Doesn’t matter what SAT score they receive, their ability to work their way through the course material is what matters. A large percentage of blacks that enter College drop out during their first year. Just because you get an augmented SAT score doesn’t guarantee you will make it in College.
A large percentage of students that enter College drop out during their first year.
It does matter.
For every student who is admitted through an "augmented" score there is a more deserving student who was denied her chance to attend a top-rated university.
I barely graduated from High School, having done well all the way through Junior year and then giving up Senior year (this was 1968 and in the midst of a big change in our society).
I ended up in the Air Force after not being able to get a decent job anywhere, or go to college (my fault) and because I was 1A. I did eight + years, during that time I got married and we had a son. I got out and came home to work for $150/week repairing electronic medical equipment, still more than I made in the AF.
I wanted more and studied and took the SATs and applied to a very well known engineering school here in GA. I never did find out what my SAT scores were, the school never told me, but they miraculously accepted me.
On entering, I took their assessment tests and on the math part I got a 39% - very bad, and it demoralized me a lot. It was then I realized why they never told me my SAT scores and why they accepted me. It was because I was a veteran, plain and simple.
It took me 13 straight year-round quarters to graduate. I did this because I knew if I took a quarter off, I’d never go back. The first quarter was filled taking ‘remedial everything’. I did okay and thereafter I worked and studied damned hard - up to 2 or 3 in the morning most nights. I was on the Dean’s List 12 of those quarters.
So, yes. There are cases where SATs don’t mean much. It’s more about how hard you study, IMO.
Yes, but then they can put "Attended Columbia University" on their resumes, and no politically correct HR department with a quota to fill dares interpret that as meaning anything other than that they are fully qualified degree holders.
It DOES matter because the future dropouts are being accepted into slots that would have been filled by whites or Asians who would have succeeded and perhaps been responsible for the next great medical breakthrough or discovery in physics or chemistry. Instead, they have to go to their second or third choice school, with a weaker program in their major and receive a lesser education.
In the state school I attended they quarantined many affirmative action students in one building, where they could take all of the remedial classes that white/Asian guys needed just to be admitted. They’d waste away there a semester or two, paying for classes that had no college credits, then would just disappear.
When you had those students in regular classes, it was very sad; during the first class or two they would realize how far behind the “real” students they were, and would often drop out (or head to the African or Women Studies departments). One basic flaw of the affirmative action policies is that there are black, Hispanic, and female students that would have fit right in at that school - but they had been pushed up a level (to better schools) where they probably had the same experience. All were being bumped up one level, which ensured they would probably fail (and certainly wouldn’t be treated as equals to white/Asian men). It also leaves a burning sense of inferiority in them, that manifests itself in the workplace and voting booth; it has convinced most of them that their gender/race is the only reason they have a job - and they are usually right.