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From NPR:
Study: Colleges That Ditch The SAT And ACT Can Enhance Diversity
April 26, 20186:12 AM ETCLAUDIO SANCHEZ
There are now well over 1,000 colleges and universities that don’t require SAT or ACT scores in deciding whom to admit, a number that’s growing every year. And a new study finds that scores on those tests are of little value in predicting students’ performance in college, and raises the question: Should those tests be required at all?
Colleges that have gone “test optional” enroll — and graduate — a higher proportion of low-income and first generation-students, and more students from diverse backgrounds, the researchers found in the study, Defining Access: How Test-Optional Works.
In other words, colleges that go “test optional” aren’t all that ultra-competitive. Harvard and Stanford want test scores.
… Syverson and his team of researchers studied 28 public and private institutions that no longer require test scores, and tracked about 956,000 individual student records.
Now, an example from George Washington U., a private college with an amazing location practically right next to the White House. George Washington U’s big strategic brainstorm in recent years was to always try to distinguish itself by being the most expensive college in the land. (It’s a tough job, but somebody has got to do it.)
This gimmick apparently worked at drawing attention and GWU is now much more fashionable due to its recent reputation as the most expensive college.
Students like Ian Haimowitz, a sophomore at George Washington University, a test-optional school in Washington D.C.
He says in the beginning, he felt like a fish out of water.
“I know for a fact I’m the first Nicaraguan-American, the first Latino, the first Jewish Latino that a lot of kids meet,” he says.
Wow, I never ever went to college with anybody who looks like Senor Haimowitz. I never once saw an MBA student at UCLA in 1980 who looked like Haimowitz. Thank goodness for Diversity!
… Ian was a straight-A student in high school, but his SAT scores were so low he didn’t think any top tier school would accept him. He says not having to submit his test scores opened the doors to a top selective school.
This year, George Washington received about 26,500 undergraduate applications from all over the country. Close to 20 percent did not submit their test scores, which GW says has helped enroll more students from diverse backgrounds.
Still, some researchers question the impact that test-optional admissions policies have had on schools.
Jack Buckley, a senior vice president at the American Institutes for Research, notes that while diversity improved at schools that have gone test-optional, that also happened “at the same rate among those that didn’t.”
In other words, says Buckley, test-optional schools are not more effective in enrolling minorities than schools that still require test scores.
Test-optional is a good way to let in more of the coveted Jared Kushner demographic of students who don’t test well but whose dads write big checks (at least when they aren’t in the joint) without getting your USNWR ranking dinged.
ISTR reading that Kuchner’s dad agreed an installment plan for his “donation”, and then welched on the deal when Jared graduated.
So, overall, he only paid a small multiple of tuition.
Since the Kushners are Jewish and not Welsh, it would be more correct to say that he jewished on the deal.Replies: @Kyle
https://gph.is/28SGQbX
And in the 15th paragraph, the entire premise of the article is demolished:
“Jack Buckley, a senior vice president at the American Institutes for Research, notes that while diversity improved at schools that have gone test-optional, that also happened “at the same rate among those that didn’t.”
The “study” in the first paragraph seems to have been built to get the desired results: “The institutions ranged in undergraduate enrollments from 1,500 to 20,000 and 15%-90% admit rates in selectivity, and included long-time users of TOP as well as recent adopters of the policy”
This is, then, as Steve indicates a self-selecting group. If you download the report, it’s really clear that the study is dealing with a lot of middling students. The results aren’t surprising. It’s also clear that the researchers cared a lot more about diversity than academic performance. It’s not surprising that among middling students there are a fair amount whose SAT/ACT scores didn’t reflect their high school performance. This is a less-driven demographic than top scorers and it makes sense that they’re more likely to not take the test seriously, or perform poorly due to other reasons (learning disability, poor preparation, etc.). But, if TOP becomes widely-used, well, high school grades are much easier to game than ACT/SAT scores, and schools know it. There’s a reason why top schools want scores. Just as effective a strategy for “non-submitters” might be to take a test prep course and re-take the test.
Two years worth of data show that students who got into GW with high test scores performed no better as freshman and sophomores than those who got in without submitting their test scores, he says.
Woah, that’s way different than “scores on those tests are of little value in predicting students’ performance in college.” It just means they found sufficient other proxies for test scores to maintain a similar admission standard.
