College President: SAT Is Part Hoax, Part Fraud

[DGS49]

To be anecdotal for a moment, when I was high school back in the stone age, the kids who got 800's on the SAT parts and on the Merit tests were the best students. No slackers.

I guess that was just a coincidence.

 

[Roudy]

To be anecdotal for a moment, when I was high school back in the stone age, the kids who got 800's on the SAT parts and on the Merit tests were the best students. No slackers.

I guess that was just a coincidence.

Getting a good score in the SAT is like mastering a video game. However, many of the components that are required to get that high score happen to be the same ingredients that make up a good student. So it isn't a coincidence that students who get good grades in school also end up doing well on the SAT. And that's what colleges look at. However SAT is not the only requirement that colleges look at for their admissions. It is merely a piece in the puzzle that helps them understand the applicant.

 

[aplcr0331]

The stated purpose of the SAT is to measure a potential college students chance of success in the FIRST year of college. Nothing more and nothing less. It's not a test of abstract reasoning or logic. It tests the reading, math, and writing levels of high school students. It has been found to correlate to FIRST year college grades. Nothing else.

It's not a hoax or a fraud. It's part of the system to assess a students potential for success in college.

 

[Katzndogz]

Too many minority students cannot score high enough to get in.

 

[Disir]

It's used as a guide to weeding through college applicants. It adds a non-source biased reference to a students overall academic ability.

I really don't get people's hatred of standardized testing. The whole idea is to get a general comparison of a group of people vs. the same set of questions/b.

But, it doesn't predict college success accurately and this is what it is supposed to do. I don't get defending something that doesn't work. There are over 800 colleges that no longer use them. And counting.

College success is different than getting into college. One has to remember one of the biggest issues with college success is formerly well supervised 18 year olds turning into effectively unsupervised 18 year olds.

There has to be some non-biased source of information for colleges to figure out aptitude. Going with grades only/after school stuff leads to schools being able to pad kid's resumes, and covertly advertising the fact they do it.

So you get less merit, and more cronyism/money talking.

Wait........the study that I recently posted did indicate that these tests are not accurate predictors. The colleges are stating that they are not good predictors. The colleges are dropping the tests. They are telling you what they need if you are going to do it and finding success with GPA scores. The College Board creates and administers the tests and then profits off all of the study bells and whistles. That right there is the bias.

 

[IanC]

SAT, ACT and IQ scores are very good indicators. just not particularly good at first year college kids. when was the last time you heard of a survey that said those tests weren't good predictors of 4th year grades?

there are a few good reasons why they are not particularly good first year indicators. the first is restriction-of-range. the more kids that get in with pathetic SAT scores, the better the correlation. another is readiness. a smart kid who cannot handle being on his/her own, or who doesnt want to be there, is going to do poorly.

but the main reason is that general testing is meant to test groups. an individual's result is noisy, but if you test ten people and compare the ten first year results, the correlation is much higher. a group of 25 will give a correlation that is much higher still. a group of 100, over a four year program will have an almost perfect correlation.

 

[DGS49]

The complaints about the SAT's are all hinged on one unfortunate fact of life:
Different demographic groups of people have differing ability levels - whether you are referring to academics, athletics, strength, endurance, whatever.

Academic people don't like this fact. They want the world to change, so that if the population is 8% Croatian and 15% Nigerian, then that same proportion will be spread throughout any measures of accomplishment or proficiency. But reality - damn it - will not comply.

When I applied for a job with the U.S. Federal government in 1974, people who were applying for "professional" positions were required to take the "PACE" test. The Professional and Administrative Career Exam some such thing.

It was a general knowledge and intelligence test. With my 5 point Veterans' Preference, my score was 104%, and I was hired within a few months after taking the test.

Not surprisingly though, the number of so-called, Negroes who scored high enough to be considered for hiring was so small as to be non-existent. During the period when the PACE test was used, essentially no Negroes were hired for professional or administrative positions (outside our Nation's Capital) on the basis of the test.

This was the height of the "Affirmative Action" era, and President Carter found this to be unacceptable. The Office of Personnel Management then published a bulletin stating that the PACE test was being discontinued, and they were going to develop a written test that would guarantee that the pool of the highest scores was demographically identical to the population at large.

Clearly, they were delusional, and despite many years of trying they were never able to develop such a test. But in the absence of a test, they began evaluating applicants mainly on touchy-feely criteria, but mainly on their grades in college. So people who went to "historically Black" colleges and graduated with 4.0 QPA's were golden. Absurdly, they were hired over people who graduated from, say Carnegie Mellon University, and only were able to manage a 3.8 QPA.

Truly, the lunatics were running the assylum.

But what do you expect? It's the federal government.