Posted on 02/02/2020 10:35:07 AM PST by karpov
As schools like the University of California consider dropping the SAT as a requirement for admission due to concern that the test is biased, they run up against another question with a potentially bigger impact for students and their families: Should they continue to use SAT scores to award scholarships?
Colleges and universities give out about $30 billion a year in merit aid, which is often based on a student’s SAT or ACT. An additional $2 billion in merit aid distributed by states hinges on standardized test scores.
Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts stopped using the test for merit scholarships last year, said Andrew Palumbo, dean of admission. Instead, the school is weighing grades, community service and leadership. The school has made the SAT optional for applicants since 2007.
“Using the tests doesn’t help us achieve our goals” of diversifying the student body, he said. Students who apply without the test are just as successful as undergraduates as peers who do submit the test, he said.
The College Board, the New York-based nonprofit that oversees the SAT, said it has worried for years about income inequality influencing test results. White students scored an average of 177 points higher than black students did and 133 points higher than Hispanic students did in 2018 results. Asian students scored 100 points higher than white students did. The children of wealthy and college-educated parents outperformed their classmates.
Those gaps don’t reflect bias in the test itself but the lopsided distribution of resources across K-12 schools, the College Board has said. The College Board gives schools data to see students’ socioeconomic profile and considered creating a score to reflect this, a plan it dropped amid public objection.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
The best should get in...how about diversity for the baseball team???
I read a few years back I read articles about the origins of standardized tests for college admissions. It seems decades ago the students from the most prestigious prep schools and high schools had a big advantage getting into the colleges of their choice.
So, standardized testing was introduced to give the kids from less prestigious high schools a way to demonstrate their knowledge and abilities in comparison to the kids from the most prestigious schools. The tests were introduced to help the less advantaged kids show that they had just as much potential as the more advantaged.
But now, the right groups aren’t doing so well on the standardized tests and they must be de-emphasized, or maybe eliminated altogether at some colleges.
And my doctor wonders why I always ask him if he got into Medical School through an Affirmative Action program.
The students aren’t served by preferential grade boosts. It’s for the university’s benefit. Harvard gets its diversity Browny points, and the student that supposedly benefits learns nothing useful. There are highly intelligent black students who want to matriculate to a good school, but since they are in short supply, the big-name universities fight over them like dogs over a stray kitten. Personally, I think liberal arts universities are useless for today’s students. They’re doubly useless for minority students, except insofar as they provide connections for graduates. I learned a lot from a two-year college, then taught myself second-year Modern Standard Arabic and ancient Greek while commuting to and from work on the subways, as well as reading all of Shakespeare, Pound’s Cantos, lit crit, and other impractical but fun subjects perfect for long subway rides.
Indeed. ‘Tis far better to award scholarships to almost reaching average folks like Bare-ass Dorkbama who we all know is most deserving of an education that obviously did not take.
“Using the tests doesn’t help us achieve our goals” of diversifying the student body, he said.
That isn’t your job and it shouldn’t be your goal. It was someone else’s job, 17 years ago, and realistically, 50 years ago.
“Students who apply without the test are just as successful as undergraduates as peers who do submit the test, he said.”
Define “success” as used here. I call BS on this.
I suspect that this is one of the only countries in the world where academic testing is controversial...
“Anyone here want a 2.00 grade point surgeon?“
Well,don’t forget what you call a doctor who graduated last in his or her class.
Doctor.
I would argue that these institutions are torture, no matter what your score.
Sending a kid below 1450 to H-Y-P-S is signing him up to be tortured. When you look at the suicides, I bet most of them are in this category.
I saw this happen. It’s “fair”, like sending infantry soldiers off to war with zero training.
As much as the Left thumps their chest is proclaiming their allegiance to science, the science of IQ is an anathema to them.
Yes, it is right to take the brightest students, for they have worked hard to get where they are. The lazy, unambitious, or grifter students should go somewhere else. SATs are not fair - they are challenging and they weed out the best.
The world needs ditchdiggers, too.
In the interest of transparency and disclosure universities should disclose what is under the diversity requirement and what is not. Are the football and basketball teams to meet diversity requirements? What about the cheerleaders? What about the band? What about admission to scholarship societies? There is a long list.
Who cares?
It's THEIR money; they can distribute it any way they want!!
The Left only believes in “science” that supports their totalitarian agenda and anything that does is “science.”
“Science” says there are 187 human sexes, for instance.
Oh yeah....let the dummies in to get the advanced degrees....that will be great for the country and advancement of civilization in general....identity politics, diversity, and political correctness are destroying this country....why shouldn’t I be a starting qb in the nfl?.....am I not equal???
Yes, and sadly the public never knows when they are calling that person.
Typical liberal twisted logic. They should be more concerned that blacks score lower than if whites score higher. Effort should be made to raise blacks up, not bring whites down. Of course their bigotry is oblivious to them.
The “academic-industrial complex” is a bubble of greater relative proportions than health-care or housing.
If Trump wants a real political winner - he will pop that bubble.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.