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Education

Applications Surged After Colleges Started Ignoring Standardized Test Scores (nbcnews.com) 187

What happened when college admissions offices started ignoring the standardized test scores? NBC News asked college administrators like Jon Burdick, Cornell's vice provost for enrollment: When the health crisis closed testing sites in 2020, four of Cornell's undergraduate colleges decided to go test optional, meaning students could submit a test score if they thought it would help them, but didn't have to. Three of Cornell's colleges adopted test-blind policies, meaning admissions officers wouldn't look at any student's scores. The effects were immediate, Burdick said. Like many other colleges and universities, Cornell was inundated with applications — roughly 71,000 compared to 50,000 in a typical year. And the new applications — particularly those that arrived without test scores attached — were far more likely to come from "students that have felt historically excluded," Burdick said.

The university had always looked at many factors in making admissions decisions, and low test scores were never singularly disqualifying, Burdick said. But it became clear that students had been self-rejecting, deciding not to apply to places like Cornell because they thought their lower SAT scores meant they couldn't get in, he said. Other colleges also saw a similar surge in applications.... At Cornell, managing the surge in applications wasn't easy, Burdick said. The university hired several admissions officers and about a dozen part-time application readers — paid for in part by the additional application fees....

In the end, Cornell enrolled a more diverse class, including a nearly 50 percent increase in the share of first-generation college students. "It showed me that these students, given the opportunity, can show really impressive competitive credentials and get admitted with the test barrier reduced or eliminated," Burdick said.

Research on colleges that went test optional years ago shows that students admitted without test scores come from more diverse backgrounds and do about as well in their classes once they arrive as peers who did submit test scores.

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Applications Surged After Colleges Started Ignoring Standardized Test Scores

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  • Low Bar (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 18, 2022 @03:10AM (#62455826)

    They can "get admitted with the test barrier reduced or eliminated". Similarly, I can compete at the olympics if there are no barriers to my doing so.

    • Re:Low Bar (Score:5, Informative)

      by AleRunner ( 4556245 ) on Monday April 18, 2022 @03:37AM (#62455850)

      The bit which really matters is this (from the last link in the summary)

      The findings are dramatic. ...the coefficients for SAT/ACT scores are always less than 0.02, which means that an increase
      in test scores of one standard deviation is associated with an increase of less than 2 percentage points in six-year
      graduation rates; this relationship is even negative at the historically black colleges and universities (HBCU’s).

      If it's true that higher SAT scores sometimes predict less able (more stupid?) people then using a high SAT score to let people in is actually lowering the bar.

      Now, I'd say that I'm surprised by the result, to the extent that I'd normally suspect that there's something wrong with it. This wouldn't be the first time I've seen some garbage science in social sciences, if my gut instinct is right, however I've got no right to criticise it until I find a clear piece of scientific evidence that shows this is wrong. They've put their science out there and I haven't. Before we have any right to criticise this, we need hard evidence that SAT scores are in some way linked to future academic achievement.

      • Re:Low Bar (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Sique ( 173459 ) on Monday April 18, 2022 @03:48AM (#62455864) Homepage
        It just means that SAT scores are less a measure of your possible scholar achievements, but more a measure of how much your parents are able or willing to spend, so you can pass the SAT with a high score.

        Children from families with enough income or time to spend on SAT tutors, SAT prep classes or SAT exercises will have better chances at high scores.

        • Re:Low Bar (Score:5, Interesting)

          by DrSpock11 ( 993950 ) on Monday April 18, 2022 @07:33AM (#62456166)

          I think the "wealth" effect of SAT tutors / prep classes is highly overstated. You can buy an SAT prep book for $20-$30. These contain the same "tips and tricks" that any fancy course will teach you. Even poor people can afford that. Kids get out of it what they put into it, so at the end of the day, it's still mostly based on motivation and intelligence. And learning/prepping directly from a book is very analogous to what one does in college so ones success in doing so is probably a good predictor.

          When I was in high school I spent a ton of time and effort prepping for the SAT and got a fairly good score. My siblings, despite having access to the same books/courses, put zero effort into preparation and as a result received mediocre to poor scores. You can't teach motivation or intelligence.