Yes, I blockquoted that whole thing, because I’m wondering if Idiocracy has come 490 years earlier than Mike Judge reckoned! Mr. Sanchez is looking at students’ performance in college, but who’s to say those colleges that don’t have the SAT/ACT requirements aren’t a whole bunch easier. They don’t get the brightest students, so they need to make it easier to get the numbers up. What will “performance at college” mean anymore?
One of these days, after seeing the figures, parents are going to wise up en masse, and the university bubble will burst. Don’t be in the area when that happens.
So once again, diversity has proven to be the opposite of a strength.
Nicaraguan-American seems like a pretty odd concept, especially when you lump it in with all those other things. Teddy Roosevelt’s famous speech comes to mind – if a hyphen is like a dagger, then what is it when you add Latino, and then Jewish Latino?
It was Woodrow Wilson, I believe:
"Any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyphenated_AmericanReplies: @Almost Missouri, @songbird
Stanford recently permitted various graduate programs to make the GRE optional for admission.
https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2018/04/16/stanford-adjusts-gre-requirement
I knew a kid who was half Nicaraguan and half Palestinian. His heroes were Yassir Arafat and Anastasio Somoza.
Somoza would be like Jeb Bush, if he had a double-chin and was a dictator.Replies: @sayless
NEVERMIND!
That’s a sophomore? He looks like he’s pushing 40.
It's all that gravitas, it piles on the years, he's a genuine Nicaraguan Jewish avatar to the culturally complacent and unconscious and the situation is bowing his shoulders.
Heavy responsibility, and he knows that he's the first of his kind that some have seen.
Let's all hope his blood panels are okay.
A straight-A student with low SAT? I don’t think this is possible. The opposite does happen with smart but lazy people.
As grading gets easier and easier, the high GPA/low SAT cohort should increase.
https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2013/08/26/kashawn-campbell/
It can absolutely happen.
Do you really think the Nice White Ladies teaching are going to break form?
GWU has a nice campus in Foggy Bottom where the State Department is and next to Georgetown. Lots of rich kids from the Northeast and rich and politically connected international students go there.
He looks like a lot of MBA students at UCLA in the early 1980s on job interview days.
Right, it’s a Veblen good:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good
One of my college friends was valedictorian of his high school class, but got 1020 on his SAT. I myself scored 1250 but my HS GPA wasn’t even in the top-25 percent.
There is an old picture of a newspaper, it gets posted on 4chan a lot, headline “school improves SAT scores,” subtitle or in different story “less blacks took the test this year.”
Define low. There were a fair number of girls in my high school who had 4.0 GPA and only average or slightly above average SAT.
As grading gets easier and easier, the high GPA/low SAT cohort should increase.
Ian Haimowitz was born in Taos, NM and attended Taos High School. There wasn’t much competition for As. He was on the track team (1600m, discus, shot put), vice-president of the student body, captain of the debate team, and a public relations official for the National Honor Society.
George Washington University does require SAT/ACT scores if you are applying to the seven-year BA/MD program, are homeschooled, attend a school that doesn’t give grades, or are a recruited NCAA Division I athlete. Unlike some test-optional schools, GWU doesn’t seem to require test scores for competitive majors like engineering.
The character Dennis Weaver played on McCloud was a deputy marshall from Taos who was on loan to the NYPD as a special investigator.
Goes to an inner-city high school, gets lots of Participation Pokemon points
https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2013/08/26/kashawn-campbell/
It can absolutely happen.
O/T
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/11/601568419/justice-dept-reportedly-investigating-early-decision-admissions-at-elite-college
Arafat had a face only a mother could love.
Somoza would be like Jeb Bush, if he had a double-chin and was a dictator.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2003/08/17/f-is-for-valedictorian.html
That article was from 2003. In 2017 New Orleans high schools had an average ACT composite of 18.9: http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2017/08/new_orleans_school_act_results.html
The lowest ACT composite average I see is Crescent Leadership Academy* at 14.2 (* means an alternative school).
Is this just a combination of a terrible student body overall, grade inflation run amuck, and someone who works hard (and sounds like a wonderful student in everything but test ability) but is not very smart (and is horrible at math) or is there more to see here?
Some kids are just really, really dumb at math. Do we want them to be branded for life as a high school dropout?
