The dumbing down continues...

UC system went AGAINST their own task force findings and do not currently have anything in the short term to replace SAT/ACT. Janet N should be fired.

I LOBBIED FOR THIS DECISION. Glad to see it.

How will they fairly evaluate all their applicants now? Random picking or just rely on those very subjective grades? Stupid is stupid does.

I heard the UCs will give you a diploma now as well as long as you think you should get one because someone else got one.

I mean the financial divide between those with degrees and those without clearly indicates an institutionalized bias that continues to favor those that went to school and earned degrees.

Great! It gives more leeway to decision makers to advance the rich and powerful people at targeted group in exchange of benefit, but at the cost of tax payers' hard earned money.

I think that that standardized testing was becoming meaningless and universities have been looking for some alternative for a while to use in the application process. This might just be the first step towards that.

When first created, the concept of the standardized test was to give colleges a way to measure and compare applicants who come from very different schools, as there was no way to know if a 4.0 at one school compared to a 4.0 at another school. Or in today's scenario a 4.6 vs a 4.8!

Kids used to just go in and take the test once! (that's right one time)
and that became a useful piece of information for colleges to use in their evaluation of college readiness.

If you think back 25 or more years, the smartest kids would do well on these tests and most people did average - seemed to make sense. There were few surprises or a litany of kids with "perfect" scores.


But over time, people figured out ways to scam the process and sent their kids to paid prep courses, took the test multiple times etc... so the scores were less about a student's actual knowledge or ability - and more about how much professional prep time was put into learning how to take that test and even knowing in advance what was on the test....so what are colleges to do with that information and inflated GPA's.

I sort of hope some new application process will come of all this.

Some ideas I have heard are actual interviews with students, especially now that everyone is comfortable with zooming. Just like a job interview, when all the candidates seem to have an amazing resume and you need some way to make a distinction and decide who to hire.


Another idea was that UC schools are creating their own tests (though this will soon fall victim to the current issues), also how much paid test prep training time you have received will need to be reported to the University along with your amazing score (though this too will be tough to keep honest but would be useful information)

Interesting to see what schools choose.