
University of California Will Stop Using SAT, ACT - big_chungus
https://www.wsj.com/articles/university-of-california-will-stop-using-sat-act-11590099469
======
neonate
[https://archive.md/SuCkO](https://archive.md/SuCkO)

~~~
QuantumGood
_interesting_ url there...

------
dang
A related article is [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/us/university-
california-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/us/university-california-
sat-act.html)

------
hpoe
I know some people protest measures that are considered more "objective" over
measures that are more "holistic", whether this is in school admittance,
performance evaluation, promotion consideration, interviewing, determining
welfare benefits, choosing who makes the rules and governs.

However it has been my experience that whenever an explicit test or hierarchy
is removed another shadow one builds up that is more subjective, more biased,
and more subject to abuse.

Sure the SAT/ACT does favor students whose parents had enough money to afford
private tutors, but it also meant that if I didn't have a private tutor if I
could get a perfect score my chances increase. Now it changes to the whims of
the interviewer, the committee that ranks my "holistic" experience, etc.

~~~
awillen
Yeah, I agree with this 100% - these students are going to be compared to each
other somehow, and it's always going to be imperfect and favor those who are
better off. Still, these tests are at least relatively objective, and if you
remove them the kids will be compared with less objective measures that allow
for more bias to be introduced.

The SAT/ACT are the worst form of college admission criteria very much in the
same way that democracy is the worst form of government... except for all the
others. A lot of people criticize them, but those critics haven't come up with
anything better.

~~~
Shoue
Finland, often touted as the best in education, does not use SAT. The same can
be said for many other European countries with excellent education. Are you
implying there is no correlation? Have you looked at their systems before
making a claim such as "haven't come up with anything better"?

~~~
bananabreakfast
European entrance exams, including Finland's, are far, far worse than the SAT.
They are much more serious and shape one's life far more and enforce systemic
bias to much higher extreme.

~~~
Gibbon1
I don't have direct experience but I think the whole system in Europe is
designed to irrevocably pigeon hole students very early in the game.

If I remember California State Colleges have a bunch of placement tests to
gauge what level of classes to put beginning students in. I think I'd be
happier with a system that throws a net wide and than deals with the result on
an as needed basis. Than a hyper meritocratic system that excludes large
segments of society.

~~~
BurningFrog
> _the whole system in Europe_

Pet peeve: There is no European system. At least every country has their own
unique system.

~~~
Gibbon1
So whats your point here?

~~~
njonesuk
That your statement about "the whole European system" is factually incorrect,
because every single country takes their own approach, and there are huge
variations between them.

Trying to tar the whole of Europe with one brush would be like Europeans
conflating the US education system with Paraguay and Ecuador because it's the
"whole American system".

~~~
Gibbon1
So whats your point here?

------
corrupt_measure
>Admissions tests, allegedly biased against minority students, will be phased
out over five years

Why are we lumping minorities into one group when we know that many minority
groups score better than average on standardized tests than the general
population. Asian Americans, Nigerian Americans, Jewish people, etc all do
very well.

In a world where the wealthy have ever more advantages in college admissions,
standardized tests serve to level the playing field. I grew up in a very
wealthy town and many kids I knew whose parents spent large sums on SAT tutors
never improved their scores because they didn't have the intellectual
horsepower.

Just because college administrators and others feel uncomfortable that certain
groups continue to do better than others on the SAT is a horrible reason to
get rid of the test.

~~~
Barrin92
> In a world where the wealthy have ever more advantages in college
> admissions, standardized tests serve to level the playing field

wish I could upvote this more than once. Rigorous testing and merit based
examinations have a reputation for being elitist but they're the exact
opposite.

There's some benefit for people coming from higher social classes, but the
difference in intellect is much smaller than the difference in networking,
cultural attitudes or any other vague criterion that tests are replaced with.

At any country you look that has truly high mobility in education and has
managed to produce a broad, national high quality system there's almost a
Leninist attitude towards discipline and putting people through examinations.
It's much harder for social privilege to be sustained in these institutions
than in some kind of essay writing competition. It's also I think the reason
for the pretty strong diversity of the military.

------
cameldrv
This is very unfortunate. Yes, you can improve your SAT score by studying
somewhat, but not massively. The College board has made a free online prep
course with Kahn academy that achieves similar results to professional
coaching if the student puts in the time. The fact that a student is willing
to put in that time should be an indicator that they're likely to be
successful in college.

Where more of the abuse is is in parents getting disability diagnoses to get
extra time on the test. This same technique can be used to game grades though
too.

~~~
catalogia
I'm not convinced more time on tests will actually help somebody who doesn't
legitimately have some relevant disability.

Generally tests are structured so that if you know the material, you'll have
plenty of time to spare. But if you don't know the material, it's unlikely
you'll figure it out even if you're given twice as much time on the exam. It's
not like they'll spend that extra hour teaching themselves the trigonometry
they neglected to learn in the weeks/months before the exam.

~~~
PureParadigm
I've taken exams in college where the professors intentionally put more
questions on the exam than you have time for. They say, "think of each
question as an opportunity to increase your score" as opposed to caring about
answering them all. The score is then standardized at the end, since most
results are below 50% correct. It turns out exams like this usually give a
very normally shaped distribution. More time is a massive advantage in these
cases.

~~~
barry-cotter
More time is only an advantage if you get it and others don’t.