"Jack Buckley, a senior vice president at the American Institutes for Research, notes that while diversity improved at schools that have gone test-optional, that also happened "at the same rate among those that didn't."
The "study" in the first paragraph seems to have been built to get the desired results: "The institutions ranged in undergraduate enrollments from 1,500 to 20,000 and 15%-90% admit rates in selectivity, and included long-time users of TOP as well as recent adopters of the policy"
This is, then, as Steve indicates a self-selecting group. If you download the report, it's really clear that the study is dealing with a lot of middling students. The results aren't surprising. It's also clear that the researchers cared a lot more about diversity than academic performance. It's not surprising that among middling students there are a fair amount whose SAT/ACT scores didn't reflect their high school performance. This is a less-driven demographic than top scorers and it makes sense that they're more likely to not take the test seriously, or perform poorly due to other reasons (learning disability, poor preparation, etc.). But, if TOP becomes widely-used, well, high school grades are much easier to game than ACT/SAT scores, and schools know it. There's a reason why top schools want scores. Just as effective a strategy for "non-submitters" might be to take a test prep course and re-take the test.
Two years worth of data show that students who got into GW with high test scores performed no better as freshman and sophomores than those who got in without submitting their test scores, he says.
Woah, that's way different than "scores on those tests are of little value in predicting students' performance in college." It just means they found sufficient other proxies for test scores to maintain a similar admission standard.Replies: @Mishra
Thanks for reading that far. Another classic case of ‘burying the lede’.
Daniel Tosh had a bit in his act about students who claim they just “don’t test well” but it’s mean enough that even I won’t repeat it, even here 😉
https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2018/04/16/stanford-adjusts-gre-requirementReplies: @International Jew
That’s not much of a concession. At a top PhD program, they don’t care about your GRE much anyway. You get in having proved yourself as a student of or research assistant to a professor at your undergraduate institution, who then recommends you to a professional colleague elsewhere who he thinks would be a good next mentor to you.
He looks like he’s pushing forty
It’s all that gravitas, it piles on the years, he’s a genuine Nicaraguan Jewish avatar to the culturally complacent and unconscious and the situation is bowing his shoulders.
Heavy responsibility, and he knows that he’s the first of his kind that some have seen.
Let’s all hope his blood panels are okay.
Somoza would be like Jeb Bush, if he had a double-chin and was a dictator.Replies: @sayless
Re Arafat’s face, I always thought he was probably a very cute baby, and Al Sharpton too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuOpXHLKjss
Stanford is unlikely to shoot themselves in the foot. The really elite colleges are ruthless about understanding what matters to them.
The young Mr Haimowitz SHOULD have gone to a university in the Deep South, and spent his time attending Shabbat services on Friday nights and Saturday mornings at Modern Orthodox and Conservadox (two species in which yenta-mediated match-making still runs wild and free) congregations in the 150-mile radius from his dorm room
He would have been able to MARRY into money, a la John Kerry
I think an enthusiastic (read: “good acting skills”) convert could ALSO pull it off, if he was willing to settle for one of the leftover daughters/neices ( = 0lder than 25-ish, or divorced)
ABC introduced us to one in the 70’s, Juan Epstein.
No, Steve, Stanford has gone full Stepford. I was shocked when they did not offer amazing stuff, any job to graduate/PhD (white) Finns (haha) to come there to “do stuff and teach stuff to undergrads.” Finns have always been wanted @ MIT, Cal, Caltech (thank God, is the last school…St. Paul in NM for liberal arts), etc. Sad, just s-a-d. Stanford was really smarmy, according to my sons.
My mother’s theory: US will fail because they do not promote their most intelligent students.
sigh, my beloved mother died. It is hard to get her messages out of my head these days, especially, when we talk about how crazy it is to promote students who possibly, can’t write?…have not taken Algebra 2? …do not understand ‘internal combustion.’ She was an immigrant. She payed no attention to what class/ethnic group/ race her students were. She adored her students and thought they will all succeed…if they want to.
A straight-A Jewish student with a low SAT? It’s impossible. This guy gamed the admissions process.
I don’t get it. How did she get an A in Algebra II if she was that bad at math?
