Free Republic

The University of California has slammed the door shut on using any standardized test for admissions decisions, announcing Thursday that faculty could find no alternative exam that would avoid the biased results that led leaders to scrap the SAT last year. UC Provost Michael Brown declared the end of testing for admissions decisions at a Board of Regents meeting, putting a conclusive end to more than three years of research and debate in the nation’s premier public university system on whether standardized testing does more harm than good when assessing applicants for admission. “UC will continue to practice test-free admissions...

Ladies and gentlemen, if you’re here tonight, it’s because you are concerned that our colleges and universities aren’t doing so well. I hate to be the one to have to say it, but it’s worse than you probably think. Remember when we used to fret about grade inflation? At least then nobody was arguing that grading students (or for that matter the whole concept of academic excellence) was racist. Remember when political correctness was just deeply annoying? On today’s “woke” campuses, it’s not just that someone might wag a finger at you for saying the wrong thing. These days expressing...

Every year, aspiring college students complete admissions applications, with the hopes that their grades, extracurriculars, and recommendations will lift them above the pack, and earn them acceptance at the school of their choice. However, some college applicants are misrepresenting their race in an effort to use their desired school’s diversity efforts to gain admission, or obtain more financial aid. Intelligent.com asked 1,250 white college applicants ages 16 and older if they lied on their application by indicating they were a racial minority. The survey found that 34% of white Americans who’ve applied to college falsely claimed on their applications they’re...

Currently, nine states prohibit colleges and universities from practicing race-conscious admissions. That number may soon become ten if a new bill in the North Carolina legislature is successfully adopted. Public opinion polling shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans oppose racial preferences in college admissions. Even in states dominated by the political left, citizens have made it clear that they prefer students be admitted into college based on merit, not based on the color of their skin. One person who can testify to this reality is Wenyuan Wu. Wu is executive director of Californians for Equal Rights, which is a...

The University of California will not take SAT and ACT scores into account in admissions or scholarship decisions for its system of 10 schools, which include some of the nation’s most sought-after campuses, in accordance with a settlement in a lawsuit brought by students. The settlement announced on Friday signals the end of a lengthy legal debate over whether the University of California system should use the standardized tests, which students of color and those with disabilities have said put them at a disadvantage. Opponents of the tests called the settlement “historic,” and said that it would broaden access to...

The editorial board at the Washington Examiner has a good analysis of a pending case before the Supreme Court that could turn some of the current debates over racism in America on its head. The subject at hand once again deals with the college admissions system in this country and the ham-handed way that many schools put their thumbs on the scales for all the wrong reasons. A lawsuit against Harvard is currently attempting to deal with that issue, particularly as it applies to one specific group of minorities. Through an arbitrary “rating system” used by the admissions board, Asian-American...

No excerpt from Bloomberg allowed, story here, archived here. The article says that in 2020, 49% of students who had a parent with a bachelor's degree submitted test scores, compared to 30% of first-generation applicants, down from 79% and 71% in 2019. Here are the percentages of students submitting test scores by race: 58 Asian 48 White 33 "Latinx" 33 American Indian 31 Black

The college admissions essay can be a stressful part of the application process for students. Like standardized test scores, however, their influence is waning. Many colleges have stopped requiring them. Even when they do, essays tend to be short—more like personal statements than a longer and more serious piece of writing. On the bright side, not requiring them might be for the best: some in use have become compelled political declarations. However, the loss of the college essay is also a loss for challenging students and setting the tone for their next level of education. The disappearing essay is a...

In the latest sign of trouble for the standardized testing empire that has played a major role in college applications for millions of students, the organization that produces the SAT said on Tuesday that it would scrap subject tests and the optional essay section, further scrambling the admissions process. The move comes as the testing industry has been battered by questions about equity and troubled by logistical and financial challenges during the coronavirus pandemic. Critics saw the changes not as an attempt to streamline the test-taking process for students, as the College Board portrayed the decision, but as a way...

info@commonapp.net January 8, 2021 Dear Student, We witnessed a deeply disturbing attack on democracy on Wednesday, when violent white supremacist insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undo a fair and legal election. The stark differences between how peaceful Black and brown protesters have been treated for years relative to Wednesday’s coup again call attention to the open wound of systemic racism, and highlight the work we still have to do to create a more just and equitable global society. As students like you work diligently toward pursuing higher education, I urge you in moments like this to...