          • Re:Low Bar (Score:5, Interesting)

            by ranton ( 36917 ) on Monday April 18, 2022 @07:52AM (#62456218)

            I think the "wealth" effect of SAT tutors / prep classes is highly overstated. You can buy an SAT prep book for $20-$30. These contain the same "tips and tricks" that any fancy course will teach you. Even poor people can afford that. Kids get out of it what they put into it, so at the end of the day, it's still mostly based on motivation and intelligence.

            Arguably the largest effect wealth has on SAT scores is how easily it can compensate for a lack of motivation. Just look at the difference between taking a class in programming and taking a Coursera course. Most students could perform just as well on an aptitude test after taking both courses, but they don't. Students in a physical class with a teacher, who grades them and reports those grades to a school (and the kid's parents), do far better on average. Just paying for courses has a huge effect, even if from the same institution. A free Coursera class will have a 2-6% completion rate, while paid classes have a 45-55% completion rate (articles found in a quick google search varied widely).

            So a student who has access to actual tutors is going to do far better than most students given access to the same educational material for free, regardless of their level of motivation.

          • by jbengt ( 874751 )

            When I was in high school I spent a ton of time and effort prepping for the SAT and got a fairly good score.

            When I was in high school, spending a lot of time and effort preparing for the ACT/SAT wasn't even on my radar. Things have changed over the years.

            • Me neither. I didn't prep for the SAT at all. Went in on a Saturday, took the test, and that was it. I guess folks these days are trying to "game" the system, thereby potentially getting a better shot at ABC college.
          • Good teachers, like good coaches, work hard to motivate their students to put in the effort required to achieve the desired result.
          • I think the "wealth" effect of SAT tutors / prep classes is highly overstated. You can buy an SAT prep book for $20-$30. These contain the same "tips and tricks" that any fancy course will teach you. Even poor people can afford that. Kids get out of it what they put into it, so at the end of the day, it's still mostly based on motivation and intelligence. And learning/prepping directly from a book is very analogous to what one does in college so ones success in doing so is probably a good predictor.

            When I was in high school I spent a ton of time and effort prepping for the SAT and got a fairly good score. My siblings, despite having access to the same books/courses, put zero effort into preparation and as a result received mediocre to poor scores. You can't teach motivation or intelligence.

            Some of that is wealth, as the other comment mentioned a tutor or class is much more effective than a book, but another factor is the cultural networks that often go along with wealth (even middle class wealth).

            Parents talk, they talk about how their kids are doing, what colleges they apply to, how they apply, and how to prep their kids for the SAT.

            For instance, consider kids who do come from serious wealth when it comes to their professional lives. A lot of them make a lot of money with various investments

          • This describes me. When I was young I was poor, actually really solidly poor by modern standards (5 kids on 1 variable working class income), but nobody told me. I literally got prep books from the library or maybe secondhand. They tell you everything you need to know about actually taking the test. Anything beyond that is actually improving your education, and if you do that, you SHOULD do better on the test, because you are more educated then...
        • Re: Low Bar (Score:4, Insightful)

          by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Monday April 18, 2022 @09:45AM (#62456526)

          Yes that is true. But I guarantee every other method you come up with can also be games by the wealthy. The wealthy can afford to fund the loophole methods. The wealthy can afford all the extracurricular things. They can, and do, hire a consultant to advise them.

          • by Sique ( 173459 )
            No one really disputes that. Every benchmark that is used to assess a complex situation will be gamed upon if it promises a better outcome for some of them. And then it's no longer important to improve the situation, but to score higher on the benchmark, which thus will be less and less meaningful as a proxy for the situation.
          • Taken by almost all university candidates at the end of your school career, these are a proper examination of your knowledge of the material you've studied for the past 2 years. Your success in that studying is used to determine which universities you will get a place in.

            Whilst rich parents may be able to game the exams a little bit, on the whole they are a good measure of how much academic ability you have. In practice university admissions personnel may adjust your target (you get a conditional offer at

      • Re:Low Bar (Score:5, Interesting)

        by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) on Monday April 18, 2022 @03:58AM (#62455890)

        Now, I'd say that I'm surprised by the result, to the extent that I'd normally suspect that there's something wrong with it.

