Trey Cheek still a Bear, just signing next week

13,188 Views | 62 Replies | Last: 12 yr ago by The Duke!
CALiforniALUM
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beeasyed;842078638 said:

1. exception that does not prove the rule.
2. bogus, resentful-sounding statement.


Bogus? Really?

Pretty well known that tests like the SAT tend to favor those who share the same cultural and socio economic background as the test writers. I can assure you the the SAT writers do not have much in common with many of the athelets who walk through our doors.
slider643
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CALiforniALUM;842078668 said:

Bogus? Really?

Pretty well known that tests like the SAT tend to favor those who share the same cultural and socio economic background as the test writers. I can assure you the the SAT writers do not have much in common with many of the athelets who walk through our doors.


SAT/GMAT/MCAT/GRE etc have a higher correlation to intelligence than socio economic background.
CALiforniALUM
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slider643;842078672 said:

SAT/GMAT/MCAT/GRE etc have a higher correlation to intelligence than socio economic background.


Is this your opinion or are you basing it on some source? Because I think you could spend about 5 minutes on Google and find that there is a strong body of evidence to show that these tests bias against race and socio-economic background.
slider643
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CALiforniALUM;842078788 said:

Is this your opinion or are you basing it on some source? Because I think you could spend about 5 minutes on Google and find that there is a strong body of evidence to show that these tests bias against race and socio-economic background.


Yes, there's a bias. But the highest correlation is still intelligence.
beeasyed
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slider643;842078789 said:

Yes, there's a bias. But the highest correlation is still intelligence.


agreed.
tommie317
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CALiforniALUM;842078788 said:

Is this your opinion or are you basing it on some source? Because I think you could spend about 5 minutes on Google and find that there is a strong body of evidence to show that these tests bias against race and socio-economic background.


Since these are intelligence tests, the point is that they correlate with intelligence.
The Duke!
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The tests do not accurately measure the critical thinking skills that are essential to collegiate and grad school success. The tests (ACT, SAT, GRE, etc.) measure basic math, as well as vocabulary that will rarely be used. But that is about it. Most fundamentally, however, they most accurately measure the amount of time and money one is willing to spend to do well on the tests.

That is why Cal's office of undergraduate admissions doesn't take the tests as seriously as other schools. And it is why I don't take them seriously.

The ability to determine the volume of a cube is not an adequate measure of whether an applicant will be a good PhD student in political science. And the ability to relate "bucolic" to "sheep" in the way the testmakers intended does not accurately measure whether a HS student would make a good undergraduate engineering student.
slider643
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The Duke!;842078910 said:

The tests do not accurately measure the critical thinking skills that are essential to collegiate and grad school success. The tests (ACT, SAT, GRE, etc.) measure basic math, as well as vocabulary that will rarely be used. But that is about it. Most fundamentally, however, they most accurately measure the amount of time and money one is willing to spend to do well on the tests.

That is why Cal's office of undergraduate admissions doesn't take the tests as seriously as other schools. And it is why I don't take them seriously.

The ability to determine the volume of a cube is not an adequate measure of whether an applicant will be a good PhD student in political science. And the ability to relate "bucolic" to "sheep" in the way the testmakers intended does not accurately measure whether a HS student would make a good undergraduate engineering student.


The standardized tests measures intelligence better than any other standardized testing used by college and grad school admissions. There's a reason they're used so widely.

You're fooling yourself if you think Cal doesn't take the SAT seriously. Cal may rely less on the SAT because average applicants SAT score is so high they need to look at other factors to differentiate the applicants. But it is definitely used as a floor. If you score in the 30%ile, there's no way you're getting into Cal unless there are special circumstances.

I can't speak to the other graduate level tests, but the GMAT is a pretty good test for B school. The testing content is not directly tied to the teaching in school, but the math and critical reasoning skills tested are important for survival in school. The test results also show how a person prepares for and performs under pressure, other important traits for B school survival.
The Duke!
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slider643;842078916 said:

The standardized tests measures intelligence better than any other standardized testing used by college and grad school admissions. There's a reason they're used so widely.

You're fooling yourself if you think Cal doesn't take the SAT seriously. Cal may rely less on the SAT because average applicants SAT score is so high they need to look at other factors to differentiate the applicants. But it is definitely used as a floor. If you score in the 30%ile, there's no way you're getting into Cal unless there are special circumstances.

