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> This is why applaud California's recent decision to halt standardized tests, such as SAT and ACT, as a mandatory placement criteria for entering university. All those tests measure, given the youth and maturity of traditional high school students, is extreme preparation and not performance or potential.

Unless you think that universities should pick their students by lotteries, you must answer how whatever that replaces SAT is not worse. Because whatever replaces it, for example identifying well rounded candidates with extra curricular achievements is even more socio-economic stratifying.

It largely feels like an excuse to lower the competitive bar to manage the demographics, allowing both more legacy hires and more representative demographics. Such actions however will come at the cost of merit.

> is even more socio-economic stratifying.

Is there data to suggest that? Public schools are generally very good about providing a variety of extra-curricular activities to keep students focused upon athletic and scholarly activities outside the classroom if the student is willing to participate. Contrast those tax funded and faculty lead activities to private tutors and rigorous SAT practice that is almost exclusively limited to families with the personal financies to afford such.

> It largely feels like an excuse to lower the competitive bar to manage the demographics

I can certainly empathize with that. Wealthy households had an advantage with private tutors and timely dedicated/forced test preparation activities. Now that advantage has evaporated so that wealthy students are now less exclusively advantaged, or in other words the bar of entry has lowered to wider availability.

> Public schools are generally very good about providing a variety of extra-curricular activities to keep students focused upon athletic and scholarly activities outside the classroom if the student is willing to participate.

I think you’re greatly underestimating how much the college admissions game has changed in recent years. For top universities (like the better UCs, Ivies, etc.), being, for example, president of a club in one’s high school is essentially irrelevant. The paths to admission consist of: (1) being a top athlete, (2) significant extracurricular achievement (meaning state/national accolades, founding a non-profit, etc.), or (3) extreme adversity.

You’re absolutely correct that the SAT rewards those with wealth and resources the most. But the absurd time and resource investment required of modern high-schoolers and their families to participate in extracurriculars in the way top colleges now demand is far greater a burden than SAT prep.

> You’re absolutely correct that the SAT rewards those with wealth and resources the most.

What, why? Not American here, but in the past I was looking into going for university in US and studying for SATs and it's just a test that everyone can learn for...

Lower socioeconomic status is thought to add stress, often in the form of less time for studying because teenagers at the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder have to work more. They also can't afford tutors, have fewer books in the house, etc.

Yes, everyone can study for it, but generally the easiest ways to boost your SAT scores are to pay a tutor to drill you through the parts that can have the biggest impact on your scores, and to take the test multiple times until you get a score you like, both of which can get very expensive. Retaking the test is really helpful, as you'll be more familiar with the format and less stressed out the second time around, but a lot of students don't have the opportunity to take it more than once.

Allegedly, with time, money, and tutors you can "study to the test" pretty effectively.

Lottery with a min bar would fix most of these issues, especially the crazy extra curricular game that is played today.

Most of the Ivy League schools already implement a lottery, because even with the absurd requirements for entry they can't differentiate the qualified candidates well enough to make a determination given the limited number of acceptance slots and high number of applicants.

You have to keep mind those schools are extremely tiny compared to the highly rated state schools in California, Texas, and Florida.

This suggests that issue is not so much who get to Ivy League school, but the disproportionate advantage Ivy League schools graduates have. No matter how the entrance test is tweaked, as long as not studying there is a block in some career goal of an highly talented and highly ambitious student, there will be issues.

> Unless you think that universities should pick their students by lotteries,

The British Open University (distance learning) has no entrance requirements and still has a good reputation and their graduates are successful in getting well paid jobs.

It would be quite reasonable to use a lottery if the number of applicants exceeds the number of places, those who discover that they are not good enough or are not willing to work hard enough will drop out quite quickly. You just need to dimension the first year teaching capacity a bit higher than subsequent years so that you have enough students left at the end of the first year to fill the subsequent years.

I'll consider your point valid if oxford and cambridge also did the lottery. Otherwise, if the elite universities, which are likely to have a lot of good candidates, won't do a lottery, maybe there is some merit in choosing people by merit.

> It largely feels like an excuse to lower the competitive bar to manage the demographics, allowing both more legacy hires and more representative demographics.

It doesn’t seem like a good solution to that problem. How will removing test scores as a factor help smart kids of underrepresented minority groups against dumb rich kids (with influential parents) who are too lazy to study for the SAT? It seems much better to keep the test but apply a corrective factor if you believe it’s biased against some group. It’s the only way I can think of to keep the dumb rich kids out.

The point was that they don't want to keep dumb rich kids out. The parents are an important money source and you don't want to upset the ruling elite by withholding from them the prestige they are used to.

Public schools aren't for the "ruling elite"

The point is to replace this objective transparent measure with a subjective opaque measure. Like alumni interviews, and ranking based on personality. That way they can twist the results a preferred way

I don't trust anyone who thinks a "competitive bar" to education is a good thing.

There is a competitive bar to getting an MIT education. And that is a good thing, because it encourages competition and excellence.

It is not a competitive bar to education, but a difference of great and not so great universities, which are going to choose students from great and not so great candidates.

