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Standardized testing for entry into college.
Jast
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Basically, I made this thread to discuss standardized testing for entry into college. Personally, I dislike the SATs and ACTs. I feel they put too much pressure on students and are held in too high regard, when studies have shown the doing good on the SATs doesn't neccesarily mean a person will do good in college or not doing good will mean the person will be a failure. The SATs were first started so that people could get into college based on their aptitude, not just their personal connections. A good thing. But in this day and age we shouldn't need it anymore. I wish I had more to say, I'm wondering what other people think.
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Absolutely, there are tons of race and class issues involved in standardized testing. Until a widespread substitute is found, however, expect colleges to continue to use the tests as at least a partial means of sorting their applicants pool.
Even then, teachers and administrators can change grades for their favorite students. And teachers also hold the power to give grades, different teachers will give different grades. Two essays by two students, both equally good, but one had a teacher who didn't like him so he gets a B, the other had a teacher who loves him and he gets A+. How are you going to prevent that?
In my experience, most of the students complaining about how the ACT or SAT tests aren't a good measure of performance are the same people who didn't do as well as they wanted.
There might be some problems with the ACT and SAT tests, but they're a good way of measuring performance because so many people take them. They can tell a lot more than a GPA alone.
That'd be way too much work to try and implement a standardized grading system. Even with a uniform grading system, certain classes and teachers are going to be harder than others.
When SAT/ACT prep courses and guides can advertise average 100 points of test improvement, then it shows that the test isn't about future college performance but rather standardized test-taking performance, which isn't a major component of most college curricula.
As far as predictability goes they aren't perfect but given that they know exactly what their testing for (performance in an academic enviroment) and the long history they've had for review they do a pretty good job.
If you look at the records of thousands and thousands of people who got "X" SAT score and then performed at "Y" level after getting into school you can get a pretty good idea which horse to bet on.
The biggest problem with this is that the federal government really doesn't control schools all that much. I mean they do give some money, but constitutionally education is a state right, not the business of the federal government.
I had a friend who bombed his SATs and his GREs, and he's about to get his Masters. I have friends who did well on their SATs / GREs who are dipshits.
The tests only indicate how well a person can take that test and nothing more and I'm pretty sure that is demonstrably the case.
They aren't as important as you might think, at least at the top level. I had top scores and almost a 4.0 from highschool and I still didn't get into 2 of the 4 schools I applied at (and one of those I got into was a state school). I'm not so good at those BSey "who are you and what do you want to do" or potpourri essays though.
Numbers instead of names.
That still doesn't fix grade inflation, though, which I think is a far worse problem than teachers potentially favouring some students over others.
The main problem in fixing grade inflation is distinguishing schools that do so from schools that have a high proportion of unusually intelligent students. Both kinds of schools would turn out similar distributions of grades, yet should be treated differently.
With a national grading system, it might be possible to keep track of how students from high school A perform in college B, and use that information to normalize the grades of applicants from A to B. Difficulties would arise when there haven't been enough A->B students to be statistically significant, but a workaround would be to compute some sort of generic difficulty ranking for high schools by seeing how their students perform at all the colleges their alumni matriculate to. That ranking could then be taken into account when considering the applicant's grades.
Yeah, I did well on the SATs. Yeah, I supported them before I even took them. They all give colleges more things to base their decision on. As to the "SATs reflect how much time a student has put in, given tests and books and study guides", no. Some students require that, but I do not know a single person who I feel has gotten a score significantly higher than they would have because of the tests. I didn't have a booklet, and I didn't have a course, I just went in and took them, and I stand by my statement that the test judges reasoning ability, because there were things from so long ago that I had forgotten and had to work out myself (mostly geometrical stuff, where I forgot the formula but could use logic to deduce an answer that made sense).
Complaining about counting off for wrong answers is pretty silly too, I think. They don't want people getting incredible lucky streaks and getting scores much higher than they deserve by filling out the answer and just randomly guessing on the rest. I wouldn't feel that way if it weren't for that fact that if you can eliminate two choices (out of five) you're better off guessing than you are leaving it blank. On most questions, eliminating two choices is child's play. They don't exactly discourage guessing; they discourage extremely baseless bubble-filling.
ACTs I'm a little more on the fence about, because that really is a study of knowledge. I don't care how intelligent you are; if you haven't had formal science education, you're going to have a hard time using logic to understand the purpose of mitochondria. To be honest, I haven't taken it, but I took the PLAN (PLAN is to ACT as PSAT is to SAT) and those sorts of questions were on it.