~~~
Thorrez
The time pressure forces others to not get it. You getting it does depend on
your skill to a large degree, but extra time increases your probability of
getting it.

------
remarkEon
That sound you hear is panicked elites, rushing to the "side door" of the UC
system in an attempt to figure out how best to influence their kid's
probability of admission since paying a few grand for prep sessions (for piece
of mind, mostly) on what's a pretty darn good measure of academic aptitude is
a waste of everyone's time, now that the test is rendered meaningless ...
until California develops their own. I'm sure whatever they come up with will
be quite the improvement.

If there was a checklist that you'd go down to help the University system
implode "remove testing for academic aptitude" is probably right before "all
objective measures of performance are banned". At that point who the hell can
justify paying $150k+ for a "degree"?

Edit: pasting this from my below comment.

I think people are misinterpreting my comment as suggesting elite parents
would've been against this - far from it. They absolutely wanted this because
now it's easier to hide middling academic aptitude from admissions boards at
elite schools.

To be clear: Removing this test helps elite parents, and hurts those who can't
afford spending money on "summer experiences" abroad or poverty tourism or
whatever.

~~~
anon102010
Haha.. I think you have this backwards! If you think money can buy a good SAT
score - go make some. Reality? Much easier to pay for a trip to "volunteer" in
africa or at the local hospital, get on sports teams etc etc. If you have $$
being head of club X is a cakewalk! I had life changing SAT scores, and while
prep helps, that slacker kid isn't getting 1600

~~~
caseysoftware
A few years ago, I was advising a group of undergraduates at a university and
noticed that one was the President of their club. I thought that was cool and
met another.. who was also President. Then a third.

It turns out, they called all their members "president" so they could all
declare they were a "president of X" on their resume and could talk about
leadership. Creative way to game the system for $0.

~~~
killjoywashere
Words have meaning and that amounts to a lie en masse. Because the word
"president" has a specific meaning in the English language, what you describe
is not "creative", it's "collusion".

~~~
askafriend
The fact that it works is an indictment of the system, not an indictment of
the kids.

------
AaronFriel
Such a move would mean I would never have been admitted to university, and I
don't think I'm alone.

I graduated third from the bottom of my class from High School and had
enormous difficulties with a school system that was adversarial to me
throughout my childhood.

In my public elementary school my principal deceived state officials to try to
put me into special ed. She was admonished after it was revealed she hid my
Iowa standardized test scores from state officials.

In my public high school, my teachers and administrators were given my
elementary school file and treated me similarly. I was forbidden from taking
AP classes or even taking the exams with self study. After I graduated, my
high school refused to release a copy of my file to me, saying they had
destroyed it mere weeks after I received my diploma.

Standardized tests were the one opportunity I had to demonstrate I didn't fit
my grade point average or what I'm sure would have been derogatory information
provided by my public school to any university I applied to.

~~~
ikeyany
> In my public elementary school my principal deceived state officials to try
> to put me into special ed. She was admonished after it was revealed she hid
> my Iowa standardized test scores from state officials.

I think a student talking about that during the application process would
actually be considered for admission.

~~~
AaronFriel
I would say it's a very naive assumption that admissions will look that deeply
into a story of a "low-performing" student saying they have been wronged with
no evidence otherwise.

Especially if I did not have a standardized test score, a public school file
documenting it, or anything to back up that claim other than recollections of
my own and my father's.

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bcatanzaro
This is a great victory for privileged kids that can now rely more than ever
on coaching to have the most awesome extra-curriculars and most convincing
essays. Truly a brave step to ensure that poor kids can't sneak through the
admissions system using their smarts. I expect this will lead to higher
donations to the UC system in the future. </s>

Seriously, considering stopping donations this year - I'm a UC alumnus and
this makes me sad.

------
LatteLazy
When this subject comes up I always tell the same story.

When I entered university, the head of admissions had been forced to accept
the job. He didn't want to be head of admissions (for physics, our subject).

He used the opportunity to do an experiment. Normally you need advanced Maths
with a decent grade to get onto a physics degree. He abandoned that and
admitted about 20 people without that. He also admitted people with lower
grades than usual. Hs basically made offers to everyone who applied. So our
first year class was almost twice the size it was meant to be.

He was my personal tutor and asked me to help host admissions lunches for
prospective students, so the subject of admissions came up.

He laughed and said he admitted everyone because as far as he was concerned,
if you were too dB to pass first year you'd be kicked out then and if not you
deserved to be in second year whether you're grades at 18 were good or not.

Of the 20 people without maths, at least 15 failed or transfered to other
subjects in year 1. But a few graduated.

So he gave them a chance and they took it.

I know the logistics make it impossible. But I actually think letting everyone
who applies in and letting the end of term/semester/year exams decide who
stays is much fairer than single tests or one off interviews of lists of
(parentally supported) extra circular projects. Imagine if MIT or Harvard said
"Everyone is welcome but only 10% of people pass the first year".

~~~
fnord123
The logistics aren't impossible. As far as I'm aware, this is how e.g. the
Belgian system works.

In the US, however, I think attrition is a metric that contributes to
University rankings. So if you accept people into a course you want people to
graduate. In such a scheme, the attrition rates are high.