I can't speak to the other graduate level tests, but the GMAT is a pretty good test for B school. The testing content is not directly tied to the teaching in school, but the math and critical reasoning skills tested are important for survival in school. The test results also show how a person prepares for and performs under pressure, other important traits for B school survival.


You wrongly assume that colleges and universities always do things in logical ways. I suggest you look up Cal's comprehensive review policy. The standardized tests are still required and considered, but just as one of many factors.

I agree with your comments about the 30th percentile for many disciplines. But the GMAT is a terrible example to use to try to prove your point, as it is only for potential business students. Thus, it tests knowledge that is supposedly most useful for that discipline. The ACTs, SATs and GREs, however, are purported to examine general intelligence and critical thinking skills that are a critical factor to determining whether a student will succeed in college. But this is not the case.

Your 30th percentile argument, in many other disciplines, is not so important. For instance, there is a PhD student in History at my university. He scored in the 23rd percentile on his math GREs. He has won more prestigious external fellowships and prizes than anyone else in the history of our 100+ year old department. And he is only in his fourth (out of what is likely to be a 7 year) career.

So why did our Department almost not admit him? Because he can't find the area of a pentagon? That is just plain silly. The student has been recognized as one of the best in the world in his field. What does it matter if he does poorly at standardized tests or in subjects unrelated to his own?

Standardized tests make difficult admissions and funding decisions seem easy by supposedly eliminating the problem of comparing apples to oranges. Administrators like this because it takes a lot of time and money to really look into a student's potential. But in reality, the tests just create a new arbitrary category. The student in question undoubtably has the intelligence to get a 60-70 percentile on his math GREs. But he didn't have the time or money to take a prep course.

No one cared that Einstein was a less-than-stellar violinist. I am told that he did other things fairly well.
gobears725
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hope trey gets in. he has posted a few times on another board and seems like a very motivated individual
tommie317
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The Duke!;842078936 said:

You wrongly assume that colleges and universities always do things in logical ways. I suggest you look up Cal's comprehensive review policy. The standardized tests are still required and considered, but just as one of many factors.

I agree with your comments about the 30th percentile for many disciplines. But the GMAT is a terrible example to use to try to prove your point, as it is only for potential business students. Thus, it tests knowledge that is supposedly most useful for that discipline. The ACTs, SATs and GREs, however, are purported to examine general intelligence and critical thinking skills that are a critical factor to determining whether a student will succeed in college. But this is not the case.

Your 30th percentile argument, in many other disciplines, is not so important. For instance, there is a PhD student in History at my university. He scored in the 23rd percentile on his math GREs. He has won more prestigious external fellowships and prizes than anyone else in the history of our 100+ year old department. And he is only in his fourth (out of what is likely to be a 7 year) career.

So why did our Department almost not admit him? Because he can't find the area of a pentagon? That is just plain silly. The student has been recognized as one of the best in the world in his field. What does it matter if he does poorly at standardized tests or in subjects unrelated to his own?

Standardized tests make difficult admissions and funding decisions seem easy by supposedly eliminating the problem of comparing apples to oranges. Administrators like this because it takes a lot of time and money to really look into a student's potential. But in reality, the tests just create a new arbitrary category. The student in question undoubtably has the intelligence to get a 60-70 percentile on his math GREs. But he didn't have the time or money to take a prep course.

No one cared that Einstein was a less-than-stellar violinist. I am told that he did other things fairly well.


Yea but Einstein would no doubt ace the math section. Many jobs require quick yet complicated math/English intelligence: financial, consulting, law, engineering, etc. don't kid yourself that high scores do not correlate to academic and later on, professional performance, assuming EQ is the same (which is where grades and extracurricular come in)
The Duke!
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tommie317;842078951 said:

Yea but Einstein would no doubt ace the math section. Many jobs require quick yet complicated math/English intelligence: financial, consulting, law, engineering, etc. don't kid yourself that high scores do not correlate to academic and later on, professional performance, assuming EQ is the same (which is where grades and extracurricular come in)


Re Einstein: this is precisely my point. The math section of the GRE does a good job of assessing whether a potential student understands high school math. But these skills are only relavent in so many fields.

In my discipline, there is no correlation between high GRE scores and subsequent academic performance.

In our Department, GRE scores are one of a number of factors evaluated for admissions decisions. They are given heavy weight, on par with grades, writing samples, publications, and letters of recommendation.

But once a student is admitted, funding decisions are made almost exclusively based on GRE scores. This is not unusual. This is how most departments do it.