        MIT for example claims that "[their] ability to accurately predict student academic success at MIT is significantly improved by considering standardized testing -- especially in mathematics" [mitadmissions.org]. Maybe Cornell isn't teaching in a way for which high ability demonstrated by testing is relevant but MIT is? Or maybe Cornell's results are garbage as you say, that's also possible.

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          Or maybe MIT makes no effort to assist students who didn't get the best mathematics education before arriving and Cornell does.

          From MIT's own page:

          In other words, there is no path through MIT that does not rest on a rigorous foundation in mathematics, and we need to be sure our students are ready for that as soon as they arrive

          It's a blatant fuck-you to anyone who went to a high school with a poor mathematics curriculum and couldn't afford tutors to ;provide them with a better education.

          • by Junta ( 36770 )

            I started off high school in a typically low-resource rural public high school, then got to go to a better school with college level courses, and I am thankful that on various fronts they caught what was missing and I benefited from a few 'catch up' classes, as the school decided it was their job to make up for lacking curriculum rather than the student's fault. So after losing roughly a semester to 'remedial' (comparitively speaking) courses, I got to the more rigorous and useful coursework.

          • Re:Low Bar (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Mitreya ( 579078 ) <mitreya@gmai l . c om> on Monday April 18, 2022 @08:14AM (#62456274)

            It's a blatant fuck-you to anyone who went to a high school with a poor mathematics curriculum and couldn't afford tutors to ;provide them with a better education.

            It's not that simple. The solution has to come from improving the education in high schools, not from having MIT accept students with insufficient math background.
            If accepted, a student who comes with insufficient math preparation may fail in their classes that require math knowledge. This certainly does not help the student in the long run.

          • Which is why, when I was approaching the end of my enlistment, I went to community college to get my math and science up to par. Not only did it help me a lot when I got to the University, I think having that additional transcript of recent A's in directly relevant courses helped me get accepted. Universities have to make a cut-off somewhere. The many factors that drive student achievement gaps in primary and secondary school should not be the responsibility of the University.
          • Re:Low Bar (Score:5, Insightful)

            by alexgieg ( 948359 ) <alexgieg@gmail.com> on Monday April 18, 2022 @09:17AM (#62456444) Homepage

            It's a blatant fuck-you to anyone who went to a high school with a poor mathematics curriculum and couldn't afford tutors to provide them with a better education.

            I have talent for math, so my case isn't typical, as I never needed tutors, or even much studying, to get consistent A scores in high school math and physics classes. Math for me always simply fun. But one thing I noticed over the decades since is how poor what we were taught was, with teachers themselves barely grasping what they were talking about.

            On the flip side, once YouTube became a thing it was as if finding an entire new world. Suddenly there were EXTRAORDINARILY GOOD teachers for a change, teaching it all properly, didactically, and with full knowledge of what they're talking about. With these tutors aren't necessary, except the problem now becomes students having enough interest to watch such videos.

          • Re:Low Bar (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Hodr ( 219920 ) on Monday April 18, 2022 @09:31AM (#62456484) Homepage

            It's not a fuck-you, it's MIT stating that they expect a certain level of preparedness for their courses. If someone wasn't prepared by their high school but for whatever reason feel compelled to get into MIT then they need to find another way to learn these skills.

            This is one of the primary functions of junior/community college.

          • It's a blatant fuck-you to anyone who went to a high school with a poor mathematics curriculum and couldn't afford tutors to ;provide them with a better education.

            So you would be happier if they admitted you anyway, have you fail because you can't handle the level of maths required and then end up with a large tuition bill and still no degree? Setting someone up for an expensive failure is not better than saying no in the first place.

          • [MIT requiring a strong foundation in mathematics] a blatant fuck-you to anyone who went to a high school with a poor mathematics curriculum and couldn't afford tutors to ;provide them with a better education.

            albert einstein surely had more tutors than any of us then.

          • MIT admitting people lacking a core skill will on aggregate produce poor results. Students who could achieve good results elsewhere in perfectly respectable colleges will fail at MIT.

