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<p>If the state flagship wants the top 50% of students, then the bottom 50% will never get in.</p>
<p>Here is why they want 20 and up.</p>
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<p>Most states that have a true “flagship” university also have one or more state-funded colleges with an open admission policy. What makes the flagship a flagship is (barely) having students well prepared enough to offer challenging courses that are truly at a college level. Students who need remedial courses (review of high school) at college age can find those too, often with substantial state subsidies.</p>
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Our state flagship has a student body with an average uw GPA of 3.7 , an SAT average of about 1200 (CR &M) and a 6 year grad rate of about 75%. This suggests that most of the students are prepared for challenging college courses who attend. However, we also have a regional university that has a student body with an avg GPA of 3.17, an SAT avg of 990, and a 6 year graduation rate of 49%. For this school, many need remedial work and many of the rest do qualify as barely prepared. This school is not a completely open admissions they admit 80% of the applicants.</p>
<p>The problem I see across this thread is that no one has clearly identified what they think the purpose of college should be. Let’s set aside private universities, which can do whatever they want, and just consider public universities which should be working in towards the public good. Is the purpose of the university to churn out the most technically skilled graduates possible? Is it to raise the level of public education to the highest degree possible? Is it to educate the hardest working students possible? All three are valid but subtly different goals, and there may be more. But different posters seem to hold different implicit opinions, when the difference has a big impact in how ad comms should proceed.</p>
<p>@ KG:</p>
<p>Here’s what all colleges should do: Take in the smartest, most able kids. Give them the best education and hope they become productive members of society with the training that was provided. </p>
<p>What college has become? It’s deviated from that practical objective and become a beer-soaked, white suburbanite social ritual of liberal arts studies and people double majoring in English and Women’s Studies.</p>
<p>Public colleges are tax-subsidized and thus should provide the tax-paying public with capable labor.</p>
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<p>So there are credible measures less linked to affluence than the SAT?</p>
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<p>Alright then. Here’s my prescription for your society. Devise a test for intelligence and ability. That test could be a holistic evaluation, a single standardized test, or some combination. I recommend that you proceed by devising admissions tests, and then scientifically benching those against more detailed analysis of intelligence and ability, where intelligence and ability are strictly defined according to the proposed needs of your society.</p>
<p>Next? (:</p>
<p>PS: Poignant and entertaining evaluation of today’s university culture.</p>
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<p>It seems you’re implying this is an almost impossible task. I think it already exists. It’s called the SAT or before the politically correct got a hold of it: Scholastic Aptitude Test. Or replace that with the LSAT, which in my opinion is a slightly better indicator of logical reasoning and intelligence (though probably replace the logic games section w/ a math section or two). </p>
<p>If those aren’t good enough, go over to China and Singapore or go to NYC and visit Stuyvesant HS. All these places have devised tests that they consider appropriate as the sole basis for characterizing potential students. I don’t think the entirety of the decision should lie in one test (work ethic and diligence should always be central criteria), but surely it’s a conceivable system.</p>
<p>As a taxpayer, I do not support dontno’s vision of the ideal college selection process, at least not as the sole selection process. A taxpayer supported college system must offer clear benefits to a larger proportion of taxpayers than just the children of the “most able”, if it is to continue to be taxpayer supported.</p>
<p>I also disagree that “labor” is the sole societal goal of college, in fact I think this is rather recent idea. I think democracy demands a well educated population well versed in history, political theory, sciences, etc.</p>
<p>There are definitely a few holes in this argument. For one, I know plenty of low-income students who outscored me (my family is about as middle-class as you can get) by hundreds of points on the SAT without taking a single prep class. Most of them bought a $20 SAT prep book, but beyond that, these students had no training. </p>
<p>I don’t know if this is a general rule, but my experience has been that SAT prep doesn’t really help that much. The first time that I took the SAT, I didn’t study a bit and got an 800CR and 620M. The second time, after spending half an hour almost every day practicing the math section from my SAT prep book, my score was 740CR 630M. Maybe an SAT prep course could have helped me, but I think at some point, a student’s own mental limitations are going to get in the way. If a student has to struggle to do well in math and English in high school, then the odds are that this student will not perform as well on the SAT. </p>