The admits with the higher scores are eligible for advanced funding offers (i.e. "prestigious fellowships"). The difference between a prestigious fellowship and a normal stipend is anywhere from $7,000-$16,000/year, plus better health coverage and several other perks (such as recognition and preferential consideration for smaller research and travel grants).

Of the students who have failed to pass their comprehensive examinations or get their dissertation proposals approved over the last 10 years, 100% of them have received these advanced funding offers because they had impeccable GRE scores.

They did amazing on the test. Superb actually. 99% in verbal, 6 on the writing, and 85%+ on the math. And knowing many of these students, I can tell you that they worked very hard on preparing for the exams and also spent a lot of money on test prep classes. But in the end, these skills did not translate into them being able to ace their seminars, pass their comps, or get their proposals approved.

Bottom line: it is impossible to tell if a student will be a decent historian from making him sit at a computer at a test-taking center for 3 hours and fill in multiple choice answers and answer a silly writing prompt question.

In my field there is little correlation between these scores and success in earning external fellowships, prizes, passing comps, publishing articles, and getting a tenure track job. As long as a student gets a 5 on the writing and a 80% plus on the verbal, I could care less what his or her scores are.

So why are they used? For math-heavy disciplines, I agree that it is important to ensure that a student understands math. But the GREs only test for high school level math. Thus, the tests aren't that helpful apart from weeding out the terrible students. For other disciplines, a student must have a command of basic vocabulary and how to write a grad school level essay. But again, the GRE is not super helpful in this area apart from weeding out the absolute worst applicants.

The real reason they are used is twofold: First, the alleviate selection committees and administrators from the time and hassle of really digging into an applicants file. They make things really easy by providing a simple number to make incredibly important decisions. Second, ETS and the test prep companies make an absolute fortune off these tests. We're talking ridiculous money. The test itself is expensive, not to mention the cost of sending one's scores to each school that you are applying to. But if you want to do really well, you at least need to buy an expensive test prep book, or better yet, spend several thousands of dollars on a course at Kaplan or Princeton review.

For my Discipline, it would be much better if the student were to use this money to go learn another language or to conduct archival research.
kad02002
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a7051;842076382 said:

I think it turns gold once he signs, it's a metamorphosis type thing.


Here's hoping the uniforms next year are ACTUALLY GOLD. California GOLDEN Bears...should not have yellow trimmed uniforms. Never neon yellow.
Unit2Sucks
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Duke - I don't think anyone is digging in against what you are seeing in grad school but are you considering that maybe there's a difference between the application of standardized testing to people who want to be historians and people just looking to graduate from Cal.

To be more specific, is it that hard to imagine that there's a higher correlation between SAT scores and college graduation rates than there is between GREs and grad school success rates for historians?
slider643
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The Duke!;842078936 said:

You wrongly assume that colleges and universities always do things in logical ways. I suggest you look up Cal's comprehensive review policy. The standardized tests are still required and considered, but just as one of many factors. One of many factors, but the first and most important of them along with GPA. Like I said, if you score poorly, you're not even considered.

I agree with your comments about the 30th percentile for many disciplines. But the GMAT is a terrible example to use to try to prove your point, as it is only for potential business students. Thus, it tests knowledge that is supposedly most useful for that discipline. The ACTs, SATs and GREs, however, are purported to examine general intelligence and critical thinking skills that are a critical factor to determining whether a student will succeed in college. But this is not the case. I used the GMAT because that's the only test I have experience with besides the SAT. It does not test business math, it tests math in a very SAT like manner with no context. There's not "business" about the test.

Your 30th percentile argument, in many other disciplines, is not so important. For instance, there is a PhD student in History at my university. He scored in the 23rd percentile on his math GREs. He has won more prestigious external fellowships and prizes than anyone else in the history of our 100+ year old department. And he is only in his fourth (out of what is likely to be a 7 year) career. Why doe you use math GRE as the primary test for a History program? I have no idea how the GRE works. Do you take multiple GRE's? If so, what categories do you test and what were the students score? I find it hard to believe a prestigious academic institution would choose someone in the 23rd percentile unless there were huge mitigating factors.

So why did our Department almost not admit him? Because he can't find the area of a pentagon? That is just plain silly. The student has been recognized as one of the best in the world in his field. What does it matter if he does poorly at standardized tests or in subjects unrelated to his own? I agree, but again, why do you use math GRE as the primary standardized test?