            You can't do remedial work at the top end of education anymore than a top football team could take in 40 year-old obese guys. Where ability is there, it's something to be addressed in high school and earlier.

        • by jbengt ( 874751 )

          Maybe Cornell isn't teaching in a way for which high ability demonstrated by testing is relevant but MIT is? Or maybe Cornell's results are garbage . . .

          From the link you provided:

          despite what some people infer from our statistics, we [MIT] do not consider an applicant’s scores at all beyond the point where preparedness has been established as part of a multifactor analysis.

        • Cornell probably has a lot more humanities majors than MIT has. MIT is an engineering school.
      • Re:Low Bar (Score:4, Interesting)

        by groobly ( 6155920 ) on Monday April 18, 2022 @11:56AM (#62456870)

        This seems to be bogus. If students without tests "did about as well" then you don't know their test scores to determine correlation.

        As for those with test scores, (a) podunk colleges will let a potted plant graduate, (b) any college that uses test scores in admissions is not going to have a huge range of scores in its students, so variations in scores are not likely to mean much, and (c) any college that lowers its admission standards inevitably lowers its instruction and graduation standards in order to avoid charges of systemic racism.

        • > This seems to be bogus ...

          "Test scores, on the other hand, routinely fail to pass standard tests of statistical significance when included with high school GPA in regressions predicting graduation rates, especially when we leave the realm of the most highly selective public universities ... the remaining incremental predictive power of the SAT/ACT scores disappears entirely when we add controls for the high school attended, whereas the predictive value of the high school GPA increases. (Bowen, Chingos,

      • In the 90's and 2000's, colleges were adamant that test scores were the best predictors of college success. Given that 20 years later, the social sciences are finding just the opposite, it seems that we ought to remove the word "science" from the social sciences. To be that wrong for so long about something so easily tested and verified calls into question the validity of the entire discipline.

        Over the past decade, I have been slowly coming to the conclusion that the real purpose of a college education

        • but rather against those who can't afford a degree (i.e. the poor)

          It's clear you haven't had kids experience the dystopia that is the modern college financing system. Kids that you'd want going to school - generally those from well-educated/well-off families and smart enough to do well in college - get _jack shit_ in scholarship-type financial aid except for maybe from their home state school, whereas schools throw money at those students with family incomes are under $120k/year.

          Seriously. If you're a re

    • I had found in College, the toughest classes I had to take were at the 100 level. (Even in my junior and senior years). Colleges seem to delight in having a high fail out rate. At the 200's and up. (including the 500's and 600's master classes) the Classes were more intended in actually teaching information, vs finding way to trick students into failing out our, figuring that college wasn't for them.

      The real issue is the college/university system is in a lot of conflict with itself.
      Their Marketing Depart

      • I am sure all rich kids have absolutely no real interest in education. All are there just to buy a degree. /s
  • Amazing! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by OpenSourced ( 323149 ) on Monday April 18, 2022 @03:14AM (#62455828) Journal

    Think what would happen if they made it free!

    • Universities would either have to abolish grades and hand out diplomas like participation awards, or there would be a 99% drop out rate
      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Sique ( 173459 )
        Somehow this does not happen in countries where universities are basically free. So your hypothesis needs some work.
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by beepsky ( 6008348 )
          Those places have standards for their students, unlike, evidently, the US who doesn't acknowledge test scores and admits any old retard underachiever whose willing to dig themselves into debt for an education they're not going to succeed in attaining
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Chas ( 5144 )

          Yep. The Mumbai diploma mills.

          Pay their diploma fee, get a diploma.

          It's worth less than the effort used to wipe your ass with it. But hey.

          Simply handing out participation trophy diplomas doesn't mean you get a quality education or are a usable work prospect.

  • Fools (Score:5, Insightful)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Monday April 18, 2022 @03:19AM (#62455834)

    Standardized testing is the least racist way to admit students. If people of a certain race or background are not scoring high, it means they were not taught properly in K-12 education. Standardized testing reveals which regions of the country need resources K-12 (ohh, you don't wanna fix THAT, do you?). In fact, the less you rely on test scores .. the more elitist students you will get. You will get the rich kids who could afford extra-curricular activities and training. You will get the ones who can spin a good story about how they went to a protest or shit like that. Also, you will take away the incentive to study the hard subjects. Tell me something, if you needed brain surgery .. would hire your brain surgeon based on whether he faced hardships in life? or will you hire based on "this dude will not turn me into a vegetable"?