If you don’t understand math, you are not gonna survive, anywhere. And, as far as your second sentence: people who actually, did not understand math, worked on Wall Street and destroyed the USA economy in 2007. I have no respect for people who are bad at math. They should be tarred and feathered forever. We would not be having these problems (in addition to Bushes’ wet dreams about war-mongering in Iraq/Iran – what difference does it make????) if Neocons did not con the Congress in the 90’s until today, to be: rah, rah, rah, more war, yeah, baby, more war! Elite U’s are just indoctrinators of fools these days. Elite U’s are just, haha, banks, yeah, banks.
The Wall Streeters only had to know that a 5% commission on a billion dollars would get them $50 million with every billion. They didn't care about anything else.
There was this asian math whiz that came up with a mathematical equation of how to invest and completely eliminate any risk of losing your investment. A bunch of peeps bought into it and lost their asses. The math whiz fled back to asia. This was about 10 to 15 years ago.
Other math whizzes on Wall Street are behind the hyper fast trading, that have caused multiple market melt downs when something goes wrong with the math.
Last point, there is something cooked into human DNA that produces the infamous 80-20 rule.
Over and over, peeps have studied various characteristics of humans, and found 20% of the population possess 80% of something, and the remaining 80% divvy up the remaining 20%.
I first heard of this at the start of my commissioned selling career. That 20% of the sales force will make 80% of the money, and the other 80% will earn the remaining 20%. And it was true, there was a small percentage that made the vast amount of the sales.
So math ability appears to operate on the 80-20 rule as well. Just look around at any school and a small group have the math gene and the rest don't really have a clue.
This also works in a negative sense, crime, car collisions and tickets, just generally being crazy are 80-20. 20% of the population commit 80% of this behavior....
I bet you're good at math, but would never be able to change a flat tire or some other simple task without help. Let the rest of us know what you're terrible at.
Then we could tar and feather YOU! LOL
So, overall, he only paid a small multiple of tuition.Replies: @anon, @Joe Walker
Harvard got what they deserved.
This is becoming increasingly common among lower tier schools who are struggling to put butt on seats. Education is a business, as much as religion is a business. The day Harvard makes SAT optional, American higher ed is truly on its last leg, and that day can’t come soon enough.
Yasser Arafat at age 11 and Al Sharpton at age 7.
If we actually graded blacks fairly in school and judged them fairly in court we would be left with a fraction of them. We misjudge them their whole lives and then when they encounter a real judgment they think, oh, this is that racism I’ve been hearing about.
How do you interpret that? If I understand the ACT scoring correctly the composite score (max 36) is an average of the four subtests: English, mathematics, reading, and science. If she got half the points for English and reading and 0 for math and science that would give a 9. How does a HS valedictorian score an 11?! If she is getting “top marks” in biology she also should not be scoring 0 on science. Then again, she got an A in Algebra II…
That article was from 2003. In 2017 New Orleans high schools had an average ACT composite of 18.9: http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2017/08/new_orleans_school_act_results.html
The lowest ACT composite average I see is Crescent Leadership Academy* at 14.2 (* means an alternative school).
Is this just a combination of a terrible student body overall, grade inflation run amuck, and someone who works hard (and sounds like a wonderful student in everything but test ability) but is not very smart (and is horrible at math) or is there more to see here?
China has the toughest entrance exam for University, the Gaokao:
Study: Colleges That Ditch The SAT And Act Can Enhance Diversity
There, fixed it.
(BTW, doesn’t “enhance” mean to improve, not to increase?)
Cosby can keep his fraction to himself.
This guy Haimowitz’s mother was Nicaraguan, Catholic, I think from what I’ve seen. The picture you use is kind of misleading. Here is another:
That says more about the colleges than about test-optional if it’s true. But of course, it isn’t. SAT and ACT correlations to college performance is the subject of quite a body of research, so if you’ve figured out that the previous research was doing something fundamentally wrong, you need to mention that, not just ignore everything that came before. I suspect that a”performance in college” means something like graduating, graduating with a certain grade point average, passing all first year classes, passing all classes in first two years, etc., but if you back up and include choice/mix of majors, I think a hint of what’s going on will emerge. I’m sure that there are one or two or three special “test-optional kids” majors that sweep them right through to graduation with A averages and tuition paid on time by student loans.