Standardized tests make difficult admissions and funding decisions seem easy by supposedly eliminating the problem of comparing apples to oranges. Administrators like this because it takes a lot of time and money to really look into a student's potential. But in reality, the tests just create a new arbitrary category. The student in question undoubtably has the intelligence to get a 60-70 percentile on his math GREs. But he didn't have the time or money to take a prep course. Again, I find it hard to believe that someone in the 23rd percentile gained admittance to a prestigious academic institution without mitigating factors. What were those factors?

This is where the GMAT is very helpful for B school. If you're applying to B school, you have to be successful in your career. It also means you are likely to be working 60+ hours a week. If you are able to take a class and study in this context, it shows time management and desire, two traits looked for in B school admissions besides raw intelligence.


No one cared that Einstein was a less-than-stellar violinist. I am told that he did other things fairly well.


slider643
GivemTheAxe
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slider643;842078672 said:

SAT/GMAT/MCAT/GRE etc have a higher correlation to intelligence than socio economic background.


I have read a lot in this area and from what I have read, SAT/GMAT/MCAT/GRE etc have a higher correlation to socio economic background and access to resources than to innate intelligence (but they have some correlation to innate intellgence). It also shows more what you have already learned either in school or from your environment.
Our Domicile
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Dear Trey,

Think about going to JUCO and then transferring to a school more closer to home, closer to Family. There are many aspects of California that aren't worth all the fuss. In fact, over-rated. You don't want to be judged by robots the next four years of your life.

Follow your heart and play ball where it is more appreciated by less pretentious people.

Good luck.
The Duke!
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Unit2Sucks;842079018 said:

Duke - I don't think anyone is digging in against what you are seeing in grad school but are you considering that maybe there's a difference between the application of standardized testing to people who want to be historians and people just looking to graduate from Cal.

To be more specific, is it that hard to imagine that there's a higher correlation between SAT scores and college graduation rates than there is between GREs and grad school success rates for historians?


I think Berkeley is one of the few schools that tilts slightly in my direction. The admissions office made waves when they came out with their comprehensive review plan, which was widely perceived in higher education circles to deemphasize standardized tests. They are still important, but other factors can mitigate high or low scores.
Unit2Sucks
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The Duke!;842079070 said:

I think Berkeley is one of the few schools that tilts slightly in my direction. The admissions office made waves when they came out with their comprehensive review plan, which was widely perceived in higher education circles to deemphasize standardized tests. They are still important, but other factors can mitigate high or low scores.


Understood but that doesn't address my point. You were saying that GREs may not be useful in your field to determine grad school success. I'm saying that standardized tests could be useful in determining graduation rates for undergrad admits. There's a huge difference between creating Rhodes scholars and having your football players make academic progress and graduate. It wouldn't surprise me if standardized test scores are much better predictors of the latter than the former.
The Duke!
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Slider -- I am too technologically inept to figure out how to reply to your nifty intertextual post. So this will have to suffice:

Historians at good programs all score in the high 90s in the GRE verbal. So programs look at the math to differentiate students. So it isn't the main factor, but it becomes an easy metric that lazy administrators can use to differentiate funding packages. The alternative requires a lot of hard work that selection committees are typically not willing to put forth.

The 23rd percentile student I mentioned is one of the top PhD candidates in a very highly ranked Department of over 100 students. How can this be, you ask? Because you don't need to know High School math to be an excellent historian, unless you work on social history (i.e. Marxist historical materialism), the history of mathematics, or the history of science. Just like you don't need to know Herodotus to be an engineer.

These tests do an excellent job of measuring who puts forth the time, effort, and money to excel at the tests. But I haven't found a lot of evidence that they accurately measure intelligence or an applicant's ability to succeed in a program. Like I said, 100% of our students who failed to pass their comps or dissertation proposals in the past 10 years had the advanced funding packages.
tommie317
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The Duke!;842079081 said:

Slider -- I am too technologically inept to figure out how to reply to your nifty intertextual post. So this will have to suffice:

Historians at good programs all score in the high 90s in the GRE verbal. So programs look at the math to differentiate students. So it isn't the main factor, but it becomes an easy metric that lazy administrators can use to differentiate funding packages. The alternative requires a lot of hard work that selection committees are typically not willing to put forth.

The 23rd percentile student I mentioned is one of the top PhD candidates in a very highly ranked Department of over 100 students. How can this be, you ask? Because you don't need to know High School math to be an excellent historian, unless you work on social history (i.e. Marxist historical materialism), the history of mathematics, or the history of science. Just like you don't need to know Herodotus to be an engineer.