    Imagine there is a kid who wants to be a brain surgeon, he knows his shit quite well. .. Without a standardized test, how does he prove that he knows anything? how does he prove that he is in the top 1% of kids that can learn/memorize the shit you need to know to do brain surgery. I mean, you do want brain surgeons to be the best we have, don't you?

    Fix the schools, fix the parental attitudes .. don't bitch about standardardized tests. Bitch about the people who told you studies aren't important. Bitch about the parents who didn't make you learn shit.

    • Re:Fools (Score:5, Informative)

      by simlox ( 6576120 ) on Monday April 18, 2022 @04:23AM (#62455914)
      Exactly what we see here in Denmark: The left wing wants admission to be based on after school merits and interviews. All experience shows that these kind of admissions favour the children of academics even more than a grade based system. (Danish universities admit in two qouta: one based on marks alone, one based on "other things". The left wing always wants more admissions from the second qouta as they simply hate marks although they evidently give more social equality.)
    • Yep. Although this isn't in my particular field, I read a fair amount of research in education & occasionally come across interesting papers on the relationships between standardised proficiency testing (relatively objective assessments) & teachers' estimates of academic ability & there are typically large biases that disfavour particular minority groups, boys vs girls, extrovert vs introvert, etc.. We have objective assessment precisely because humans, including teachers & interviewers, are
    • Standardized testing is the least racist way to admit students. If people of a certain race or background are not scoring high, it means they were not taught properly in K-12 education. Standardized testing reveals which regions of the country need resources K-12 (ohh, you don't wanna fix THAT, do you?). In fact, the less you rely on test scores .. the more elitist students you will get.

      However, arguments about the bias of such tests aside, if there are other ways to judge academic readiness that encourages more applicants, is it not worthwhile, if it does not negatively impact the academic quality of the student body? The TFA points out allowing non-submission increased diversity, so it would seem the elitist argument does not stand up. As for academic impact, the illustrative point from TFA:

      The 2014 research revealed that—when given the option at one of those 33 TOP institutions

    • Everyone knows the K-12 system is broken. What do you do in the meantime? Completely exclude an entire generation of people who were unfortunate enough to live in a bad school district?

      Like, in Canada, maybe what you're saying would work. (Though we don't rely on standardized tests as much here; one's entrance is based on their high school grades, with the expectation that the schools are sufficiently standardized that they provide a good baseline to judge everyone.)

      But in vast swathes of the USA, you see (

    • "Standardized testing is the least racist way to admit students... Standardized testing reveals which regions of the country need resources"

      Your second claim is orthogonal to your first. You then proceed to support the second claim but not the first.

      If we stipulate your second claim and then act on it, that address future students but still does not tell us what to do about students now. Should we just write off good students who wound up in a bad school?

      Colleges do not admit lower schools, they do not admi

    • Everything you say is right: standardized test scores are the most objective standard we have. Race, eye color, height, and all the other irrelevant attributes have no influence.

      Someone who does not have the necessary knowledge and/or intelligence to succeed, should not be let in anyway. All you are doing is setting them up to fail. Or, worse, you will "pass them through", handing them a paper qualification that they do not deserve. Which then casts doubt on all the other, qualified people who received a

    • by Toad-san ( 64810 )

      Well said, sir. Okay, maybe not so well said, but you make good points. I would suggest fewer uses of the word "shit" ... but there you are ...

    • Once you account for high school GPA, standardized tests account for a tiny fraction of a percent of the remaining variance in college performance. Standardized tests are unfortunately not that predictive of college performance and generally only amount to a barrier to entry or as another filter for elite schools.
    • But here is a valid qualifier on admitting the best - universities' real (and valid) goal is to admit those who will be the best by the time of graduation and throughout their careers - not necessarily those who are best right after highschool.