> Unless you think that universities should pick their students by lotteries

This is already the case in the US - more so than any other developed nation I think, because of how poor state public schools can be and the lack of a welfare / healthcare safety net for the poor. The lottery of who you are born to and where you live is pretty much the main determination of whether you get into an elite university or not.

The answer is to provide enough high quality higher education so everyone who wants to can get one, as long as they meet the minimum bar (pass GRE / high school diploma). Let people prove themselves as adults. I'm convinced this can be done, but probably not in the traditional way of requiring a physical presence on campus.

> This is why applaud California's recent decision to halt standardized tests, such as SAT and ACT, as a mandatory placement criteria for entering university.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/22/us/uc-suspends-sat-act-for-ad...

It's not at all obvious that was done, and there are a ton of caveats in the new rules. They basically want a shot at developing a different test. They didn't eliminate testing.

"We are removing the ACT/SAT requirement for California students and developing a new test that more closely aligns with what we expect incoming students to know to demonstrate their preparedness for UC," Napolitano said.

"If a new test does not meet the specified criteria in time for admissions for fall of 2025, UC will eliminate the standardized testing requirement for California students, according to the news release. UC will work on a separate approach for out-of-state and international students."

>All those tests measure, given the youth and maturity of traditional high school students, is extreme preparation and not performance or potential.

The tests in essence measure either intelligence or work ethic. Work ethic is probably more important for college performance than anything else to be honest however you can do fairly well on the tests with intelligence alone. The point of college admission isn't really to predict your performance in life but rather to predict your performance in college. If you become a better person at 24 or 35 it doesn't really matter since you're long gone from college by then.

Work ethic isn’t just working hard. Slaves work hard without work ethic. Work ethic requires self initiative. There is no reason to suggest that those high school students who practice hardest for the standardized tests do so entirely of their own accord with a forcing function from adult interference.

Nothing is a perfect proxy for something else so lacking an oracle or a time machine all you can do is try to find an approximation. Also, adult interference doesn't end just because someone goes off to college.

> This is why applaud California's recent decision to halt standardized tests, such as SAT and ACT, as a mandatory placement criteria for entering university. All those tests measure, given the youth and maturity of traditional high school students, is extreme preparation and not performance or potential

Why speculate when people have already done research on this.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-truth-about-the-sat-and-act...

> Myths abound about standardized tests, but the research is clear: They provide an invaluable measure of how students are likely to perform in college and beyond

The peers are of the same age group (largely), so as a comparative tool within a cohort, would it still not be relevant?

No because the cohort are children operating under artificial constraints that are no longer present once those children move away from their guardians.

> This is why applaud California's recent decision to halt standardized tests, such as SAT and ACT, as a mandatory placement criteria for entering university. All those tests measure, given the youth and maturity of traditional high school students, is extreme preparation and not performance or potential.

But that also applies for grades as well. High school is preparation for college. Shouldn't colleges select for people who are prepared over those who are not? Should we get rid of grades, extracurriculars, etc? What should colleges use then? Just legacy admissions?

> I think research generally bears this out across a variety of metrics and meaures including violent crime data. The human brain is still developing until around age 24 give or take two years.

So then let those people reapply for college when they "mature". What does that have to do with SATs?

> Preparation in that regard is a socio-economic stratifier as it takes time and money outside of the student's own initiative and state provided education.

This is hilarious. SATs and ACTs acted as an objective factor against "socio-economic" factors. High school grades are unreliable as different schools grade differently. It also prevents against wealthier students buying better grades by paying for people to do their homework for them. It guards against wealthier students being able to afford quality extracurricular activities vs poor students.

The SATs and ACTs were the only objective factor a less advantaged minority group could use to show discrimination in admission. It existed as an objective national measure and currently, it's the only ones that we have in college admissions. Frankly, it's the only test we have to measure actual discrimination in colleges. And the virtue signalers want to get rid of it?

Your entire comment is in favor of GT score and SATs. You even said that you were a "dumb 17 year old". You weren't prepared.

> Generally, everybody who entered the military as a teenager notices dramatic improvement on that test when retaking it later life even with no preparation.

No kidding. That's true for everything. It's why you can join the military later in life.

So the military and colleges should take everyone who isn't prepared? All you are arguing for is people should enter military and colleges at different ages because some people are less prepared than others at certain ages.

I don't know why you are so hung up about SATs, ASVAB, only. Why not grades? Why not extracurriculars? Your argument applies to those as well. People mature at different ages. So lets get rid of every measure and let anyone in.

Everyone is against the most fair and objective test measure. There are so many media articles and social media spam about it. Not so much about legacy admissions and the real privileges.

> So then let those people reapply for college when they "mature".

Why not let all people wait and apply once they mature? Why single out “those” people without an artificial unearned advantage?

> Why not let all people wait and apply once they mature?

Yes that's my point. Let people keep trying.

> Why single out “those” people without an artificial unearned advantage?

Who is singling out anyone? If anything you are the one singling people out.

Your comment makes no sense. What are you arguing? That everyone should wait for everyone else? If so, then that's got to be the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Think about what you are saying. So if you get a driver's license, you think you should be forced to wait until everyone else pass their driving test before you are allowed to drive?

Just because you couldn't pass some military test, everyone else should wait to until you can pass?

Talk about being selfish and wanting an "artificial unearned advantage".