These tests do an excellent job of measuring who puts forth the time, effort, and money to excel at the tests. But I haven't found a lot of evidence that they accurately measure intelligence or an applicant's ability to succeed in a program. Like I said, 100% of our students who failed to pass their comps or dissertation proposals in the past 10 years had the advanced funding packages.


How much money does it take to buy a $12 SAT book? Or use the library? Or use YouTube etc type of studying or study groups etc etc. not every high scorer takes a $2000 class with private tutoring to do well on the SAT's
There's many things in life you have to put in time and effort in to, if you can't do this for the SAT, then it's going to be a long and difficult road ahead of you (for most people not for certain anecdotal exceptions that you call out), Just like licensing exams or bar exams, it's something our society has determined is a milestone to advance to the next level.
slider643
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The Duke!;842079081 said:

Slider -- I am too technologically inept to figure out how to reply to your nifty intertextual post. So this will have to suffice:

Historians at good programs all score in the high 90s in the GRE verbal. So programs look at the math to differentiate students. So it isn't the main factor, but it becomes an easy metric that lazy administrators can use to differentiate funding packages. The alternative requires a lot of hard work that selection committees are typically not willing to put forth. All the historians scored in the 90s in their primary standardized test. Why don't you accept anyone with a 23%ile score in verbal?

The 23rd percentile student I mentioned is one of the top PhD candidates in a very highly ranked Department of over 100 students. How can this be, you ask? Because you don't need to know High School math to be an excellent historian, unless you work on social history (i.e. Marxist historical materialism), the history of mathematics, or the history of science. Just like you don't need to know Herodotus to be an engineer. Yes, but you do need math and verbal skills tested in the SAT to graduate undergrad at Cal. I still don't understand why you use 23%ile in the math GRE as an example when it is obviously not the primary standardized test that is used in admission. It seems to be no more or less a factor than any other used in the admissions process that is not the verbal GRE.

These tests do an excellent job of measuring who puts forth the time, effort, and money to excel at the tests. But I haven't found a lot of evidence that they accurately measure intelligence or an applicant's ability to succeed in a program. Again, do you accept 23%ile verbal GRE students? Why not? Like I said, 100% of our students who failed to pass their comps or dissertation proposals in the past 10 years had the advanced funding packages. Without context, this is a strawman. Is this causation or correlation? If it's causation, I would suggest you start taking more 23%ile GRE verbal students.


I'm not trying to be a smart ass. But if you didn't believe in standardized testing measuring intelligence and aptitude, you wouldn't put such a high emphasis on GRE verbal scores. Aside from standardized testing, I'd be very interested in what you would use to measure intelligence and aptitude for a large applicant pool.
Troll On You Bears
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JimSox;842078463 said:

I think he just wants to be fashionably late.

You know, Tres Chic.


This excellent pun should be getting more love.

:gobears:
The Duke!
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slider643;842079110 said:

I'm not trying to be a smart ass. But if you didn't believe in standardized testing measuring intelligence and aptitude, you wouldn't put such a high emphasis on GRE verbal scores. Aside from standardized testing, I'd be very interested in what you would use to measure intelligence and aptitude for a large applicant pool.


If it were up to me, I wouldn't accept any GRE scores. Instead, I would look a lot closer at languages, research background, grades, letters, writing samples, and interviews. Unfortunately, it is not up to me. All it takes is one big time program to stop accepting these scores, and the whole system will eventually fall.

The student in question got a 23 in math (98 or 99 in verbal). Still, he makes $12k less per year and worse health coverage than students who are not particularly impressive historians.

There is no straw-man here. All of our students who failed to pass their comps or proposals did excellent on their GREs. This shows that the GREs do not accurately measure whether an applicant will succeed in the program, since those who scored less well have not had much problems passing their comps or getting their proposals approved.

I have seen many Cal students excel without being particularly good at either writing or mathematics. One group gets by via courses like NutriSci 10 and history of math. The other group gets by after a poor performance in their introductory writing class.
slider643
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Why aren't there any 23%ile GRE verbal students in the good programs?
Cal Panda Bear
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Well this thread went down the drain pretty quickly. GREs have nothing to do with Trey Cheek. Must be a slow off-season.
ColoradoBear
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The Duke!;842079124 said:



There is no straw-man here. All of our students who failed to pass their comps or proposals did excellent on their GREs. This shows that the GREs do not accurately measure whether an applicant will succeed in the program, since those who scored less well have not had much problems passing their comps or getting their proposals approved.