~~~
mrep
Depends on the school. I don't think the elite schools like the ivy leagues do
this but they are very selective so it's kind of assumed everyone that gets in
is smart enough that they should graduate. A lot of the competitive public
state schools though absolutely do this.

I went to a public state school and they straight up bell curved the grades
for most classes at the TA level so that a certain number of kids were always
going to get a D/F both of which are not passing grades and thus requiring the
student to either retake it or switch majors.

It was pretty brutal but also highly effective at getting me to really study
the material to stay above the curve and pass.

------
collegeburner
Yay, another chance for schools to curate incoming classes based on what they
want on a brochure rather than on merit.

~~~
adammunich
I'd hardly call rich parents paying for SAT prep classes a better solution.

~~~
zests
Private high schools bother me much more then SAT tutors do. I went to
$GOOD_UNIVERSITY and it drove me insane how many people had previously gone to
a private high school.

The amount of resources they had that I didn't have at my good, public high
school was astounding. It was really 'stand out from the crowd' kind of
resources that are probably going to become even more important with the
removal of SAT/ACT.

~~~
nicoburns
Yeah, I also went to $GOOD_UNIVERSITY (in the UK). There were a lot of private
high school students, but what stood out to me even more was the level of
resourcing and support that the state schools that some students had gone to
had given them.

A lot of these "good state-funded schools" pushed people to specific A-levels
that looked good to universities, and had coaching on the university
interviews and entrance exams (not to mention a much higher standard of
teaching). These schools regularly had 100+ students a year get into
$GOOD_UNIVERSITY. In contrast to my school that 2 people go in my year and
none some years, and and couldn't even work out which entrance exams I needed
to be entered for (which they had to do on my behalf).

I don't agree that the SAT is helpful though. These kind of standardised tests
measure ability to prep far more than they measure intelligence. In my
experience the universities are actually putting quite a lot of effort into
making their courses widely accessible (setting lower entrance grades for
people from less good schools for example). The problem is really with vastly
uneven quality of teaching at the high school level which means that some
students really are a lot more prepared for the courses than others (even if
that doesn't reflect base level intelligence).

~~~
twic
I went to a UK $GOOD_UNIVERSITY, and before that, a "good state-funded
school". The sum total of coaching for the interview was one mock interview
with the head of chemistry and the deputy head - neither of whom had been to
$GOOD_UNIVERSITY themselves, or really knew what the interview would be like.
Still, they did their best, and i appreciate that!

Somehow, the school still got ~10% of each year into Oxbridge; i suppose
that's the power of selective admissions.

------
nicholas73
I had middling grades and not much extracurricular padding in high school but
99th percentile SAT (no prep other than a practice test). If it weren't for
the SAT I would have had worse college options. School felt like it provided
nothing more than read and regurg and my background did not promote anything
extra. So personally I do not see how this decision evens the playing field.

~~~
paxys
There are a lot more cases which are the exact opposite. People who have done
well in school, extra curriculars and more, but are held back by a meaningless
test.

~~~
nicholas73
I don't have perspective, maybe, but what is exactly holding back someone who
does well in school to score higher on a test? It's not like you don't get to
retake it if it was a fluke.

If it's the test fee, just allow a retake for free like a gas station smog
check offer.

Or, a college can bucket grades and test scores separately and just take
whichever is higher.

------
downerending
I grew up fairly poor in a rather mediocre school district. I wonder if I'd
have even gotten into college without the SAT (which is the better test, in my
opinion). Getting 99%s on that made a difference for me.

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grumple
I wish UC the best of luck designing another test. That it was a unanimous
vote is suspicious to me though... did the college board stop bribing the
board of regents? Or did the regents pool together to create a consulting
agency that's getting paid out to develop the new test? Or are they really all
so pliable or same-minded?

------
vimax
Everyone is focused on this being a means of controlling the selection
process, but just look at the money. CollegeBoard had a 2017 revenue of
$1.07bn with an astonishing $928m in expenses.

If the new UCSAT displaces the SAT, UC gets to add an extra $100m to profits
and $XXX million in 'expenses' to get lost in the UC System. And they get more
control over the selection process.

~~~
azinman2
You're assuming they'd charge for the test. Is that documented somewhere? I
don't see that in the article.

------
jwilber
UC Berkeley alumni here. Don’t know that this is a good thing.

Currently, the UC’s provide a lot of weight to holistic applications. These
often favor privileged kids, as they have access to far more opportunities
than others. For some, the SAT provided a sort of leveling field in that
regard.

Still, it wasn’t perfect, but I fail to see how what they come up with will
fix the issue.

Of interest is that all of this is taking place in a state that has banned
affirmative action.

~~~
ciarannolan
>These often favor privileged kids, as they have access to far more
opportunities than others.