The Balkanization of college campuses. When he wryly observed that “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act,” Orwell may well have had academia in mind, where challenging prevailing ideology can have a calamitous effect on one’s reputation and career—something especially true of faculty. In 1978, the significant Regents of the University of California v. Bakke case brought the term “diversity” into the lexicon of higher education Although the Court found that the medical school at the University of California at Davis had used an unconstitutional quota system in denying Alan Bakke admission, Justice Lewis Powell...

Racial consideration for college admissions hearkens back to Grutter v. Bollinger, the landmark decision by the Supreme Court in 2003. It held that affirmative action programs can pass muster as long as they are “narrowly tailored” in order to achieve the “compelling interest” of promoting diversity on college campuses. Colleges across the country have since repeatedly cited the ruling as the basis for their use of “holistic” admissions. But the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division isn’t buying that claim from Yale, saying they let skin color play an inordinate role in admissions. It charges that Yale, Harvard, and others are...

Memo to high-school seniors applying to selective colleges: A high score on your SAT is out. A Covid-19 epiphany is in. Hundreds of colleges dropped their mandate for a standardized test score this year as a result of the pandemic, but the replacement criterion at many schools may be just as daunting for would-be college freshmen: a new understanding of themselves and their place in the world as a result of the pandemic. “This wasn’t something you could study for or plan for, but it offers a great opportunity for students to show us what they were able to do...

In 1996, California voters approved Proposition 209 by an impressive 56-to-44 percent majority. Prop 209 amended the state’s constitution to prohibit the granting of preferences based on race or gender. It inaugurated a series of campaigns, led by businessman and University of California Regent Ward Connerly, that by 2006 had established similar prohibitions in 10 states. A few weeks ago, in a move perfectly in sync with the racial politics of 2020, the California legislature put a referendum on the November ballot that invites voters to repeal Prop 209. The new Proposition 16 would allow the state government, and state...

On July 23, the University of North Carolina Board of Governors voted to temporarily waive the SAT or ACT requirement for college applicants. The vote came after UNC administrators proposed that an “emergency temporary waiver” be approved so that students who are unable to take the test due to cancellations are not negatively impacted in the admissions process. They recommended the board “waive the standardized test requirement for students applying for admission in Spring 2021, Summer 2021, and Fall 2021.” Before the full board voted on the proposal, it first had to pass a vote in the Educational Planning, Policies,...

On Thursday the Justice Department put Yale University on notice: If by Aug. 27 the school doesn’t agree to stop discriminating by race in admissions, the U.S. “will be prepared to file a lawsuit to enforce Yale’s Title VI obligations.” The notice follows a two-year investigation spurred by a complaint from Asian-American groups. Among the findings is that Yale “uses race at multiple points in its admissions process,” and that race is the “determinative factor in hundreds of admissions decisions each year.” In other words, kids who would otherwise be accepted to Yale are denied solely because of skin color....

Defendant paid $9,000 to have online college classes taken on behalf of her son BOSTON – A California woman was sentenced today in connection with paying $9,000 to have an individual take online classes for her son, in order to earn credits to facilitate his graduation from Georgetown University.Karen Littlefair, 57, of Newport Beach, Calif., was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Allison D. Burroughs to five weeks in prison, two years of supervised release which includes 300 hours of community service, and a fine of $209,000. In January 2020, Littlefair pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to...

The COVID-19 pandemic probably won’t kill the SAT, but will no doubt leave it in a badly weakened condition. Both the SAT (and its close competitor, the ACT) have had to cancel administration of their tests for the last few months and, according to this Washington Post story, universities have decided that they will make their admission decisions without those test scores. Before COVID-19, support for standardized testing was already eroding and recent developments are sure to cause further slippage. Undoubtedly, the greatest blow was the decision by the University of California (UC) system to stop relying on standardized tests...

Thursday’s decision by the University of California regents to eliminate the SAT and ACT in admissions is a historic blow to excellence in higher education. Applicants to the largest university system in the U.S. will now be judged entirely on how well they can flatter admissions bureaucracies with coached personal statements, as well as high school grade-point averages whose meanings are obscured by grade inflation. The UC started using the SAT in the 1960s to find talented students from modest backgrounds. As an exhaustive faculty senate report—ignored by university leadership—put it this year, “This original intent is clearly being realized...

Admissions tests, allegedly biased against minority students, will be phased out over five years The University of California board of regents voted Thursday to stop using the SAT and ACT college admissions exams, reshaping college admissions in one of the largest and most prestigious university systems in the country and dealing a significant blow to the multibillion-dollar college admission testing industry. The unanimous 23-to-0 vote ratified a proposal put forward last month by UC President Janet Napolitano to phase out the exams over the next five years until the sprawling UC system can develop its own test. The battle against...