Quote:
UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol T. Christ and UC Provost Michael Brown said at a forum on college admissions Friday that research had convinced them that performance on the SAT and ACT was so strongly influenced by family income, parents' education and race that using them for high-stakes admissions decisions was simply wrong.
"They really contribute to the inequities of our system," Christ said at the Berkeley forum, sponsored by the Policy Analysis for California Education research center and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education.
Family income and parents' education is quite obvious how those two items factor into why some students do better on standardized testing. They have the resources to better prepare their kids for taking the standardized tests. On average, someone that has practiced taking the test is going to do better than someone that hasn't. Someone with a private tutor is going to do better than someone relying on public education.bearup said:
UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol T. Christ and UC Provost Michael Brown said at a forum on college admissions Friday that research had convinced them that performance on the SAT and ACT was so strongly influenced by family income, parents' education and race that using them for high-stakes admissions decisions was simply wrong.
If that is the actual conclusion (rather than the reporter's shorthand) it is extremely inept. Please come up with anything at all which may not be strongly influenced by those factors.
bearister said:
"... universities that become a cesspool of contrived diversity.."
I'm pretty sure I've been triggered and need a safe space.
GBear4Life said:
(Prestigious Colleges are)....built-in employment screen. Cognitive test scores have stronger correlation to success in the work place than any other single metric, IIRC. More than experience, more than interview skills.
No kidding!!bearup said:
UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol T. Christ and UC Provost Michael Brown said at a forum on college admissions Friday that research had convinced them that performance on the SAT and ACT was so strongly influenced by family income, parents' education and race that using them for high-stakes admissions decisions was simply wrong.
If that is the actual conclusion (rather than the reporter's shorthand) it is extremely inept. Please come up with anything at all which may not be strongly influenced by those factors.
bearister said:
Harvey Keitel accepted. Report to Bowles Hall.
I've got one......The Land of Choosing INGORE.bearister said:
"... universities that become a cesspool of contrived diversity.."
I'm pretty sure I've been triggered and need a safe space.
wifeisafurd said:
Drop the SAT and ACT as a requirement for admission, top UC officials say https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-11-23/uc-officials-recommend-dropping-sat-admission-requirement
Cal has become absurdly competitive (I would never get in). How to best differentiate too many qualified applicants? Thoughts?
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concordtom said:
Remind me this film?
concordtom said:GBear4Life said:
(Prestigious Colleges are)....built-in employment screen. Cognitive test scores have stronger correlation to success in the work place than any other single metric, IIRC. More than experience, more than interview skills.
Ever see the movie Gattaca???
How about Rudy?
How about the Little Train Who Thought He Could?
How do you measure Will, Self-Confidence, Hunger, Perseverence: the Indomitable Human Spirit??? Because I'd rather have a person with those traits than the highest IQ.
concordtom said:wifeisafurd said:
Drop the SAT and ACT as a requirement for admission, top UC officials say https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-11-23/uc-officials-recommend-dropping-sat-admission-requirement
Cal has become absurdly competitive (I would never get in). How to best differentiate too many qualified applicants? Thoughts?
Per my above comment (Gattaca, Rudy), I'm really not confident there's a way to measure the most important factors.
...GPA's are BS. 10% of kids probably have an above 4.0 due to grade inflation.
My eldest daughter had a 4.38 and 1410 SAT and was wItlisted at Cal Poly/Econ and denied at UCSB. She got moved off Wait on May 1 and is loving it there (sophomore).
My second is a senior and has slightly higher in both categories, and will miss out on valedictorian because rather than another AP class she took two art classes, like her sister - and they both can draw like MF's. 1420 SAT. She went on to take the advanced math SAT test and got a 790 but was in only 67-percentile for kids going to Harvard or something. Meaning 33% get a perfect score. I think that means she missed 1 single question. And I think that's NUTS!!!
Her college advisor (we fall into the category of white, educated, well enough off to pay for the tutors) has told her that it's a 3-legged-admissions gambit:
1) gpa
2) sat/act
3) extracurriculars
1) Everyone has high gpa. Grade inflation is incredibly rampant and I have spoken to teachers frankly. There is NO check at the school on forcing a "B" or "C+" as an average grade, either by class, teacher, or school wide, and the only thing keeping a teacher from awarding everyone A's is "personal pride, self respect, restraint"... I forget the word he used, but it was perfect! (I was not an SAT Verbal high scorer, go figure!) This math teacher/fellow parent told me that maybe 10% of kids will get straight A's.