I think these "holistic" admissions do the opposite. They allow a small group
of college administrators to pick which "backgrounds" they want to make up the
freshman class each year.

~~~
grumple
Admissions already works like this. An admissions committee is a bunch of
professors that volunteered / were convinced to do admissions, and they
consider the academic background, personal background, demographics, essays
(sometimes), and most of all - ability to pay. Requiring aid negatively
impacts your chances of even getting in.

------
lemoncucumber
Can we fix the article title to properly capitalize SAT and ACT to be more
readable? Particularly since both "sat" and "act" are words.

------
Balgair
The connections between this decision, the recent _Students for Fair Admission
INC v Harvard_ , and the _Varsity Blues_ scandal are striking. The interesting
tid-bit is the _Varsity Blues_ information.

Previously, the price of bribery was unknown. The economics of such a trade,
illegal as it was, were murky. With the unmasking of the scheme, including
possible angles, and now a known bargaining price point, the whole admissions
process has become much clearer.

Covid19, throws a wrench into everything, including college admissions. But
these other mechanisms of entry are still in place.

I suspect that the admissions departments are about to get a lot larger.
Especially with the ability to use Zoom for everything now.

------
Aaronstotle
I took the SAT in high school and my scores discouraged me so much that I
ended up not applying to any colleges. Worked out in the end because I went to
a community college then transferred to Berkeley (which thankfully didn't
require an SAT score)

~~~
sinkasapa
My experience was much like your own except I never took the tests, which I'm
sure I'd have done horribly at given my high school experience. I'm now
getting a PhD in a really nice program so I feel good about the transfer
route.

High school and college are so different, I've often wondered if transfering
wouldn't be the best for most people. Then you can prove that you can succeed
in college by going to college and learning what that means. I meet so many
people that went straight from their high school to a competitive
undergraduate institution and then came out the other end of it feeling like
they never knew why they did what they did. In fact, many make it all the way
through their PhD, only to think afterwards whether it was what they really
wanted. They never worked at normal jobs or really left the citadel. 18 is so
young to commit to all of this. I think the transfer route allows for more
reflection and a far more realistic "model" for institutions to base
projections of later success in a BA or BS program on.

Going to a community college and being in class with people who are middle
aged and seeking new directions, refugees, people who made mistakes, and other
young people who knew they wanted to do something but not what yet, was an
invaluable part of my life and formed my understanding of what it means to
seek out education. It is an insight many of my colleagues lack.

Though it doesn't really seem to be the point of the debate on exams, what
really could stand to be improved is the extent to which undergraduates have
the best long term life outcomes based on their educational experience and how
the admissions process functions relative to this question.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
People keep saying those tears favor the rich, but I think if you look at
legacy admissions, which are the domain of the rich, those tend to have lower
SAT scores than other students.

Also, the various people arrested in the college payment schemes were rich,
but still were not able to get their kids into the colleges based on their
scores.

Basically, the colleges are doing this so they have more leeway to select the
students they want without having to answer tough questions about bias and
discrimination.

------
yhoiseth
> The road to Thursday’s vote has been full of twists and turns. Ms.
> Napolitano began the review of the use of the SAT in 2018, that prompted a
> faculty committee began a review of the use of the exam. In February it
> recommended that the system continue to use the exams, arguing that
> applicants’ scores on the SAT and ACT still serve as better predictors of
> first-year performance than high school grades.

I think I would have followed that recommendation.

------
seibelj
Another strike against genuine education. Now prep schools that have 17
valedictorians will help their students pad their applications with nonsense
extra-curricular activities and experiences. However it's likely much easier
to create the same pastiche of fluff in poorly-performing schools than it is
to actually raise test scores.

Now more than ever, college signals nothing other than the ability to follow
rules and jump through hoops. Such a tragedy.

~~~
basementcat
Alternatively, this may prompt more students to take the AMC examinations.

[https://www.maa.org/math-competitions](https://www.maa.org/math-competitions)

~~~
zests
Good luck self studying for those -- I tried. I made AIME but had no chance
there.

There's no way a significant number of generic public high schools start
caring about the AMC. It will just be helicopter parents, wealthy private
schools and the odd self motivated student.

~~~
saagarjha
You can study for the AMC–I used to (disclaimer: I knew a lot people who did
so as well). However, doing well on the AMC usually means you need to actually
understand what you're doing; it's fairly difficult to cheese your way
through.

------
vikramkr
It's weird that the development of our educational system is being driven by
what basically boils down to free market competition where UCs reject the
value proposition of those standardized tests and impact the market for
educational testing services. It's also interesting to see, if you view this
as the market becoming more efficient, it's interesting to see how long it
took for any significant move towards efficiency to happen by rejecting
standardized tests. I wonder if market skeptics are right and that these
evaluations and decisions would have been made a lot faster and better with
regulation and centralization, or if market advocates are right and this was
the best/fastest way to have educational institutions realize the impact
subpar admissions selection based on flawed tests has and course correct,
which they might only do because UC is competing against other institutions
(unlike universities in other countries), and which opens up the market for
better evaluation methods that will, because of a profit motive, lead to new,
less biased standardized evaluations being developed rapidly to increase
equity and equality of opportunity in society.

------
ordinaryperson
Lot of great comments here, just wanted to add one piece of historical
context:

This had a really bad outcome the last time the UC system tried to do this 20
years ago:
[https://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2001/02/21_sat.html](https://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2001/02/21_sat.html)

In response to the UC's criticism the College Board added an essay to the SAT.
The thinking was this would expose the softer, more human side that
standardized tests missed.

What happened?

It significantly increased the cost of the test (gotta pay someone to grade
it) and made it even harder for poor kids to go to rich schools because they
couldn't afford the more expensive test.

Not to mention the subjectivity of grading an essay.

Standardized testing is like that Winston Churchill quote on democracy being
"the absolute worst form of government, except for all those other forms that
have been tried from time to time" \-- what system does the UC have that's
more fair?

The NYT piece said they're planning on developing their own test -- so now
prospective students have to take two tests if they plan on applying to
schools outside the UC system?

The practical effect of this is Asian Americans will have to work 2x as hard
as other groups to get into good schools, as was revealed by the Harvard case
[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-
enrollme...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollment-
applicants.html).

------
willberman
I would prefer if schools just gave as concrete as possible feedback for why
individual applicants are or are not admitted.

i.e. Congrats, you got accepted. Your GPA ranked in the top $X percentile of
our admitted class and your engagement in robotics was astonishing.

or

You were not admitted because while your GPA was excellent, we did not see
sufficient community engagement in your extracuriculars.

