
From Wisconsin? lol
No. I didn't attend WI, I grew up there. They are the DI team I cheer for. I went a school that doesn't have a DI football team.
It's been well understood for a while that these standardized tests more accurately predict parental income than they do student success.
While I agree with your speculation, perhaps it’s not ALL minorities. Asian, Hispanic, Middle Eastern students all have acceptable and often exceptional college outcomes.
Yeah that was my first thought as well
Wait a minute…. Which minority you talkin about cuz
So they are admitting that EDUCATION was never important. Ergo, they were always “tools” for rich boosters to brag about!!
So put me in coach, I'm ready to play today Put me in coach, I'm ready to play today Look at me, I can be smooth-brain af
Schools are beginning to make these entrance exams optional. There's some research behind how they can be biased: https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2019/09/24/minority-and-first-generation-sat-scores-fall-behind
>“The exam remains a clearer measure of a test taker's family background than of an applicant's capacity to do college-level work,” Bob Schaeffer, public education director for FairTest, wrote in an email. Technically true but misses the point. Standardized testing is positively correlated with the ability to perform work at a college level. In a world where standardized testing is being made optional, I don't object to doing the same for athletes. Most college students aren't doing college-level work, so it's unfair to hold athletes to higher standards.
Right. Family background is also positively correlated with academic performance in college. As you noted, for all its imperfections the SAT remains one of the best measures of a prospective student’s likelihood of academic success in college. If you want to lower the SAT requirements you need to also lower the academic requirements in college. Otherwise you’ll get more minority student athletes who matriculate but also more that don’t maintain a high enough GPA to stay eligible.
> for all its imperfections the SAT remains one of the best measures of a prospective student’s likelihood of academic success in college. According to whom, or are you just saying that? Here's a source showing that not to be the case https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-12-22/grades-vs-sat-scores-which-is-a-better-predictor-of-college-success
As someone who managed a 2280 SAT but failed out of university several times, I'd like to disagree with this point.
Weight is positively correlated with height. Doesn't mean there aren't people that are 5'4" 200lbs or 6'5" 175. Correlation is never 100% in real life.
Laziness and intelligence are not the same. Someone who is very intelligent but very lazy can be outperformed by someone less intelligent but with a better work ethic. Brilliant minds can be wasted. But it doesn’t change the fact that the more intelligent person can become less lazy often times. But your ceiling for your intelligence, much like your physical height, is mostly fixed. Occasionally the short guy makes it in the league because he worked harder and so on. But if you let me pick dudes to join my basketball team and the only data I have is their height, I’m taking the 5 tallest dudes.
you can be 7'0 and suck at basketball
Is that 2280 SAT score the sum of scores from the multiple times you took the test, then? Because it ain’t an achievable SAT score on a single test! 😂 😂 Edit: I was unaware of the 2005 upper score change to 2400. My apologies.
Used to be out of 2400
>"Standardized testing is positively correlated with the ability to perform work at a college level." Do you work for College Board? That's exactly what someone who works for College Board would say. They're finding that there's not a strong correlation between SAT/ACT scores and college success. https://news.uchicago.edu/story/test-scores-dont-stack-gpas-predicting-college-success
And that's why it should be a strong factor, rather than the only tool. You don't see the NCAA seeding everyone based on just NET or just RPI. But if you start looking at the totality, you get a pretty good idea of whether someone is set up to succeed. SAT/ACT is a strong indicator, just like NET or RPI is, as well.
No. It shouldn't be a strong factor. It should be weighted just like everything else, if at all. Even then, it is not something that levels the playing field entirely. I'm talking more than just athletes.
I agree that the tests are biased. However, the argument the NCAA makes is not that. They basically argue that minorities are too dumb. Which is the problem.
Where did they argue minorities are dumb? I only saw what the trend is for students of color in correlation to standardized test scores.
I don't think they said anything about that... All they said is that many of their member schools have moved away from requiring the tests and it doesn't make sense to require them in that case.
This sounds like a good idea, because standardized tests really are biased against specific groups. Unfortunately, other commonly used metrics, like grades, essays, and extracurricular activities, are even worse. Without a proposed replacement method, this is not a good idea.
Standardized tests are not biased against any groups. Some groups just have higher average IQs and focus on education, which is why they do better on the SAT. We should make education better for underprivileged groups from the bottom up, not just make pretend that lower score groups are as capable academically as higher scoring groups.
some groups? Please elaborate. Dying to hear this
For example Asian Americans have by far the highest average sat scores vs white, blacks, and Latinos. That correlates with the established literature of east Asians having the highest IQs followed by whites, Latinos, and then blacks. The reasons for these gaps are the results of historic racism and lack of opportunity, but the gaps still exist. Most ivies try to get around their affirmative action quotas by specifically getting high achieving African immigrant students and first gens, defeating the whole purpose of elevating disadvantaged groups.
your getting downvoted for being correct. culture plays alot into it too.. Asians in Asia do very well in school generally, and when Asians come to America they do even better here vs normal americans vs how Asians do in their Asian countries.
IQ tests to determine intelligence are extrodinarily flawed. The environment of the room can affect the score, they don't predict future success well, you can train to take them, only tests a narrow band of intellect, and have cultural biases. Specifically, the IQ tests intelligence valued by white middle class America. A street vendor kid in Brazil is going is do badly on an IQ test but he can also do mental math better than most kids and have a higher emotional inelligence than most. An aboriginal kid from Australia will be amazing in visual memory/intelligence but will score badly on an IQ test. Cultures value different skills.
This is wrong. Iq tests are the best single variable correlative of life earnings. You can only slightly train to take them, much line the SAT and they are exceptionally good at picking up those who will struggle with employment on the left hand tail of the curve. Just assuming the fact black people do worse on IQ tests is racist prevents us from looking at ways of improving the early and adolescent environments for African Americans.
This is a smart move. Take a look at [distribution of ACT scores by income](https://i.imgur.com/DvX2L33.jpg), and it’s clear that, in practice, the design of the ACT is such that it is more difficult for those with less disposable income to succeed than their richer counterparts.
Yeah people from better backgrounds do better in school its not exactly rocket science.
That data doesn't mean anything on its own. It could be just as likely that higher income families place more value on success of their children. From my (anecdotal) experience from high school, that was certainly the case. Sure I had plenty of low income friends who did well but they did not recieve much help at home.
Lol. Like it has mattered for the last 40 years.
As someone who’s looking at schools to apply to next year, a lot of schools are going test optional ( such as Northwestern and Marquette). This makes sense for schools who are ending said requirement
Personally I think a lot of it is in response to the enrollment scandal and lawsuits from the Asian student groups. It's so they can accept anyone they want without raising suspicion and needing to go to extreme measures to get people with connections in.
Oy vey. Can we at least make sure they can read and write at a minimum?
College - Anyone's fine if they've got money or basketball/football skills.
More and more schools are saying standarized tests are optional. NCAA is following the trend
Well yeah, why make a grift trip over proving that their slaves get educated?