I don't really study, too, so the SAT is a chance for me to prove that I have the know-how to deal with college-level courses. My GPA is entirely a product of my ability to retain and apply knowledge, and to be frank, it does, to some degree, reflect my lack of very hard work. I think that the kids who have a harder time with material but spend two to three hours every night studying absolutely deserve their GPA, probably more than I do, but I'm glad that the SATs, SAT subjects, ACTs and APs give me a way to say to colleges "hey, I'm worth more than my GPA shows". Yes, I understand that an enormous part of college (possibly the biggest) is the ability to buckle-down for an all-night study session, and I don't think that's beyond me, even if I haven't done it yet, but I'd rather the colleges say "Well, maybe he hasn't been stimulated enough yet" rather than "look at that GPA, he must not be very bright". For the record (not to be a pretentious prick) I have a 4.0, but that's with two Bs in AP classes, and those could easily be As, if I had the will to study.
TL;DR: The SATs aren't perfect, but to just base college acceptance off GPA wouldn't be fair to kids that are like me, whether it's because they don't feel the need to study for hours every night to raise a grade by 3 points, because their teachers don't like them, whether they missed three weeks because of an injury, whatever.
The problem is there are millions of students who sound the same on paper and only the tests can help decide that final push. Plus, everyone knows that there is a great deal of luck in the whole application process. Just a roll of the die...or if your parents are rich.
Now, sure, you can still use various methods to determine scholarships and whatnot, and you can certainly set a given GPA that must be maintained once enrolled...but as far as getting in? Why make it into a big thing?
If I can attend class and keep a good GPA once I'm there, who gives a shit whether I ever even showed up to high school?
And think above all the strapped idiots they'd have to deal with. The administration process would be so bogged down if they had to keep track of every yokel with $40,000 who thought the school would be good, continuously weighing extracurriculars and GPA and ability to go A and B the C of D.
No. No, no, no, no.
Looking at statistics for a couple ivy league schools, they get about 20k applications per year. Imagine how many they'd get if people knew they could just get right in. What happens when fifty thousand or more students enroll at all the ivy-league schools every year? I'd guesstimate it'd take at least a decade to build the housing and infrastructure and so forth to support that many students close to campus. All that building is going to take a ton of money, too. Do you really think alumni are going to contribute that money knowing it'll serve to make the school less prestigious? And if not them, where would it come from?
There are also problems on the other end. All those students suddenly going to the top schools have to come from somewhere. Current community colleges would likely see enrollment plummet, to the point where many of them might have to shut down or consolidate.
But really, the SAT is good at determining what it's supposed to determine: a student's awareness of a sizeable panoply of vocab. words and math up to Algebra 2--maybe a hint of writing skill. Sure, there are courses out there to help you "beat the test", but there are only so many flash cards you can go through each night. It's a roll of the dice for most people out there. And I'm positive most colleges worth a damn aren't going to make it their sole criterion of entrance; they'll take it in context of your academic career. Hell, cross-checking your entrance essay with your SAT essay is a pretty fine idea, in my opinion.
No shit the ACT/SAT measure how well you do on them instead of your "future college performance", that's what they're supposed to do. The ACT and SAT test you on things you're supposed to be learning at school (reading ability, math skills, grammar) and how quickly you're able to do them. Test centers can help people improve their scores, not by teaching them magical test taking techniques, but by helping the students improve on their math, reading, and writing skills.
Without reforming our educational system, how exactly do you propose colleges get a close measure of one student to students all across the country without standardized tests?
When I took the ACT, the science section was pretty much just like the reading section, only with reading and graphs related to science. There weren't any questions requiring outside knowledge about cells or mitochondria.
For verbal: Have a good grasp on grammar.
For math: Be able to do whatever math you learn in 11th grade.
For the writing: Bullshit it. Seriously. My friend wrote about Lincoln freeing the slaves, I bullshitted something about my "friend," "Bill." Got 620.
EDIT: It doesn't really test how quickly you can do shit, Treeloot. In order to do that, they'd have to time how long it took each person to end each portion of the math/verbals and add them together.
I understand the appeal of standardization, and people can argue that grades alone only reflect an individual experience under very subjective circumstances, which perhaps give a very skewed perspective of a student's abilities.
