The University of California System Will No Longer Consider SAT and ACT Scores for Admissions

The nine campuses of the University of California system will no longer consider standardized testing scores as part of the admission process beginning in the fall of 2021.

The change is the result of a legal settlement (pdf) of a lawsuit brought by groups that claimed that the traditional SAT and ACT tests are racist.

Under the settlement, the university, which enrolls some 225,000 undergraduate students, said it won’t consider SAT or ACT scores sent along with admissions applications until 2025. The university further stated that it had no current plan to consider the scores after 2025.

The settlement specifies that the university can still use SAT and ACT scores to determine course placement after the students are accepted. But the nine campuses will no longer use the test scores to determine how to award scholarships.

The lawsuit was filed against the university on Dec. 10, 2019, by several students and groups, including Chinese for Affirmative Action, College Access Plan, College Seekers, Community Coalition, Dolores Huerta Foundation, and Little Manila Rising. The Compton Unified School District filed a similar lawsuit on the same day. The two cases were subsequently merged.

On Aug. 31, 2020, the Superior Court of the State of California, County of Alameda, ordered the university to stop using the SAT and ACT test results for admissions or scholarship decisions while the lawsuit was pending. The university appealed the decision and the appeal remains unresolved.

As part of the settlement, the University of California system will pay $1.25 million in attorney fees to the lawyers who represented the plaintiffs.

The settlement specifies that the university can still use SAT and ACT scores to determine course placement after the students are accepted. But the nine campuses will no longer use the test scores to determine how to award scholarships

This is already in effect, as colleges already ignore low SAT scores based on student "demographics."

With this from UC system, we can finally discard the lie that every student stands on an equal basis. The SAT is now a high-end-only test, which will finally bring it back to being what it was originally intended to do: measure merit, not birth status (rich, poor, black, white, etc), which it has become.

That said, the worst casualty here will be high-scoring black kids who will now be measured against other black kids by GPA and not SAT scores. (UC and every college admissions office knows that GPA is not a standard metric.)

The only argument I remember was that the vocabulary was too white with words like “regatta” in it

I've heard this argument also with the word "patio", and I've countered it with something very simple:

"If you are 8 years old, black, and not know what a patio is, that's excusable. But if your 21 years old and not know what a patio is, you're simply a dumb ass".

Hate to be blunt about it.

Oh, ha ha. I’ve been hearing it a lot. I tell you, I could never make it through nursing school or neuro-psych with all the genders and fears of saying the wrong word or pronoun and having someone go ballistic on me.

Let me know what equity means. I’ve a feeling it’s tired in to reparations and the 1619 project/new history of the US.

So, it means that some kids actually worked and studied, and did better than others, but we’re going to consider them all ‘equal’?

I’d certainly want the smartest with the highest grades, whether they were picking up my garbage, installing my electrical system, designing my nearby nuclear energy reactor plant or-

sitting in Congress.

Honestly, it no longer matters. Universities are big business, education is just a cover for their ponzi scheme. It has been this way for at least a decade or more. During my daughters first semester at her university, the dorm was packed with people. From August to December, she had to walk around kids passed out, vomit and other bodily fluids on the floor etc. While this was normally the case Friday thru Sunday, depending on events, the parties would go into the wee hours of the night all week. When she returned in January, at least a third of the rooms in her dorm were empty. The kids went home and never came back. They failed the majority of their classes but still owed the school a lot of money despite dropping out. Later she found out that to fill the classes and dorms, at some point in the the application process the Admission office waives the SAT scores. In other words kids who had no business at a university were accepted just for the money. Kids drank and ate away student loans and left the university owing money on the dorms and classes they enrolled in. The University did not care, they get paid one way or the other.

Absolutely right, especially the part on Big Universities being nothing more than a Big Cash Grab.

Some of the most stupid and irresponsible people I ever met were FSU students, and their reprehensible behavior made clear just how much a difference the cash and bribes can make.

Meanwhile, kids who actually have a brain were told they weren’t “qualified” to study there.

Total sewer of corruption at that Godforsaken “university.”

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