@scholarme - people who can’t afford psychologist (low and middle class - I can’t pay exorbitant amount since the test is not covered under insurance if I remember right) at the disadvantage if they have true ADHD need. SAT/ACT should extend their time to 5 hours regardless of accommodation need or not.
The admissions office does not determine if the recruited athlete is the best athlete for the slot or even if the athlete has ever played the sport. It was not uncommon just a few years ago for rowing coaches to take the best athlete for the team even if the student had never rowed before. The coaches knew they could turn a strong athlete into a rower. This is not as easy to do with a tennis player but the admissions department gives the slots to the coaches and as long as the student is academically qualified, the admissions office is not going to assess the athletic ability. Or the acting ability. Or the musical ability. Or really, the mathmatical ability. The admissions department relies on the recommendations of the coaches and professors for those things.
Now lying on the application would be grounds for the admissions dept to reject the application, and certainly cheating on the tests would be, but just not being a good enough athlete? No.
The idea of the admissions department checking the local newspapers for proof of athletic achievement is, frankly, ridiculous. Do you think the LA times is going to have a story about Lori’s daughter’s high school rowing team, if there even was a team? My daughter’s high school didn’t have a team but 4 girls signed with D1 schools; they were on a private club team. I have no idea if there were stories about them in the paper. I wouldn’t expect the admissions office to figure out that it should check the county newspaper and not the big city paper to find a story about my daughter’s big game and there is no place on the application to attach the articles listing her, in one line, as a ‘first team All County’ member. They just have to believe the application or reject it, but they aren’t going to do a google search on every applicant.
A few comments:
- Local news outlets always look for a local angle on big national stories, and here in San Diego the local TV news stations have pounced on the fact that one of the colleges caught up in the scandal is the Univ. of San Diego, a local private college. Now USD is a good school where one can get a perfectly fine education, but IMO it has never had the visibility or academic reputation that would commonly lead one to contemplate cheating or bribery to get into. I kind of wonder whether some USD people might be secretly pleased that their school is now being mentioned in the same breath as Georgetown, Yale, and USC as "elite" schools so desirable that someone would risk jail time to get admitted to.
- I guess we can stop sanctimoniously pointing fingers at certain Asian countries for being hotbeds of organized SAT cheating.
- I'm mildly surprised that some people resorted to crimes in the college admission process, but I guess I'm shocked, shocked that the rich and famous turn out to have advantages and privileges not available to the rest of us.
This should be evident, at least with respect to academics, from standardized scoring profiles. Over fifty colleges overlap with Harvard by this measure (i.e., their 75th percentile scores exceed those of Harvard’s 25th percentile scores, typically by one or two ACT points).
But what would that mean in practice? Does it mean it can be a whole day? When would the day end, assuming it started at 8AM? 5PM? 9PM? Can it be multiple days, and if so, how would you prevent cheating of students looking up the topics at home?
And there is already the problem that these tests are already too easy to separate out the moderately strong students from the really strong students. Should the test be made harder to compensate for that? What does that mean in terms of time?
@PurpleTitan “Yes, and the striking thing to me is that Americans seem much more comfortable with that than many people from other countries, including ones with higher levels of corruption.” Spot on Titan
Its all branding and advertising, the wealthy are buying the education they DESERVE, earning it is beneath them.
They could do that now, but it would be inconvenient for the college (to run its own standardized test program) and potential applicants. Like it or not, the SAT and ACT are the default incumbent standardized tests, so colleges going against that face an uphill struggle for mindshare for an alternative standardized test (even the SAT subject tests).
@hebegebe - Make it 5 hours for all regardless of accommodation need or not … (remember there are many kids who never get diagnosed with accommodation due to lack of knowledge or money about this major issue)
@hebegebe it would probably mean a complete redesign of the tests, and yes, make them harder.
Or possibly computerized, with the next question based in whether you got the previous question right, like some other tests.
Here’s the exact HOW they did it. Very concise, with evidence also: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/us/admissions-scandal.html
@girl19 This scandal has brought out how widespread the everyday scam of getting extra time on the standardized tests is. The kids all know it’s going on. They know that their friend that who has no problem in class all of a sudden has a special accommodation for taking the SAT. A few kids getting in as fake athletes doesn’t affect near the same amount of kids as the standardized test issue. At a minimum the testing agencies should disclose that the student had extra time.