      Imagine you were a coach choosing people for the track team, and some kid moves in and without practice runs almost as fast as the kids you've been training every day for months. Wouldn't you be interested? Not because of pity, but because there's every chance tha

      • By the way this is an argument against over-relying on standardized test scores for admittance - not an argument against administering them at all.
    • If people of a certain race or background are not scoring high, it means they were not taught properly in K-12 education.

      Not necessarily. It might mean that their parents do not care about education. Or, it might mean that as a class, they are less suited to the white man's education system. Or, it might mean that as a class, they have lower aptitude for what goes on in schools.

      Then there is also a question of equity. If to be "taught properly" for student of group X costs 10 times what it does to be "taught properly" for student of group Y, is this fair either to group Y or to the taxpayer?

      In fact, bad schools are bad be

    • Standardized testing is the least racist way to admit students.

      They don't want a less racist way to admit students. They want a student body representative of the population. Even if that means creating different standards for different groups.

  • by khchung ( 462899 ) on Monday April 18, 2022 @03:39AM (#62455854) Journal

    Is it a good thing to have many more applicants than your fixed capacity to take in? Since you always only end up with the same number of new students, so the answer is "yes only if you end up with overall better students", you could easily just as well end up with worse students.

    But now that they have removed the only objective measure (regardless of how useful it was), there is no way to answer the question, until years later when those students graduated, and even then, any measure would be hard to separate from other factors. So, good job for these colleges to make a change that cannot be measured, they can pat themselves on a job well done because no one can challenge them.

    But, one obvious downside is now the colleges need to spend much more effort to decide which students to accept, and many students have to spend more effort to apply for more colleges. And why is that? When colleges used test scores as a criteria, most students could practically judge which colleges would likely accept them based on their own scores, and could thus quickly make a shortlist of colleges to apply.

    Now, with no test scores to guide them, most students have to take a scattershot approach to apply to as many colleges as feasible so as to both maximize the number of offers they can get, so they can choose the best among them.

    This is the same (broken) approach HR departments take to hiring, which resulted in job hunters spamming as many companies as possible, it did not result in better fit between jobs and applicants, it only resulted in resume spamming services. If colleges continues this practice, we can look forward to "college application services" soon to help students to apply to "hundreds of colleges by filling in just one form", and colleges getting flooded with applications they have no resource to handle. Then, of course, those college application services will turn around to "help" colleges filter applicants (using keywords just like broken the HR hiring process).

    Also, look forward to see more corruption in college applications, since there is no way you can tell if any student was accepted based on merit, or was it based on their dad's "donations". Such corruption, of course, amplifies social inequality, in an already very unequal country. Good luck with that.

    • "(regardless of how useful it was)"

      If the measure was not useful, that means that prospective applicants were eliminating themselves before the college got to do their actual evaluation. This provides an advantage to aggressive applicants regardless of any other ability.

      "This is the same (broken) approach HR departments take to hiring"
      Competent hiring managers will tell you that resumes and interviews can only go so far, and at some point you just have to try people out in the actual work environment and se

    • by jbengt ( 874751 )

      But now that they have removed the only objective measure (regardless of how useful it was), there is no way to answer the question, until years later when those students graduated, and even then, any measure would be hard to separate from other factors.

      You obviously didn't read the paper. They have years of data for applicants who opted to include SAT scores and those who didn't in the same shools. They conclude that there was a small drop in mean GPAs for those who didn't submit SAT scores compared to

  • by thona ( 556334 ) on Monday April 18, 2022 @03:39AM (#62455856) Homepage
    Ok, admission. Nice. What about graduation statistics and later professional performance? Because that is what matters, not that they are allowed to go into the beginner class.
    • The answer is right there in the summary, if you'd bothered reading it

      Research on colleges that went test optional years ago shows that students admitted without test scores come from more diverse backgrounds and do about as well in their classes once they arrive as peers who did submit test scores.