By the way, Inside Higher Ed and Chronicle of Higher Education are two excellent websites for following the decline of universities. Their audiences are the administration and faculty of universities, so the good stuff is obfuscated and buried deep in articles, sort of like the New York Times does with topics that challenge political correctness. It can be an intellectual challenge to read the higher ed articles and tease out the between-the-lines truth. It gives me a similar satisfaction to finishing a challenging crossword puzzle. For instance, an article celebrating new “reforms” in STEM education, if read carefully, is really about young SJW female administrators terrorizing tenured professors into dumbing down their classes so black kids won’t be washed out, and instituting group grading systems so nobody but their classmates know the black kids are completely lost. The result is that the black kids don’t wash out immediately when there is still time to get the credits for a major they can handle, but they wait a year or more and drop out of school altogether. (Or they power through and get hired by Florida bridge construction companies.)
I knew a Jewish-Latino from the DC area who went to an elite university. Shockingly, he was a Communist, but also a fervent Zionist.
Going test optional is also a way for a school to brag about its test scores. The students who submit scores tend to have higher scores than the typical admit. The school then reports the average submitted score as if it were representative of the incoming class.
Test-optional: a way to signal that your institution is a straight-up diploma mill.
Teddy Roosevelt’s famous speech comes to mind – if a hyphen is like a dagger
It was Woodrow Wilson, I believe:
“Any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyphenated_American
How much wiser our ancestors were!
Of course, the cartoon was satirical and meant to deride the asker of such questions, so I guess the rot set in pretty early.
So, overall, he only paid a small multiple of tuition.Replies: @anon, @Joe Walker
ISTR reading that Kuchner’s dad agreed an installment plan for his “donation”, and then welched on the deal when Jared graduated.
Since the Kushners are Jewish and not Welsh, it would be more correct to say that he jewished on the deal.
One of these days, after seeing the figures, parents are going to wise up en masse, and the university bubble will burst. Don't be in the area when that happens.Replies: @Almost Missouri
I look forward forward to this day. But the legacy of Griggs v. Duke Power and related legislation that gave universities the de facto gatekeeper monopoly on all white-collar hiring will keep universities alive and solvent in this zombie state for a long, long time. Unfortunately, that life and solvency is extracted from and at the expense of the real economy and the real culture.
So once again, diversity has proven to be the opposite of a strength.
This is certainly possible. The valedictorian of my high school class didn’t crack 1000. She studied a lot and took easy classes.
These used to be called dummies.
It was Woodrow Wilson, I believe:
"Any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyphenated_AmericanReplies: @Almost Missouri, @songbird
An 1899 Puck cartoon caption from your link asks why we should let the hyphenated “cast whole ballots when they are only half Americans?”
How much wiser our ancestors were!
Of course, the cartoon was satirical and meant to deride the asker of such questions, so I guess the rot set in pretty early.
Yes, a lot of apparently strange college/university behavior makes sense once you understand that it is meant to game the US News and other rankings.
I will add a little purely anecdotal evidence.
My first three kids are all either out of HS, or soon to be out of HS (as in graduate this spring).
For all three kids there was a significant disparity between grades and test scores.
Kid #1: Test scores in the top 1%. REALLY crappy grades. As in he was in danger of flunking out of HS. He really cared about athletics, and there was a college nearby that required a 3.0 and he really liked the coach and the team. And he decided on a tough major while in HS. The coach took him to the admissions office, and the admissions officer gave him a stern lecture about how he needed to bring up his grades. So he did. His grades at that college were well below average, but he excelled at his sport.
Kid #2: Fantastic grades, crappy test scores. Kid #2 had a diversity scholarship to a well-known public university, but those test scores were sooooooo bad. She spent years on classes and training to bring her test scores up to slightly below average for that college. She got in, great scholarship, and now her grades are up in the top of her college. She is a pre-med, and has a GPA over 3.9. For example, her last organic chemistry test she was almost 30 points above the average, as in getting an A even without the curve. She is getting every honor and research opportunity the university can throw her way. She is worried about whether she can do well on her MCAT when the time comes.
Kid #3: Grades almost as good as #2, test scores slightly better than #2. She applied to 3 elite private colleges, not quite Ivy, but a step or two below that. She got into all 3 of them. In all 3 cases, her test scores are in the bottom 10% of the incoming class, but if you weight her grades by the honors and AP classes she took, she is well above average. One of the three universities gave her a great financial aid package, the other two offered nothing. You can guess which one she will attend in the fall.