But honestly, what will your SAT scores reflect if not the sum of many, many highly subjective experiences? I'd say for the most part, your grades in high school and your SAT scores are probably going to have some kind of correlation. That underachieving genius archetype who pulls Cs and scores a straight 1600 (or whatever the hell it is now) is probably a severe minority, as is the persecuted student whose teachers simply wish to punish him or her for their personal differences.
I guess what I'm saying is, why bother with the high pressure standardization if it's ultimately going to reflect the kind of subjectivity its designed to circumvent.
So, uh, yeah, bullshit it. :P
Like, I made up every single thing. I was amazed that I got more than 200.
To get back on topic, personally I have no problem with the SATs. In my experience most kids don't get too stressed out about it and the ones that do are the kids who are already freaking out about their gpa and class rank.
What did you get on the essay?
I'm not saying "Don't try," I'm saying, you can do decent, not great but okay, without trying.
These scores are really the only thing I have going for me. I have generally meh grades because I don't try in a lot of my classes.
No good school is going to have anything other than need-blind admissions policies. Unless you mean that because he is rich, he received a good education and is better-prepared for the SAT and the rigors of college, in which case I agree 100%.
So, can someone enlighten me as to what the problem is, exactly?
The science section is made up shit that you don't have to know-- I found that the key is being able to flip through several graphs really fast and semi-understand them, then answer questions about it.
And concerning the PLAN test: I took the PLAN in 10th grade and it said I'd probably get a 23-26; I took the ACT the summer after 10th grade and got a 32. PLAN is bullshit.
What school do you go to where a 4.0 is a LACK of hard work? At my school, less than 10% of the people get a 4.0.
The only thing that I have noticed is that when American students come to British unis, they are quite often not reallly prepared for uni, their essay writing skills are quite often poor and it can take them a year or so to get up to the level that is expected within Russel Group unis over here.
Saying that, the pattern in Britain is starting to get that way too, with people being taught just the exact ansers to their A-Level papers rather than a lot of the skills we used to be taught and they end up coming to Uni able to recite the ansers to specific questions but the general skills that one should have before coming to Uni are sometimes missing.
I don't completely understand SAT's, but from what I know they seem quite poor even compared to the A-Level system over here, and I am a bit confused as to whether the marking is anonymous over there - it's standard practice for any kind of exam over here. Also, while there will be a reference from a teacher for the University application, there's no kind of GPA system which goes on your application, the only thing the teacher has control over is predicted grades, and it's kinda difficult to play favourites with that as it only takes one year of obviously raising and lowering depending on favouritism and they'll be in deep trouble with their boss as the college/school will get a bad reputation with the Univerities, and no one wants to piss them off!
We have letter grades, F is 0-59% correct on something, D 60-69, C 70-79, B 80-89, and A 90-100.
GPA is a point system based on semester grades, with an A getting you 4 points, B 3, C 2, D 1, and F 0. As such, a 4.0 GPA SHOULD be the highest possible, but then there's AP (Advanced Placement)/ IB (Internat'l Bac), which ups each letter by 1 point, so you get a 5 with an A, 4 B, 3 C, 2 D, and 0 F again. Because of this, it's entirely possible to get something like a 4.3 at my school, although most of my school's AP classes are in various specific sciences like Biology and Chemistry, so I don't care to take most of them.
Also, grades are rounded to where an 89.5 = A, so you can get an 89 one quarter (B), a 90 the next (A), and end up with an A for the semester, and since different grades that make up an A don't matter for GPA, you can get an 89.5 or a 100 for all that it matters.
Talk about teaching to the test: my English class Junior year consisted of reading four books, several poems, and preparing for two tests: the English end of course (Taken at the end of Junior year, if you don't pass you have to take an extra English course as a Senior for no credit), and the ACT, which is the main admissions test in my area of the United States. There were several occasions in my class where the teacher would pull out ACT PRACTICE BOOKS from a bookshelf and have us all take a practice test for the English section...
One of these times I had a fun conversation:
Me: "Do we really need to take an ACT practice test?"
Teacher: "Have you taken the ACT yet?"
Me: "Yes, I got a 32 composite (99th percentile)."
Teacher: "What was your English score?"
Me: "My English section was a 31 (99th)."
Teacher: "Oh, well, why don't you just go ahead and take it anyway?"
Henceforth, I repeatedly complained that I literally had no reason to take the tests as I already had a more-than-acceptable ACT score, but my teacher made the practice tests worth points for your grade and refused to let me sit them out without giving me a 0 for the grade.
I am happy to be out of that class.