University of Miami Reinstating Mandatory Standardized Testing
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University of Miami Reinstating Mandatory Standardized Testing

University of Miami Reinstating Mandatory Standardized Testing

“Along with a student’s high school record and other factors, the SAT or ACT test results help shape the review process of a student’s application”

This is another sign that we are finally getting away from ‘equity’ in higher education.

Campus Reform reports:

University of Miami is latest college to reinstate mandatory standardized testing

The University of Miami recently announced that it will be removing a COVID-era policy that did not require incoming applicants to report test scores.

The standardized test score policy is set to be put back in place for any students applying during the 2026 undergraduate admissions cycle.

Miami’s website says the school will revert back to previous standards for admissions, stating that the university previously “paused” the standardized test score policy as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This policy is the latest in a trend of high-profile colleges and universities reinstating their standardized testing requirements for admissions. Dartmouth College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have also restored the requirement, as well as Johns Hopkins University.

The University of Florida requires standardized testing, but allows students to take the Classic Learning Test (CLT) instead of the SAT or ACT. In 2023, Campus Reform reported that the University of Florida System approved the CLT as an alternative exam.

Miami’s move will now require any prospective students entering the undergraduate admissions process at the university to “submit an SAT or ACT score with their admissions application.”

“Along with a student’s high school record and other factors, the SAT or ACT test results help shape the review process of a student’s application,” the web page reads.

“While we recognize the value of changing the policy during the pandemic, we have decided to go back to including this information as our data show that standardized test scores can be a predictor of academic success,” Guillermo “Willy” Prado is quoted as saying on the web page.

Prado added that the university considers “a wide array of information in our admissions decisions and [relies] heavily on a student’s high school performance and grade point average, along with community involvement and many other factors.”

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Comments

DuckDuckGo: high school grade inflation is perhaps the biggest reason for reinstating test scores.

There are a lot of articles on grade inflation in high school. One I found said that since 1970, average high school grades had increased from 2.68 to 3.2 (from memory…)

UC Faculty Issue a Powerful, Data-driven Defense of Standardized Testing in College Admissions

1) The declining predictive power of high school GPAs…In short, grade inflation and compression render high school GPA less informative than it once was….
As the Task Force states in it’s report, the “predictive power” of high school GPA “has declined markedly over the last few years.” High school GPA “accounted for 17 to 20 percent of variance in the freshman GPA prior to 2007, and then 15 percent in 2012 and 13 percent in 2015. As high school GPAs become less useful, the “explained variance accounted for by test scores has increased over the time from 13 percent in 2001 to 20 percent in 2015.”

(This study was from 2015 data. More current data, with more grade inflation, would further contuinue these variance trends.)

The Task Force predicted that without admissions tests, the average student at UC would have “a lower first-year GPA, a lower probability of persisting to year 2, a lower probability of graduating within seven years, and a lower GPA upon graduation.”
(3) Test scores better predict outcomes for underrepresented students

In short, a 3.5 average with grade inflation means that there is a wide variation in test scores. A 3.5 average could come from 1400 SATs or from 800 SATs, thanks to grade inflation.

If it’s about academic success, especially the ability to succeed in hard majors, the standardized tests are probably the very best predictor, above grades or any of that other stuff.

It’s not pure IQ. A kid can improve his SAT scores a lot by studying the things tested on it. If they taught grammar, SAT verbal scores would go up because they give away about 50 points with a few things that are tested in the “writing” (not essay) part of the verbal. Algebra 2 is the level you need to do well on the math.

IQ still matters, but then it matters in life too. Most IQ tests are achievement tests on skills that take years to develop — like the SAT itself.

It’s exactly as if all these college administrators were throwing wild parties over the past few years because their parents weren’t home, and now that daddy’s coming back, they’re straightening up and flying right.

The Gentle Grizzly | January 29, 2025 at 6:33 pm

Standards are raysiss.