Stanford will once again require standardized tests for undergraduate admission | Hacker News Reader

Stanford will once again require standardized tests for undergraduate admission

sfchronicle.com

62 pointsbelter19 comments

> Stanford officials said Friday that they decided to back the tests after a faculty committee studied the numbers and found that the scores were “an important predictor of academic performance at Stanford.”

It sounds like they could have gone the other way if the investigation had shown that the tests didn't predict academic performance.

The findings of the faculty committee was almost certainly available and known before they stopped requiring standardized tests. I would say the decision to stop was due to pandemic and politics, and the decision to start was due to politics, while the stated reason for starting was the findings about academic performance and test scores.

> I would say the decision to stop was due to pandemic

So would Stanford:

https://stanforddaily.com/2020/06/17/standardized-testing-no...

At the time they also announced that they expected to reinstate the requirement for the class of 2026 (turned out to be 2030.)

Embarrassing that they ever did away with it.

During the pandemic all SAT/ACT exams were suspended. The unis didn’t really have a choice.

The purpose of standardized testing was to give smart kids who did not have a good upbringing a chance at college.

For a while, Stanford abandoned this in favor of only giving a chance to those with a privileged upbringing.

I am glad to see they might reverse their course.

Wow who could’ve known that was a bad idea? Surely not the “most educated” institutions in all of the US…

note: standardized tests are the chemotherapy of academic performance. still hurts almost everyone, just don't have a better solution.

dropping them without a replacement was a bad solution. and now its being presented as a false dilemma against having them, fictionally presented as the only two possible solutions

amusing, since its supposed to be an intelligence test, but intelligent people are falling for the false dilemma

> note: standardized tests are the chemotherapy of academic performance. still hurts almost everyone, just don't have a better solution.

This is an interesting, but apt, description. I wish more people would keep this in mind.

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