<p>Also, the student’s determination to perform well on the test is a factor. Last year, my friend’s parents paid hundreds of dollars for her to take an SAT prep course. She resented them for making her do it and spent the whole time zoning out. Needless to say, her score wasn’t that great.</p>
<p>I think there is an important mandate for our educational system to identify and cultivate the “core talent” that has been mentioned. But I do not think this should go on at the college level. It just strikes me as preposterous to attempt educational intervention so late in the student’s development. Put the money and the effort much earlier - preschool and elementary. If we did that plus held parents more accountable instead of always encouraging them to blame an unfair system on their kids performance then I really think no one would have to agonize any longer over the make-up demographically and economically of the high performers on the SAT. We would finally have that magical mix of NMSF and Pres Scholar candidates that we long for.</p>
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Not at all. I’m honestly highlighting how simple the solution is. It’s absurdly simple, to the point where there shouldn’t be any argument, just a quantifiable discussion of the results of different methods.</p>
<p>The difficult part is the question of what role college should serve. That’s how we know which specific results we want to see coming out of admissions committees. Once we (quantifiably) know the results we want out of admissions committees, it’s simple to determine which available option best produces that. And then of course you have to weigh that against the cost of implementation, etc.</p>
<p>So, the SAT is a really good option for one particular type of goal. Maybe it’s not the best for another goal of college. But there’s no saying that the SAT is great or it sucks without defining what performance we’re looking for. I think that discussion is taken for granted in a lot of these articles, which assume a priori that university population should be racially/economically representative, or that top performers should have exclusive priority, or anything else.</p>
<p>Correlation does not mean causation. There are so many confounding variables to the link between affluence and SAT scores, and standardized testing in general, it is not even funny. GPA can measure consistency perhaps, but it can be easily subject to many problems as well since all the schools in the nation have different grading policies, and within schools different teachers of the same subject have different tedencies as well. At least the SAT provides a natural benchmark that is otherwise very difficult to come by.</p>
<p>Test prep really does one thing and that is to make kids work. It is simply a substitute for motivation. Standardized testing is as straightfoward as hell and most books will provide all the “tips and tricks” you need.</p>
<p>A lively thread–the SAT really gets peoples juices flowing. In my day, you took it once and that’s what your score was. Anecdotal evidence notwithstanding, I think that’s still pretty true. Is the first score more valued for admissions decisions than the 4th?</p>
<p>Like it or not, it’s been around for a long time: somebody who took it when I did, 1964, has a score that they can compare with the score their children and grandchildren got (I know there was a big rethink of scoring a number of years ago, and the test has changed, maybe not always for the better: how could they drop analogies, my favorit part?).</p>
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<p>I think this was a great revision. Analogies were so dependent on studying obscure vocab words. I find the reading comprehension to be a great judge of verbal ability.</p>
<p>Interesting discussion–A few things to add (I speak as a Special Ed/English teacher, as well as an SAT tutor, and pretty well trained on the test issues). First of all, for SAT, income has the absolute strongest correlation: On average, the higher your wealth, the higher your score. Income is a better predictor than race, gender, etc. Hence, the concern about inequity. Someone stated categorically that richer people had smarter kids on average. Hmmm. Likely other reasons: 1) test tutoring/prep/expectations. Rich kids are prepped on testing for years. Yes tutoring helps (ok, I know I have to believe this since I’m a tutor!). But seriously, I raise scores on average by 100-150 points per section, at least (more or less depending on what part of the bell shaped curve we’re talking about). This is quite significant. Yes, you could raise those scores by yourself, and many do, but a good tutor is just better–we target areas of weaknesses and actively teach these areas, such as dangling modifiers, etc. 2) Rich kids on average have richer experiences academically speaking (books, museums, words spoken etc.) 3) the test itself. It is very definitely skewed toward a those with a certain background; wealthier people are just far more comfortable with it, on average. This is a conscious decision on the part of college board. 4) Rich kids can afford to take the test more than poor kids. </p>
<p>SAT is not an IQ test, nor was ever, ever meant to be. It was designed to be (and still technically is) a standardized test (bell shaped curve) meant to predict who would do well the first year of college. That’s it. It is fairly accurate in this prediction, although many people argue it is far less accurate for girls than for boys in making its predictions. </p>