If you really wanted to prove or disprove what you are saying, you'd need to look at how students that get in the 70-80 percentile on the verbal GRE, but I'm guessing they are not admitted to start with. No idea why you school puts such a big emphasis on math for history grad school, but that sounds more like a problem with the school's admissions and not the test. I'm sure there are many fields where math scores correlate to success much better than history.

And I would strongly suggest against extrapolating whole world views on standardized testing from a couple of anecdotal exampled from the Notre Dame history department.

As for this topic, what MB says hits the nail on the head. He's talking about some really low SAT scores versus average SAT scores and I don't why there's anything wrong with using that difference to select football players. 1200 and 1400 maybe no difference depending on how math/verbal intensive a given field is. 700/800 vs 1000, that seems significant because in the first case it means everything is below average. There are going to be some socio-economic biases I'm sure, but there really is a lot of basic stuff on the SAT and scoring very low still indicates that one is not ready for a big time college. I'm talking basic reading comprehension or math skills.
GB54
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ColoradoBear1;842079135 said:

If you really wanted to prove or disprove what you are saying, you'd need to look at how students that get in the 70-80 percentile on the verbal GRE, but I'm guessing they are not admitted to start with. No idea why you school puts such a big emphasis on math for history grad school, but that sounds more like a problem with the school's admissions and not the test. I'm sure there are many fields where math scores correlate to success much better than history.

And I would strongly suggest against extrapolating whole world views on standardized testing from a couple of anecdotal exampled from the Notre Dame history department.

As for this topic, what MB says hits the nail on the head. He's talking about some really low SAT scores versus average SAT scores and I don't why there's anything wrong with using that difference to select football players. 1200 and 1400 maybe no difference depending on how math/verbal intensive a given field is. 700/800 vs 1000, that seems significant because in the first case it means everything is below average. There are going to be some socio-economic biases I'm sure, but there really is a lot of basic stuff on the SAT and scoring very low still indicates that one is not ready for a big time college. I'm talking basic reading comprehension or math skills.


Thanks for the common sense. The answer is it does correlate with intelligence and can be gamed by people in higher socio-economic groups. My son's SATs went from 1350 to 1450 after a prep course.
The Duke!
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ColoradoBear1;842079135 said:

If you really wanted to prove or disprove what you are saying, you'd need to look at how students that get in the 70-80 percentile on the verbal GRE, but I'm guessing they are not admitted to start with. No idea why you school puts such a big emphasis on math for history grad school, but that sounds more like a problem with the school's admissions and not the test. I'm sure there are many fields where math scores correlate to success much better than history.

And I would strongly suggest against extrapolating whole world views on standardized testing from a couple of anecdotal exampled from the Notre Dame history department.

As for this topic, what MB says hits the nail on the head. He's talking about some really low SAT scores versus average SAT scores and I don't why there's anything wrong with using that difference to select football players. 1200 and 1400 maybe no difference depending on how math/verbal intensive a given field is. 700/800 vs 1000, that seems significant because in the first case it means everything is below average. There are going to be some socio-economic biases I'm sure, but there really is a lot of basic stuff on the SAT and scoring very low still indicates that one is not ready for a big time college. I'm talking basic reading comprehension or math skills.


This happens in all history departments. I have plenty of anecdotal evidence that it happens in many other departments as well, and not only in the humanities. When I was at Arizona, I saw the problem of over-reliance on SATs and ACTs first hand. Students don't even have to write an admissions essay there. They admit based on GPA and test scores alone. But many of the undergraduates I met were almost totally incapable of writing a 4 page college essay. At my current institution, students have amazingly high scores. But there are still plenty of students who struggle with the basic 4-5 page essay. True, there was a higher percentage of students who could not perform this basic task at the UofA, but not that much higher. (There were also some students who struggled with this when I was at Cal)

Administrators want to show that their new admissions class has high scores across the board. ETS and the test prep companies are heavily invested in maintaining the status quo. So nothing will change anytime soon. But I suspect that eventually they will. It will just take one major department to step up and admit what many professors admit privately -- there is no good reason to require these tests.

IIRC, Marshawn had both bad grades and bad scores. But he turned things around when he got to Cal. In that case, Tedford was right to perform a comprehensive review instead of looking at any single academic metric.

That being said, the tests do a good job of pointing out very basic illiteracies. But these illiteracies would also become apparent in an admissions interview.
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