What does this mean?
These are only 3 data points, and only 1.5 completion through college. It does suggest that grades, esp. from a reputable high school, are more important than test score in determining college success for this one particular family.
From another time, regarding presumed beautiful babyhood:
It was Woodrow Wilson, I believe:
"Any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyphenated_AmericanReplies: @Almost Missouri, @songbird
I believe you are right.
I know, I got it! … too lazy to throw rocks…
… wait, I thought that was going to be a certain joke that I’d heard before.
NEVERMIND!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9RWgVbvklAReplies: @songbird
It is really an interesting case. Rumor has it that nothing matters afterward. You can buy your credentials or copy your papers.
The high grade/low test score student is a feature of the METCO program in Boston, which brings dusky urban yutes to the white man’s suburban schools.
Do you really think the Nice White Ladies teaching are going to break form?
Shocking!
Hey NPR, how about a link to this study that supposedly proves SAT scores don’t predict college performance? I would be absolutely fascinated to see it? I know this internet stuff where people demand to see and evaluate your sources for themselves is newfangled, but would you at least try?
I went to a lower middle class, blue collar, school district. I had to take SAT’s; the elite school I wanted to go to, required them.
You didn’t have to be the sharpest knife in the drawer to understand why they wanted the SAT test. I could get a 3.8 GPA because the teachers graded on a curve, and my fellow students pulled the curve to the left.
Go to school in the rich districts, or the private Country Day School, I would have a 2.8 because everybody is pretty damn bright, a good percentage brighter than me!
So by having everybody take the same test, they had a way to accurately measure how we stacked up to each other.
This negro womyn that was a straight A student in high school but flunked her math exit exam 5 times, she was in a school where the grading curve had been shifted waaay to left by her idiot student cohort.
The school district was obviously using a test that was designed for the average student in the country; not just the ones at terrible NAM schools.
And after 4 years, I graduated from the elite college, with a 2.8. Most of my classmates were from the richest districts or had gone to private prep high schools…
Grading is subjective (ie subject to affirmative action and low competition) and, insofar as it’s objective, based more upon conscientiousness than intellect. It’s no mystery to me at all.
Somebody I knew years ago pointed out that everybody has skills, interests, abilities, somewhere on a continuum. And from that, not all peeps are going to be good at everything. I’m sure you’ll agree.
The Wall Streeters only had to know that a 5% commission on a billion dollars would get them $50 million with every billion. They didn’t care about anything else.
There was this asian math whiz that came up with a mathematical equation of how to invest and completely eliminate any risk of losing your investment. A bunch of peeps bought into it and lost their asses. The math whiz fled back to asia. This was about 10 to 15 years ago.
Other math whizzes on Wall Street are behind the hyper fast trading, that have caused multiple market melt downs when something goes wrong with the math.
Last point, there is something cooked into human DNA that produces the infamous 80-20 rule.
Over and over, peeps have studied various characteristics of humans, and found 20% of the population possess 80% of something, and the remaining 80% divvy up the remaining 20%.
I first heard of this at the start of my commissioned selling career. That 20% of the sales force will make 80% of the money, and the other 80% will earn the remaining 20%. And it was true, there was a small percentage that made the vast amount of the sales.
So math ability appears to operate on the 80-20 rule as well. Just look around at any school and a small group have the math gene and the rest don’t really have a clue.
This also works in a negative sense, crime, car collisions and tickets, just generally being crazy are 80-20. 20% of the population commit 80% of this behavior….
I bet you’re good at math, but would never be able to change a flat tire or some other simple task without help. Let the rest of us know what you’re terrible at.
Then we could tar and feather YOU! LOL
The colleges that are ditching standardized tests certainly are looking for students with parents that can write big checks, but I think that mostly they are looking to expand the enrollment, to suck in ore of the government-guaranteed student loan cash. Colleges are increasingly thinking like businesses, and it’s all about maximizing cash flow.