~~~
google234123
There's no point in feedback since you can't go back in time to fix those
issues. You should already be able to guess from looking at the profiles of
students who got in and those that didn't.

~~~
willberman
I don’t necessarily agree with either of those.

Maybe a college tells me that a particular type of extra-curricular wasn’t
valued as highly as I thought it was and I elect to pursue something different
in undergrad (I wouldn’t recommend this but to each their own). The feedback
would also provide relevant data points to future applicants if chosen to be
shared.

There are plenty of examples of students who are accepted/rejected to schools
which you wouldn’t expect.

------
fnord77

         > ...dealing a significant blow to the multibillion-dollar college admission testing industry.
    

why such concern for a parasite industry?

------
wholien
Still feel like test scores are the least inequitable parts of college
admissions. This is where people can
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/upshot/how-universal-
coll...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/upshot/how-universal-coll..).

Louisiana made everyone take the ACT and... more people went to college,
especially the high achieving low income and/or minority students!

[https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2303z4.html](https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2303z4.html)

------
jariel
This pragmatically means the administrators are free to pursue their biased
and ideological policy objectives.

I loathe to be so cynical but 'roughly objective' measures are usually better
than none.

~~~
ciarannolan
> This pragmatically means the administrators are free to pursue their biased
> and ideological policy objectives.

This is the express purpose of this change.

~~~
jariel
This is probably true, and really it hurts.

In this Trumpian era we like to talk about the 'integrity of institutions' and
yet so many are boldly willing to do away with the results of baseline
objectivity when it doesn't suit their agenda.

Because of course, the 'agenda' is what matters, not Truth or Objectivity.

Hmmm ... I wonder if we could have a place, where like ... 'free thinkers'
could be free to talk about ideas and be objective without worrisome
authoritarians creeping in. Maybe we could protect such people with things
like 'tenure' so that they would be free to not have to follow some specific
ideal ...

Now that would be interesting!

~~~
dominostars
> In this Trumpian era we like to talk about the 'integrity of institutions'
> and yet so many are boldly willing to do away with the results of baseline
> objectivity when it doesn't suit their agenda.

Except that the SAT and ACT have been shown over and over again to _not_ be
objective, so calling it "baseline objectivity" misses the point entirely.

~~~
jariel
No, the SATs are by far the most objective criteria, to not realize this, is
to miss the point entirely.

That 'rich kids to better' is a more nuanced thing, not a fundamental flaw,
because, after all, that 'rich kids do better' at the SATs and everything
else, means that they are actually first-order better candidates for the
school.

It's only when you take into consideration the secondary objectives, that the
flaws in SATs become evident.

Now, of secondary objectives such as 'economic and racial composition' become
the 'primary objective' \- then objectively academic exercises like the SAD,
grades etc. become irrelevant.

There is the possibility that SAT's are actually a distraction, that and that
there might be a better way of determining ability - most of the rest of the
world does it somehow.

------
xxpor
If you thought grade inflation was bad before, hold on to your tuchus.

------
organicfigs
I can't say I agree with this decision. I graduated from Cal probably a bit
higher than 70th percentile by GPA in EECS 10 years ago. To this day, I was
motivated by everyone smarter than me who was admitted based on merit based on
their SAT. If I were to graduate today (at lets say) 85th percentile, not
because of merit but because Berkeley admitted applicants not as strong, that
would've damaged my motivation more than being in a fair 70th percentile
placement.

------
usui
Yes, finally! As someone who underwent the standardized testing grind, I have
been waiting for an announcement like this by a university system for years.

I understand that there needs to be some standardized way to objectively score
students, because allocating college seats to students seems to be an induced
scarcity problem.

However, as someone who scored highly and is currently studying computer
science at UC Berkeley, I ultimately feel like my time was wasted because the
tests have almost no relation to any of my studies in class.

I know that in the absence of SAT and ACT, universities will need to come up
with a different system, that has an equal chance of being gamed. Perfect is
the enemy of good, and in this case, I would rather we strive toward
standardized systems that actually relate to the content of high school. So
many times while studying for the test I thought how much of a waste of time
it is, and that I would rather be doing something else like programming.

Thank goodness that nowadays all I have to worry about is actual computer
science. I got past the time-wasting hump and I never have to look back again.
That is, unless I face the GRE...

