“You can’t make college admissions fair by getting rid of the SAT”
The harsh truth about college admissions.
Lots of schools are making a big deal and patting themselves on the back for dropping the SAT in the name of diversity, but in the end, this serves the schools, not students.
Freddie deBoer writes at SubStack:
Why the Fuck Do You Trust Harvard?
Here is what I want to say to you: at the end of this process, no matter how you change it, no matter how many statements the schools put out about diversity, no matter how many thumbs you put on all the scales to select for a certain kind of student, at the end of this process are self-serving institutions of limitless greed and an army of apparatchiks who are employed only to protect their interests. That’s it. You can’t make college admissions fair by getting rid of the SAT because colleges admissions can’t be “fair.”
College admissions exist to serve the schools. Period. End of story. They always have, they always will. College admissions departments functioned as one big anti-Semitic conspiracy for decades because that was in the best interest of the institution. Guys who the schools know will never graduate but who run a 4.5 40 jump the line because admissions serves the institution.
Absolute fucking dullards whose parents can pay – and listen, guys, it’s cute that you think legacies are somehow the extent of that dynamic, like they won’t let in the idiot son of a wealthy guy who didn’t go there – get in because admissions serves the institution. Some cornfed doofus from Wyoming with a so-so application gets in over a far more qualified kid from Connecticut because the marketing department gets to say they have students from 44 states in the incoming class instead of 43 that way, because admissions serves the institution. How do you people look at this world and conclude that the problem is the SAT?
And what just drives me crazy, what I find so bizarre, is that all these PMC liberals in media and academia think they’re so endlessly disillusioned and over it and jaded, but they imagine that it was the SAT standing in the way of these schools admitting a bunch of poor Black kids. What the fuck do you think has been happening, exactly?
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Comments
Freddie the Boor sure does like his F word.
Emphasizing a point without the use of profanity (or, almost as bad, ALL CAPS) is the type of thing we used to learn in school. High school.
There, or by examples set by adults around one in childhood.
Universities drop the SAT because they want to use criteria other than academic ability and merit to choose their students, and they don’t want anyone to be able to prove what they’re doing.
High-school GPA’s have been inflated to the point that they are meaningless, so standardized exams are the only reliable measure of academic ability. The Harvard lawsuit showed using test scores that Asian students were getting screwed. How can the administration discriminate any way it likes without leaving evidence? By eliminating test scores.
Even the state of Oregon recently did the same thing. Their schools were failing to educate their students, especially minorities. That was embarrassing. How to fix the problem? Stop giving the tests!! Graduate everybody, whether they can read and write or not. And they can get athletic scholarships to colleges that don’t give tests, and major in Underwater Basketweaving.
Most college entrance essays are essentially creative writing so the college can ignore the horrific grammer being used. “They intended to do that to make a creative point.”
My son goes to a good private school, is a senior, and has taken AP English, for which he was awarded A’s. I spent an hour last night correcting the grammer on an essay he needed to submit to compete for a scholarship. I didn’t change a word of what he said. I just … fixed the grammer. Well ok, I discussed ‘weak’ versus ‘strong’ sentences with him also. The essays on SAT and ACT do give the school a baseline look at writing skill. They need to know this information.
Complete bull scheit. Universities are hungry for student tuitions. They don’t care if they flunk out. They got the money and the bankster collectors got a new client.
No SAT, no problem. Here are education loan applications. Welcome to Harvard! Flunky! Say goodbye to $35,000 for tuition and say hello to the bankster collectors.
He’s right. Removing an objective measure just makes the subjective more ripe for abuse.