      • by twdorris ( 29395 )

        The answer is right there in the summary, if you'd bothered reading it

        No. It isn't. The OP is suggesting that metrics collected while in school do not correlate to performance in the field. Everything in the summary, including your quoted snippet, refers only to how the new free-range, grass-fed students do "about as well" in their classes and graduate about as often. If that's your only criteria, that the students stay in the field long enough to pay for a 4-6 year degree, then success! But you leave open the bigger, and perhaps more relevant question, of how long they

        • by jbengt ( 874751 )

          But you leave open the bigger, and perhaps more relevant question, of how long they remain in the field and how well they do later. And that, as the OP suggests, is conveniently difficult to follow up on.

          But that's not the question at hand, as it's a more general issue about how well college prepares you for the corporate world.

      • by Hodr ( 219920 )

        "about as well in their classes" doesn't mean equal outcomes If your more diverse background students on average take lower difficulty courses or less strenuous subjects.

  • Is the SAT biased? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Monday April 18, 2022 @03:42AM (#62455858)

    Alright, there are fools claiming the SAT is "biased." Rigged so that only white people can score high due to cultural bias in the questions ... Umm OK .. maybe .. but then how is in that people whose parents/background is from India and China score the highest .. by far on the SAT? They had zero exposure to white culture, yet they somehow manage to score high on these tests? I mean, seriously .. the cultural bias thing is BS. The cultural bias is that YOUR parents didn't show or tell you the importance of studying. They didn't instill a discipline of spending 4 to 6 hours every day on academics as many Asian parents do. Indian parents don't give a shit about sports (out of the entirety of India, 1.2 billion people, only one Gold medal was obtained in the 2020 Olympics), but they care about academics. So should the NBA draft Indian people because they culturally lack sports emphasis? Should a grammy be given based on the hardships someone faced rather than the music they created? THAT could be cultural, but the goal of the test is to see who can do English and Mathematics the best. If you didn't study or give enough of a shit about it to waste your time on it, then how the fuck are you supposed to do it? The reason you got a low score on the exam is you didn't give a shit about Math and studies. Or you started caring too late.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      CRT: "If they're doing well, it's because they are White-adjacent"
    • by jbengt ( 874751 )

      Alright, there are fools claiming the SAT is "biased." Rigged so that only white people can score high due to cultural bias in the questions

      "Rigged" is not the same as "biased".

  • by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) on Monday April 18, 2022 @03:43AM (#62455860)

    And the new applications — particularly those that arrived without test scores attached — were far more likely to come from "students that have felt historically excluded," Burdick said.

    Research on colleges that went test optional years ago shows that students admitted without test scores come from more diverse backgrounds

    Weirdly enough, MIT did the exact opposite thing recently [mitadmissions.org], using the same argument:

    Our research shows standardized tests help us better assess the academic preparedness of all applicants, and also help us identify socioeconomically disadvantaged students who lack access to advanced coursework or other enrichment opportunities that would otherwise demonstrate their readiness for MIT.

    So Cornell believes that students with no test results "can show really impressive competitive credentials" whereas MIT believe that tests "help [...] identify socioeconomically disadvantaged students who lack access to advanced coursework or other enrichment opportunities". So apparently poor students simultaneously can't do well on standardized tests, and therefore are supposed to impress in other ways, but also can't impress in other way so they better do well on standardized tests to impress? My head hurts...

    • by Ironic Daemon ( 302891 ) on Monday April 18, 2022 @04:25AM (#62455916) Homepage

      It is worth reading through the rationale behind MIT’s decision. In particular the announcement you linked to talks about how at MIT passing a rigorous calculus programme is critical to progressing. So the SAT, with its high mathematics content is useful to determine who is well prepared enough to be successful in the MIT programme.

      To me this seems logical - the university is testing for preparedness for their own programme which includes a must pass to progress exam. As far as I can see from the argument they are not saying that their decision should be universally applied.

      As one of those who excel with assignments and research type work, but struggle in an examination environment, it would be great if MIT had an alternate path to prove capability and subject mastery, but it is their prerogative to structure it this way.