~~~
harryh
_I ultimately feel like my time was wasted because the tests have almost no
relation to any of my studies in class._

The SAT is basically a somewhat disguised IQ test and I'm quite confident that
intelligence was related to the studies in your classes.

~~~
usui
I hated this admissions process so much that I did the ACT as early as I
could, graduated high school a year early, and started college faster. As soon
as I knew the battle was over, I knew I could drop the facade of playing the
game. It felt so liberating to focus on what I deemed "more relevant" tasks.

My problem though is that I do not think educational reform is my passion. My
passion aims at progressing in my chosen major, and I desperately wanted to
show to colleges this passion, but my test score was the Great Filter that
decided whether or not the other aspects to myself mattered, such as
personality, side projects, or personal achievements. I did well in high
school, so it's not that I dislike the system because I didn't perform well. I
dislike the system because there is such a great disconnect between what is
relevant to the college experience and what college admissions is based off.

In general, high SAT/ACT scores correlates with well-achieving college
students, but I'm sure most begrudgingly pushed themselves to get over the IQ
test hump.

I have thought about this issue a lot. The incongruence between college
admissions and student achievement really compels me to strive for a better
system so that future generations will not have to waste time like I did.
However, I suspect that all the great people who could work on a better system
do not stick around.

------
simonsarris
Sadly this is a continuation of a long trend. In 2005 Inside Higher Ed
mentioned:

> Fewer than a third of college degree recipients are “proficient” in everyday
> literacy, U.S. study finds, and rate is falling.

Do you think its gotten worse or better, 15 years on?

Back in 2017 I wrote about how Cal State replaced no-credit classes with
credit bearing ones, and then nixed the requirements for placement exams and
remedial classes: [https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/higher-education-
erodes-a7c...](https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/higher-education-
erodes-a7c9983692e0)

> At Cal State, about 40% of freshmen each year are considered not ready for
> college-level work and required to take remedial classes that do not count
> toward their degrees.

> The hope is that these efforts will also help students obtain their degrees
> sooner — one of the public university system’s priorities. Cal State has
> committed to doubling its four-year graduation rate, from 19% to 40%, by
> 2025.

------
nimbius
Ibram X Kendi has an excellent book, "Stamped from the Beginning" that does a
great job of explaining how SAT and ACT tests were really only ever meaningful
as a barrier to class mobility for blacks in the United states. in the 21st
century it does the same thing. By keeping test prep out of public school and
forcing takers to invest up to a thousand dollars on a classroom instruction
for the test (which often promises an increase up to 200 points) it remains a
disadvantage to latinx and black minorities who are generally poorer.

'Test prep' is also less about what you learn, and more about the finesse or
'form' required to take the test. Much the same as a power lifter lifts
greater weight due to ther superior form, those whove attended test prep
complete the SAT and ACT with a higher score because of superior test taking
'form.'

~~~
spekcular
I'm not sure this take comports with the facts. Test prep materials are
readily available at most public libraries, and even professional prep courses
produce marginal gains (smaller than the test-retest measurement error).

The claim that rich white people are leveraging their wealth to buy a secret
"one weird trick" that instantly boosts their scores is simply false.

I am happy to provide citations if you're interested.

~~~
anon102010
The idea that wealth won't buy other methods of access, now with no
embarrassingly low test score - is hard to beleive. The rich private school
WILL give donor kids X all A's. At least in the past the SAT score filtered
out the super lazy donor brats.

------
nitwit005
Giving even more incentive for high schools to inflate their students grades.
Give them all straight As so they have a good shot at the UCs.

I don't see how you can eliminate having some sort of admissions test. It's
too easy to fake most of the other criteria they want to use for admissions.

------
pacala
PDF of the decision:
[https://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/may20/b4....](https://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/may20/b4.pdf)

------
mjfl
They're trying to reduce the number of Asians at the school, plain and simple.

~~~
ciarannolan
Even more ironic is that Asian students from the _exact same_ income levels
and neighborhoods are still outperforming their peers.

Maybe there's another solution besides blatant racism.

------
gamesbrainiac
Preparing for the SAT, I have to say that it was one of the weirdest tests
I've ever taken. I don't think it does a good job at predicting future
outcomes for students, compared to how they did in their school work.

For most people outside of the US system, who want to go to US universities,
it is an extra (and expensive) hassle when you've already taken
internationally accredited qualifications like the A-Levels or the IB. I'd
much rather trust something that has assessed you over a couple of years over
something that just asses how well you can cram for something.

~~~
collegeburner
I'll give an alternative perspective from someone who just did the whole
college admissions thing. While measuring ability to cram isn't perfect, I'd
hate to be measured purely based on performance over the years. While I did
well and pulled straight As in some very hard classes, just knowing I was
under such a microscope from day one in high school would be pretty brutally
stressful and might prevent me from participating in as many extra-
curriculars.

------
perseusprime11
I hope they don’t replace one standardized test with another standardized
test. Although, that’s exactly what may happen. It is not far fetched to
create a more personalized project based testing that factors in race,
ethnicity, socio economic status, gender, etc.

Also, if all colleges are created equally, endowed similarly, we may not need
a test and follow the K12 model of going to your local college because it is
as good as any other college. It is about time we solve education along with
healthcare and create equity in the system.

------
therobot24
It'll probably come back in some form. Totally agree that too much emphasis
was on the test score and that it didn't actually represent the student and
their likelihood for success at the university. This is just Goodhart's law in
effect, "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

However, the reason it'll be back in some form later is because you need
quantitative measures to help sort the stack of applications otherwise the
overhead becomes too much to deal with.

------
Budabellly
Is there any way that it could make sense to require reporting the # of hours
a student spends in SAT/ACT tutoring, whether it be private, through your
school, or other?

As a required field on the common app, this could help in making admissions
decisions. There are so many reasons using standardized tests for admissions
isn't fair across the board, but perhaps understanding how much prep went into
the test would provide useful data for admissions offices, and also at the
macroacademic (lol) layer.