In speaking with another fellow parent who has since become the school's VP, he laughs at me saying they need more AP offerings and tells me they are just trying to get many kids graduated or UC qualifying credentials upon graduation. (Like, I'm out of touch with the level my kids are operating at - and our community & school are well respected among Placer County high schools!).
Anyways, my point here is that GPA cannot be used to distinguish the top 1% of applicants when the top 10% are perfect. If CA graduates 1,000,000 per year, how many have inflated, ridiculous gpa's???
2) SAT... neither are they going to use this now, either, because it's racist or based on a child's socio-economic class. Hmmm. What's left??
3) extracurriculars. Kids are knocking themselves out to do all the above. Ever see the documentary film called Race To Nowhere, by a Lafayette mom a dozen years ago??? Watch the trailer or more on YouTube!! It's like, maybe sleep and social life are more important than killing yourself to getting into that top 1% of schools?
-Alternatively, rather than staying up till midnight after sports, work, volunteering, starting a business, saving the world to fill out your extracurriculars bucket on the application (you really should see all they ask you for on the Common App), many kids/families lie about their stuff in this category or otherwise "game" the system to check all the boxes. And I'm NOT EVEN referring to the College Blues scandal. I'm referring to simply lying about all you've done after school. Work is not going to be verified by college application people.
Interviews could be a good separator, but there again, you can get corruption thru "connections" or you can get even (far) greater racial and socio-economic bias thru the interview process than via the SAT.
In conclusion, I'd say two things:
1) I began this process with my kids thinking they really should try hard as hell to get into that Elite school. My parents went to Cal and my stepdad Princeton and Harvard Law. I'm a believer that the brand name on the diploma matters. I went to SDSU and transferred to American U in DC - and I (no surprise) never got any boost by those names in the interview process!!
But this many years in, I've decided that it's too much of a crapshoot to worry about it all that much. My kids' self esteem and their social comfort level matter a hell of a lot more important than trying to compete in the categories of these 3 measurables. The peer pressure they face is very high. So many kids do drugs or act out in other unhealthy ways. Confidence can be shaken for not fitting in. Having the right group of friends, the right pics on Instagram, not to mention if they are "hot" or a stud on the sports team, etc.... I mean it's all so much to manage and handle. So, I'm more concerned with these aspects of their minds than with whether they are top 10 or top 1 percent of colleges. (Fortunately, my girls are smart and attractive and have been in homecoming court and, as stated, have tremendous credentials in the first two categories I mentioned, so I can afford to say that.). But it's hard for them to navigate it all psychologically. And in the end, that matters most.
As a parent, I have not mastered how to raise (Ethan Hawke's in Gattaca) "indomitable" children - totally self-directed, accomplished, and unstoppable at 17. And I seriously doubt any university screening system would be able to identify those people!
Thus,
2) Don't F'in worry about it. Pick a school where you think you might be happy. Try lots of experiences while you are there. Try to make a happy life for yourself. If you try to keep up with the Joneses, you are sure to feel like, and B, a loser. For, there is always a percentage point score higher than you, a stronger faster smarter prettier person with a nicer car, a better house, and the latest decor from Pottery Barn. Oh, and their diamond ring is bigger than yours. Her boyfriend/husband is....
AS a University policy? Good luck figuring out who the top 1% are.
(But I think it's a mistake to remove one of the 3 assessment tools.)
I suppose I'd say they need to go back to the drawing board if they truly want to assess people at 17 years old and not make it a lottery, as someone said. Yet, I'd argue, in some senses it already is! Sorry, but how does SLO wait list a 1410 and 4.38? That blows my scores away. And now they will remove the 1410? SLO, unlike the Private Schools "Common App", does not ask about extracurriculars - it's all a sliding scale of SAT-GPA. So what the helm would they do if they drop SAT????
Like I say, good luck. Start over.
Anarchistbear said:
The "cesspool of contrived diversity" at prestige schools is the legacy admit.