<p>I could go on and on (as you can see!) but I do want to remind people that in all standardized tests, the average score is by definition the average: always, inevitably, 50% score higher and 50% lower. If everyone suddenly did better on the SATs, it wouldn’t matter at all; the test (after a year or two of shift) would recalibrate to the proper bell shaped curve. What richer people do, by providing tutoring and other advantages, is to establish sort of their own bell shaped curve that is shifted over from the College Board’s. </p>
<p>I am from an upper class background but am now not well off at all. MY kids have scored quite high on the SATs (is this to be expected or an anomoly?) , and have been accepted to great colleges, but my D cannot go because we can’t afford $20K/year in loans. Fact of life. Colleges are far too expensive for what is supposed to be a democratic society, but I’m getting off topic here… </p>
<p>Basically, the richer you are the greater your advantages in getting into top colleges. First of all, you can write a check for $55K per year (more if a bribe is necessary). And it’s not just SATs or legacies or bribes. It’s having someone write the essays for you, or ‘coach’ you, it’s having a tutor help you all those years in school, and to be frank, it’s having parents who threaten superintendents and hapless teachers when grades don’t go the way they like (happens a LOT, trust me). And the richer the parents, the more likely they are to be successful in getting Johnny’s grade upped from, say, a B to an A. I myself have been forced to change grades on three occasions because of a directive from the super (one time he didn’t even bother to tell me; he just had it changed with the parent sitting in the room with him). There’s an awful lot of corruption out there.</p>
<p>So I guess what I’m saying is that it’s good to be rich…</p>
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<p>College Board once published figures that showed otherwise. </p>
<p>[File:1995-SAT-Income2.png</a> - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1995-SAT-Income2.png]File:1995-SAT-Income2.png”>File:1995-SAT-Income2.png - Wikipedia) </p>
![http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1995-SAT-Income2.png]File:1995-SAT-Income2.png](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1995-SAT-Income2.png%5DFile:1995-SAT-Income2.png){kind=link}
<p>I find it interesting that in recent years, when College Board is still gathering comprehensive data on this issue, it doesn’t publish the data in a way that makes it easy to check which correlations are the strongest. </p>
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<p>There are a lot of data showing that colleges will pass over poor applicants with strong SAT scores to admit richer applicants with worse SAT scores, so I do agree with you that being rich is an advantage in the admission process.</p>
<p><a href=“tokenadult:”>quote</a>
College Board once published figures that showed [income NOT a better predictor than race, gender, etc]
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<p>Thanks for that very interesting graph. What the figure actually shows, with textbook clarity, is that the effect of income is very close to being linear in this range, and is *independent of<a href=“not%20necessarily%20larger%20or%20smaller%20than”>/i</a> the effect of race. There is a slight exception in the lowest income ranges for Asians, as one might expect.</p>
<p>To assess whether income or race/gender are more influential one would need to know more, such as the distribution of income and of race. From the chart, both seem to matter.</p>
<p>The link to the College Board data on score vs. income is useful for discussing overall educational inequalities in the U.S. Also, since tokenadult posted the link, I infer that those are the best data in the public domain.</p>
<p>Please notice, however, that the score (CR + M) stops at a high of 1075. Relatively few of the CC posters (or their children) are anywhere near that ballpark. Also, the income data stops at $70,000 +. I can say definitively that a family headed by two public school teachers in our area would have been in the $70,000 + group in 1995. That would make them comfortably middle-class–but they would not be likely even to pay for an SAT prep course, let alone to consider endowing a building to get Johnny into Harvard! </p>
<p>The really interesting score vs. income data are missing from this chart. How far out in income does the near-linearity of the plot continue? At what point does the correlation of mean scores with income stop completely? Also, it would be much more informative if it were a scatter-plot, rather than simply a plot of the mean scores. Incidentally, QMP could not have supplied a datum for the chart, not knowing our income (nor did I know my family’s income, when I was in high school).</p>
<p>I don’t doubt that wealth may give some the power to influence (or corrupt) academic results, as mentioned by one of the posters above. But I think that usually happens when a family or group of families are “stand-out” wealthy in their area–and when the administrators are corruptible. The New York Times carried an interesting article in the Sunday Styles section a few months ago about a woman who was not able to get her daughter into the private school of their initial preference, even though the woman was a Macy . . . of the store Macy’s. Around here, that would make her wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice!</p>