      • It does seem like providing free/subsidized MOOCs that cover things like remedial mathematics might be a way to help disadvantaged students without lowering admissions to problematic levels where they'd fail to succeed.
  • by blarkon ( 1712194 ) on Monday April 18, 2022 @04:40AM (#62455926)
    The aim isn't to enroll the best or the brightest - the aim is to get the highest paying customers enrolled.
    • by Hodr ( 219920 )

      Not when the school makes more from investing their endowment than they do on admissions. Then the more "prestigious" the school, the better students they attract, the better later life outcomes of those students, the more they contribute back to the school and pump the endowment.

  • by pz ( 113803 ) on Monday April 18, 2022 @06:08AM (#62456002) Journal

    Correlation is not causation: many students took a gap year from the pandemic and are applying now. The surge will likely subside in a couple of years.

    I don't understand the political agenda of the current Slashdot editors that standardized tests are bad. It's almost as if they didn't do well in school and have a chip on their shoulder. If you didn't realize the importance of tests and learn how to take them well, especially standardized tests, then you weren't paying attention. That's on you, not the rest of society.

    • A friend did not get accepted from several big state universities, although her grades and effort should have made her a shoe-in. Two things happened: the standardized test cut, and that these universities are accepting FEWER students this year due to their having overbooked students last year.

      It was a big shock to this girls' ego and made her question why she worked so hard. She'll be fine, but it's one of those anecdotes...

  • Take away an entrance restriction and more people try to enter. I can see why this is news.

    Once they start graduating we'll know if this worked. And by "worked" I mean "showed that their old tests were flawed".

    • Once they start graduating we'll know if this worked.

      The problem would be things like bloated class sizes, having to cope with a larger number of students who can't cope with the course, and a higher dropout rate.

  • "Purchases surge after stores stop requiring money!"

    May be some downstream negative side effects, but who cares about such details ... haters!

  • They'll wind up going into massive debt to *maybe* get a degree that may or may not be of any use to them. So many are just going to be financially ruined for no good purpose.
  • I have taken a look out of curiosity at sample questions for the LSAT, the SAT and the GRE. The LSAT seemed reasonably well structured and an attempt to find out what students knew or could reason through.

    The GRE had some odd questions about the structure of the GRE test itself (IIRC something to do with the grading policy) Quite what that relevance had to anything other than "test preparation" was obscure.

    The SAT seems less of an attempt to find out what students knew or could infer than it is an attempt t

    • I'd agree about the tests' questionable usefulness in some regards. I can see them being ok at setting a baseline, but like you allude to... by the time I was done with college I felt like I could probably pass a multiple choice test on a topic I knew nothing about just from getting familiar with their structure. That in and of itself could be a useful skill, I suppose, but "do tests measure what we think they measure" is a difficult question even if they correlate with success.
  • If a bar stops checking IDs, I would expect business to boom.

  • by larryjoe ( 135075 ) on Monday April 18, 2022 @12:18PM (#62456964)

    Admissions criteria is a red herring. Dropping standardize testing simply changes the mix of accepted students. Either way, a bunch of students don't get admitted. To me, it's not at all clear that denying admission to high-SAT score students is better than denying admission to low-SAT score students. Either way, someone loses. "Fairness" is in the eye of the beholder.

    The correct strategy should be to enlarge the capacity of universities to admit all students to competent programs. Fortunately, the US system (as opposed to many Asian and European systems) offers a huge number of universities, junior colleges, and community colleges that essentially cover all students that want a post-secondary education.

    The real problem with the American university system is not admissions at all. The problem is affordability. Ironically, admitting more low-SAT score students to "top" universities exacerbates the affordability problem without helping with the quality education problem (i.e., where I distinguish between a college degree with reputation versus a degree with quality).

  • Whether you have 71000 or 50000 applications is irrelevant when there's only around 3500 positions available. It's the difference between 5% acceptance rate vs 7% acceptance rate. Whether they require a test score or not, it's very unlikely you'll get admitted.

  • Unis these days are a business. More students=more money. Long term damage to uni reputation is offset by short term cashflow.

  • by kaatochacha ( 651922 ) on Tuesday April 19, 2022 @03:03PM (#62460178)
    "It showed me that these students, given the opportunity, can show really impressive competitive credentials and get admitted with the test barrier reduced or eliminated," Burdick said.***

    ***(Credentials not proven or real)

Were there fewer fools, knaves would starve. - Anonymous

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