~~~
gen3
I can’t see how that makes anything more fair?

Some people are just bad test takers. What good does it make to penalize them
for studying and trying to do the best they can do? Someone with a learning
difference would be at a disadvantage.

Also, why wouldn’t I just lie?

~~~
Budabellly
I was thinking less about penalization or individual application decisions,
and more about aggregate or anonymized datasets for institutions and governing
bodies (College Board, Common App, etc.) to inform their policies.

And yeah, you could certainly lie, but I feel that's true for a lot of fields
on college apps? Perhaps it could be reasonable to have your school validate
or sponsor the answer?

It's well researched that private tutoring (among many other socio-economic
factors) gives you a huge advantage on these tests. Having one of these bodies
come out and say by how much could be a wake up call, and maybe spur more
decisions like this one in the original post. Totally agree with your points,
but also think tutoring != independent studying, the latter of which could not
effectively be reported.

~~~
gen3
That’s a good point. Having those numbers would be interesting, and hopefully
help us employ better use of funding.

Having an anonymous survey portion that you ripped off from the main test and
is collected separately could be beneficial, I think. I would want to also ask
questions about their parents backgrounds, if they had a connection with a
teacher in high school, internet access, and general questions about social
media usage.

------
gexla
Anecdote. I did HORRIBLE in high school. I somehow still graduated with less
than the required GPA. I think they called it close enough because they didn't
want to continue dealing with me. When I stupidly thought college would be a
good idea, I got in based on my SAT score as my GPA wasn't high enough. Of
course, I failed out of college too. ;)

------
frosted-flakes
As a Canadian who moved to the US for a year in my early 20s and had friends
entering university, I had no idea what the SAT or ACT was, and I couldn't
hear the difference between them when they talked about it. Did you know that
SAT and ACT are near-homonyms? When said quickly as in regular speech, they
sound almost the same. Talk about confusing.

------
Medicalidiot
Personally, I would like to a see a government sponsored test where the study
materials are provided for free. I feel like that would help decrease the
amount of people who couldn't afford the prep courses or tutors. Not ideal,
but better than the current system where wealthy parents pay for the best
tutors and materials.

~~~
HALtheWise
Today, the official preparation materials for the SAT are provided for free to
anyone with internet access through Khan Academy, and others in this thread
have claimed they are as good as privately available tutoring. I suspect that
no matter how effective the publicaly available test prep is, somebody will
always be able to convince parents to pay them to do better, whether or not
that actually works. For strong cultural reasons, having the police enforce a
ban on all nonfree activities intended to prepare students for the test is not
viable.

------
augustt
For the best schools, like Berkeley, I don't think this should matter much. At
that level, SAT/ACT scores are pretty much just a threshold used to whittle
down the number of candidates. Once you're over say 1500 on the SAT there's
diminishing returns on trying to close the gap to 1600.

------
aiyodev
The real reason for the change is to exclude more Asians.

History is a circle.

[https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/harvard-s-jewish-
proble...](https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/harvard-s-jewish-problem)

------
jgwil2
Does this mean they will not _require_ the exams, or that they will not
consider them in admissions at all? I'm guessing the latter but couldn't be
sure from the article.

------
stu2b50
I think this is a good move overall. Remember, they're not phasing out tests
entirely, it's over a 5 year period before they can develop alternative tests.

I think US college exam systems are horribly flawed.

For one, why are they run by a private non-profit rather than the government?

They're also clearly not difficult enough, when at elite universities it's
more a qualification than a determinant. In other nations, they're hard enough
that the bell curve doesn't clip at the end.

The tests should be free, or at least free for, say, 2 tests per year per
student. They should be harder. And they shouldn't be held in the hands of a
third party.

~~~
kansface
What are the odds that the UC system will make a _harder_ test, and secondly,
will actually get good applicants to take it?

~~~
saagarjha
Whatever test the UC system comes up with will be taken by a huge fraction of
college applicants, _especially_ the good ones.

------
nunez
This is extremely exciting news. Here’s to hoping that the UC system can
create an unbiased exam-free admissions process that increases access to
college.

------
MattGaiser
There is going to be a massive market for extracurricular consultants in a
little while as when everyone gets As, that’s what will be the deciding
factor.

------
jxramos
Does this mean the UC system will leave it up to the individual universities
or departments within? Or is this an outright ban they're going for?

------
m0zg
Abolish entrance exams entirely. Replace them with the exams at the end of
first semester coupled with some rudimentary requirement that e.g. if you want
to do math your high school math grade is OK. Make the first semester de-facto
"remedial education" oriented and vastly reduce fees. Basically start with a
giant, relatively inexpensive MOOC (possibly joint with other schools to
reduce overhead) and then filter that down to people who are going to be able
to pull their weight.

~~~
121789
is your scenario not already currently adequately served by going to a
community college and transferring to a state college?

~~~
m0zg
Such a path has significant stigma associated with it, so no.

~~~
google234123
Doesn't the current system already accomplish what you want? Why does berkeley
need to do this "remedial education"? How would you determine who goes to
where?