The mantra about test scores not correlating with performance is only partly true. At the high end, sure, things like reliability and neuroticism etc. dominate. The difference between someone at the 100% and the 70% scores is usually dominated by personal factors. I certainly have encountered graduate students with perfect GRE scores, who were psychologically incapable of getting anything real done. On the other hand, at the bottom end, there is a correlation. People scoring at 10% or less, sure there are exceptions but they are few and far between. Since my university has been bringing in some of these people, I have encountered graduate students who nominally have a BS in a hard science who literally know NOTHING. They don’t know what a neuron is, or how to do math with fractions, etc. And the curriculum adapts to their needs, and the slots are filled, and the money rolls in. And we are graduating students with great social skills, who are very good at gaming the system, and have no scholarly ability, and are being told how great they are…
Professional basketball teams typically have a ” vertical jump test.” For people who can pass this, there is little correlation with ability to play professional basketball. There are a lot of people with springs in their legs that can’t pass or throw etc. But: for people who can’t pass the jump test, they just don’t have the raw athletic ability. Maybe one in 10,000 are fast enough etc. to succeed despite that, but the pro teams just don’t have the time to weed through all of these to find that proverbial ‘diamond in the rough.’
Since the Kushners are Jewish and not Welsh, it would be more correct to say that he jewished on the deal.Replies: @Kyle
Jewished isn’t a word. The contemporary vulgar vocabulary is “jewed.” He jewed them over.
“‘Our research clearly demonstrates that these students graduate often at a higher rate,’ said Steve Syverson, an assistant vice chancellor at the University of Washington Bothell, and co-author of the study.’”
Anyone who denies that standardized tests matter is a crook. Every other measure—grades, recommendations, awards that are themselves not based on standardized tests—has been hopelessly corrupted by affirmative action, and were subjective long before that. This is true at every educational level.
If these mopes assert that politicals are graduating at higher rates, and/or with better grades than merit-based admits, they are unwittingly confessing to educational fraud.
When I taught college (1992-1998), I not only saw blacks and Hispanics being passed (in some cases with my grades being overridden) based solely on their race or ethnicity, I also saw white men being flunked, based solely on their race and sex. (I was able to save one such student.)
How exactly?
Anyone who denies that standardized tests matter is a crook. Every other measure—grades, recommendations, awards that are themselves not based on standardized tests—has been hopelessly corrupted by affirmative action, and were subjective long before that. This is true at every educational level.
If these mopes assert that politicals are graduating at higher rates, and/or with better grades than merit-based admits, they are unwittingly confessing to educational fraud.
When I taught college (1992-1998), I not only saw blacks and Hispanics being passed (in some cases with my grades being overridden) based solely on their race or ethnicity, I also saw white men being flunked, based solely on their race and sex. (I was able to save one such student.)Replies: @Anon
I also saw white men being flunked, based solely on their race and sex.
How exactly?
My first three kids are all either out of HS, or soon to be out of HS (as in graduate this spring).
For all three kids there was a significant disparity between grades and test scores.
Kid #1: Test scores in the top 1%. REALLY crappy grades. As in he was in danger of flunking out of HS. He really cared about athletics, and there was a college nearby that required a 3.0 and he really liked the coach and the team. And he decided on a tough major while in HS. The coach took him to the admissions office, and the admissions officer gave him a stern lecture about how he needed to bring up his grades. So he did. His grades at that college were well below average, but he excelled at his sport.
Kid #2: Fantastic grades, crappy test scores. Kid #2 had a diversity scholarship to a well-known public university, but those test scores were sooooooo bad. She spent years on classes and training to bring her test scores up to slightly below average for that college. She got in, great scholarship, and now her grades are up in the top of her college. She is a pre-med, and has a GPA over 3.9. For example, her last organic chemistry test she was almost 30 points above the average, as in getting an A even without the curve. She is getting every honor and research opportunity the university can throw her way. She is worried about whether she can do well on her MCAT when the time comes.
Kid #3: Grades almost as good as #2, test scores slightly better than #2. She applied to 3 elite private colleges, not quite Ivy, but a step or two below that. She got into all 3 of them. In all 3 cases, her test scores are in the bottom 10% of the incoming class, but if you weight her grades by the honors and AP classes she took, she is well above average. One of the three universities gave her a great financial aid package, the other two offered nothing. You can guess which one she will attend in the fall.
What does this mean?
These are only 3 data points, and only 1.5 completion through college. It does suggest that grades, esp. from a reputable high school, are more important than test score in determining college success for this one particular family.Replies: @ScarletNumber
You are operating under the assumption that “college success” is an important metric in and of itself.