Unless these students were clinically stupid, there is no way they didn’t know. Any applicants whose parents are running the admissions process, should be disqualified any way. If you can’t handle admission process on your own, you are not ready to attend college. I would ban all test prep centers too, no need for those. Similar goes for extra time, it’s getting manipulated shamelessly, just allow enough time so everyone can finish it. Colleges should be legally bound to conduct a transparent admissions process, no holistic veils to hide corruption or discrimination.
@PurpleTitan wrote:
“Despite Americans talking a good game about believing in meritocracy and being against corruption, our higher ed admission system is much less meritocratic and more corrupt than many other countries. But that’s not the amazing part. The amazing part to me is that so many Americans are fine with that. So people here just assume that the kids of ex-Presidents can go wherever they want. And are fine with that! In many countries that are more corrupt in many ways, that would not sit so well with people. Not saying it’s impossible, but it’s much more difficult to cheat/bribe your way in to PKU in China or a grande ecole in France or Oxbridge in the UK, for instance.
In the Republic of China (Taiwan) when it was essentially run as a dictatorship, Jiang Jing-guo was pretty ruthless about torturing and killing dissentents. But he was unwilling to violate the sanctity of Taiwan’s uni entrance exam to get his kids in to the top colleges in Taiwan. When their scores weren’t good enough to get them in, they went somewhere else”
I cannot disagree with this more. One example does not make the entire world is better off than the US. The blatant corruptions in Asia and Africa are like an ocean compared to drops of water in the US – in literally EVERYTHING, college entrance included. If you truly think that America is worse off and people are “more” ok with it, than the rest of the world, you don’t really know what you are talking about, or that you are just here to criticize american way of life.
With all the news coverage and likely more scandals to come Congress may look again at the extremely favorable tax status of Ivies and other so-called elite universities. Senator Grassley was interested in cutting back on tax breaks for colleges that had billions in endowments. This may revive interest in making these institutions more accountable and pay more in taxes than they currently do.
For example, donating money is a quid pro quo, not a charitable gift, if the object is getting your kid or future kids or grandkids into the university.
As for the tennis recruits, I know that USTA keeps stats on my matches and stats on my ranking. All one needs to do is to check the USTA website to find out all the matches and the rankings. It would take one minute to verify if these tennis recruits actually played tennis.
@hebegebe I think the question is what do you expect/need these tests to accomplish? If the answer is simply to act as a threshold to basically determine which students are qualified to have a good chance of doing well at college, then there is no need to make them harder and no need to distinguish among the very top. Once you know who meets the threshold,then other elements can be used to distinguish the students at the top. For example, the school can look at math competitions, science research, read student work, outside accomplishments, etc.
On the other hand, if you are looking for one test to accurately rank all the students who take them, you run into many of the problems you mention.
Personally, I don’t see why speed should be used as a ranking device. A student who doesn’t know how to solve problem X is not going to magically figure it out with more time. On the other hand, a student who may be quite gifted but reads or calculates more slowly would be able to show his true worth. The point is to get an accurate picture of a student’s ability in the metrics you actually care about.
@SouthernHope I don’t know if you’ve seen the press about Loughlin’s USC daughter, but on her instagram she boasts that “you guys know that school isn’t really my thing…of course I’m excited about game day and parties…but I may have to talk to the Deans about my [schedule]” Plus, she proceeded to monetize her USC status by posing for instagram in her dorm, showing off various products that she was paid to promote. Ugh! The awfulness of these people runs deep.
With regard to wholesale changes in standardized testing, I doubt this cheating scandal is enough to make that happen. Consider the “New Coke” fiasco at Coca Cola. This is big business with College Board and ACT, and they are not going to do anything to upset the Golden Goose.
@marinebioslo , why? What makes that fair to the kids who actually need the extra time? Like my kid, for example. It is not an everyday scam. It’s a loophole that has been exploited by a criminal.
give every kid 5 hours for 3 hours and 50 minutes test … you are diagnosed for accommodation or not . . and call it a day!
@LisaNCState I agree with this solution. It is fair to everyone, saves on paperwork, doesn’t disadvantage low income students whose parents can’t navigate the system and removes the stigma some kids feel from needing extra time.