( As far as Cal goes they have reams of data already- test scores, high school GPA, Pell admits, college GPA, college drop outs, grad school admits, etc, etc. if they say it's unimportant to succeeding, I suspect they can prove it.)
oski003 said:
.
This is an incredible rant, but I agree with much of it. It's a rat race, and it sounds like your kids are doing well.
Quote:
One of Ridley Scott's early films. The landscape photography alone is worth the price of admission and one of Keitel's best performances. A+
Anarchistbear said:
Well, it depends what correlates with success. If it is class ranking, admit x% no matter the school. Throw the rest into a lottery- maybe tweak it with what data correlates.
I think if I went into any suburb in this state I could shake a tree and dozens of kids with 4.0 and 1400 SAT's would fall out. Not only that; these kids would have all played a sport, played an instrument, created an app while volunteering so the homeless could locate organic kale, built churches in Mexico ( there are 200 empty churches in Mexico built by US teenagers; , interned with ..Katie Hill..; and helped rid the world of Ebola during spring break . They do all this s$it because adults and schools told them it matters. Most of it doesn't as they painfully learn and naturally assume they failed when the answer is there are just too many of them. They should be spending their high school years experimenting with drugs and sex and writing rap songs not listening to adults.
Reading this has me moving outside my own OP, but IMO many states, particularly California, have abandoned their obligation to educate their states citizens through higher education. State college like Cal were more friendly than today in the admissions process for California residents as a result. And their is a factor of driving away excellent state students with high tuition. Not educating deserving citizens and seeing them often go elsewhere (e.g., out of state privates who provide scholarships) is a drain on the state economy and just bad news overall for the state. End of sermon.concordtom said:
In re-reading my words above, I come down to another conclusion.
I'd like to see this country seriously increase funding for education and development of our children. The USA does not respect the teacher profession. We don't pay teachers much and nurturing of children's psyche is a real art. I have riffed about this issue many times on BI.
Finland requires a masters to be a teacher. And look where they rank on the education ranking globally.
Meanwhile, in the USA, we have many teachers who are wholly unfit, unprepared, or stale but have stayed because they need to reach their retirement dollar figure, and are unfireable due to the union. And we rank not so high on the global OECD rankings.
If we raised the bar and reset our mindset about teaching, we'd attract the best and the brightest. Schools would not be quite the zoos they are today. Schools would not be so big, and classes less crowded with a lower student-teacher ratio.
The niece was admitted to UCLA last year. She had an average SAT score and a sub 4.0 GPA...and a portfolio from an art magnet. She basically pulled a double load through HS, magnet work and standard. Paid college consultant said not to waste the time/money in applying to UCLA, she won't get in. School counselor said, "whatever you do, just make sure you apply to UCLA", and she got in.wifeisafurd said:
Drop the SAT and ACT as a requirement for admission, top UC officials say https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-11-23/uc-officials-recommend-dropping-sat-admission-requirement
Cal has become absurdly competitive (I would never get in). How to best differentiate too many qualified applicants? Thoughts?
wifeisafurd said:Reading this has me moving outside my own OP, but IMO many states, particularly California, have abandoned their obligation to educate their states citizens through higher education. State college like Cal were more friendly than today in the admissions process for California residents as a result. And their is a factor of driving away excellent state students with high tuition. Not educating deserving citizens and seeing them often go elsewhere (e.g., out of state privates who provide scholarships) is a drain on the state economy and just bad news overall for the state. End of sermon.concordtom said:
In re-reading my words above, I come down to another conclusion.
I'd like to see this country seriously increase funding for education and development of our children. The USA does not respect the teacher profession. We don't pay teachers much and nurturing of children's psyche is a real art. I have riffed about this issue many times on BI.
Finland requires a masters to be a teacher. And look where they rank on the education ranking globally.
Meanwhile, in the USA, we have many teachers who are wholly unfit, unprepared, or stale but have stayed because they need to reach their retirement dollar figure, and are unfireable due to the union. And we rank not so high on the global OECD rankings.
If we raised the bar and reset our mindset about teaching, we'd attract the best and the brightest. Schools would not be quite the zoos they are today. Schools would not be so big, and classes less crowded with a lower student-teacher ratio.