------
moneywoes
There is no SAT in Canadian school admissions. What would make it difficult fo
the US to adopt a similar policy?

~~~
jariel
It wouldn't be difficult, the question is, does it have merit or not.

Canada has far fewer wealthy people, far less extreme poverty, far fewer
private schools and essentially no private universities.

Even the relative quality of universities is flatter. The top schools are
pretty good, the mid-tier schools not hugely different. Whereas Harvard can
offer something considerably more substantial than most state schools, on
average. (It always depends on many factors, especially the student)

Very different landscape as well.

------
nottorp
<quote>dealing a significant blow to the multibillion-dollar college admission
testing industry.</quote>

You mean those tests are privately done? It's not some standard high school
end test administered by the state like the baccalaureate exam?

Sheesh.

~~~
woofie11
In between. They're run by not-for-profits.

~~~
nottorp
Multi billion dollar not-for-profits? :)

~~~
woofie11
Yes. ETS, ACT, College Board, etc. are all not-for-profits.

The not-for-profits means individuals can't get limitlessly rich off of it,
and there is no fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value. They're not
perfect -- plenty of people make multimillion salaries at not-for-profits --
but you don't get hundreds of millions or billions of personal profit from a
not-for-profit.

There are plenty of many-billion-dollar not-for-profits, especially in
education and in medical.

------
raz32dust
Non paywall version (different site but same topic):
[https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/05/21/...](https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/05/21/university-
of-california-eliminates-sat-act-requirement-1285435)

Is there any objective evidence that SAT favors wealthy people. I mean, I am
sure it does to some extent. But how much? Even if there is a bias towards
richer kids, the disparity could be due to other reasons as well - better
schooling, better parenting, better social network etc. How are these other
reasons eliminated?

------
yters
Well, does IQ matter for academia? Some latent ability to think quickly
matters. That's the point of the SAT.

~~~
carry_bit
The SAT stopped correlating with IQ in 1994.

~~~
yters
I have taken both IQ and SAT tests, and the sorts of questions are very
similar. I am doubtful there is no significant correlation.

The GRE, on the other hand, is more busywork and knowledge based than IQ
insight based, in my experience.

------
DevKoala
To help minorities... sure Jan.

------
ausjke
welcome to socialism/communism, where equal opportunities are nothing, only
equal results matter.

the left is absolutely brain dead, the road to hell is paved with their "good"
intentions.

------
redisman
Paywall. What is the proposed solution to replace it?

~~~
karanke
They're creating their own test.

> The unanimous 23-to-0 vote ratified a proposal put forward last month by UC
> President Janet Napolitano to phase out the exams over the next five years
> until the sprawling UC system can develop its own test.

~~~
gliese1337
If they _were_ to implement a new test, I can pretty much guarantee
applications would drop like a rock; it would have the essential effect of
limiting the applicant pool to Californians who don't want to go out-of-state
for college--'cause when anyone else is applying for colleges, do you really
think they'll want to take _another_ big test just to add the UC system on to
the big list that they can already apply to with an SAT or ACT?

~~~
ciarannolan
Maybe the University of California system should primarily serve the people of
California.

~~~
gliese1337
Maybe it should, but there is no indication that they have actually made a
purposeful choice to go that route.

~~~
ciarannolan
Except, you know, the news story we're commenting on.

------
Antecedent
I attended an elite private high school ($30,000 a year). The school gamed
everything for them. It wrote their essays, created leadership positions for
everyone, and made sure to spread the applications around so that every
student in the references could be “once in a generation.”

One guy who went to Princeton used a flagship story of “building a forest”.
The school was redoing its grounds and hired a bunch of homeless people to do
it as they worked for cheap cash. They let him “oversee” it as a social
initiative.

Another kid got into Columbia by creating a “nationwide startup innovation
movement.” His parents paid the school to book all these convention centres
and they flew him out to chill at these fictional events. They claimed all the
funds from the events went to startups. They claimed to find over 50 startups
and sent each a small check for $30. They sent random startups $30 and used it
as a claim to funding innovation.

With grades, they had an internal grade to allow for actually rigorous
education, but then they would multiply the grade by 1.2 to get your “public
school grade.” That’s the grade reported to universities.

Oh and the teacher left the room for AP tests and we were taught how to
efficiently “come to group conclusions.”

The only thing that kept them from doing that kind of stuff for everyone was
the SAT as plenty of AP National Scholars couldn’t crack 1800 on the damn
thing.

We won over a million dollars in our 60 person class in scholarship money off
these absurdities as most of them don’t ask about the SAT.

------
hardsoftnfloppy
Entrance will now be solely based on how much money your parents bribe
admissions with.

------
hirundo
A large fraction of the value of a degree is as a hiring signal of employee
quality. That signal is degraded by anti capitalist training, by merit hiring
equated with white nationalism, by academic grounding diverted to activism,
and now by the removal of objective admission standards. As an economic
transaction college is being made less attractive, to its long term peril.

If not for the evident sincerity of their academic advocates I'd suspect that
these policies were carefully crafted by enemies of higher education.

------
mberning
Higher education is an absolutely shameful industry. They work hand in glove
with public and private financiers and textbook cartels to sell 18 year olds
on a highly speculative “investment” that very frequently turns out to be
worthless from an economic standpoint. This is jus another way to further push
open the floodgates.

