WI no SAT

What if, instead of using SAT as a major college/university acception factor, colleges/universities focus on GPA, school sports, clubs, and other special activties or qualities the students pocess (For example, a championship in peticular card game contest, working experiences written into a report, a thoughtful paper on any subject, and maybe being an AH.com active member). How would the difference in college/university acceptance factors affect the global education system and how would it affect non-academic activities?
 

HueyLong

Banned
I wouldn't get in anywhere.

But seriously, there has to be some standard once you hit the era of mass education: School qualities can fluctuate too greatly for that to be accounted for.

Besides which, most good schools require what you're talking about anyways, in addition to a good SAT/ACT score.
 
Would standardized tests eventually be demanded by those who represent disadvantaged groups? Without a nationwide, mostly unbiased method of judging academic achievement, it would be very easy to include one's own biases in judging applicants. For example, a university admissions officer could assume that "those kinds of schools" (inner-city schools) aren't worth their grades, or downplay the importance of extracurricular activities that would be popular in those schools.
 

Blackwood

Banned
Schools become a bit easier to enter, of course. Disadvantaged groups at a...well, a disadvantage.
 
The SAT is the dumbest thing in the world. It's just a money making scam kept alive by the College Board. It's probably going to ruin my sisters chances at getting into a very high caliber school when she is the perfect student.

In Tejas we have a 10% rule where Students that finish in the top 10% of their class get automatic admission to any state public school. This helps kids who come from schools that colleges like U. Texas and A&M would be more inclined to pass up in favor of kids from a proven difficult school.

It's not a flawless system however, it puts the really good schools with competitive classes at a disadvantage. My High School had around 12 or so Valedictorians (I wasn't one of them, hence my inability to spell the word:D) and intense competition for the top 10%. In addition to, it puts many of the kids from worse off inner city schools or podunk out der' in da sticks schools at a disadvantage once they are in schools like A&M and UT, their schools simply failed them at preparing them for the riggers and demands of a university of that caliber.

At the end of the day, you have to make every school equal and equal in a way that doesn't bring the good schools down. Unfortanetly, that is simply very very very close to impossible.
 

HueyLong

Banned
Most colleges accept the ACT (and some prefer it) So if you do badly on the SAT, you can still take the (better, IMO) alternative.
 
In Australia there is no nation wide standardised test although they are talking about making it one. Each state does have its own standardised test, for example Queensland has the Queensland Core Skills test (QCS), New South Wales has the High School Cirriculum Education Test (HCE) and Victoria has the Victorian Cirriculum Education Test (VCE).

All tests are different, however have equivalent scores in other state's regimes. For this reason not all that many students in Australia to travel inter-state for university or any other tertiary education.

On the plus side, Australian schools have much higher standards than American schools (before you dispute this, please remember my mother is a school administator who just got back from a tour of Pacific Coast schools in the USA) At the moment I think that America's senior year is the equivalent of Year 9 (Ninth grade) in Australia. (Australia has 12 years of formal schooling plus a prep year, similar to kindergarten in the states)

This all brings me to the point that I was trying to make. Nation wide standardised testing is overrated. If there was no SAT however I believe a similar situation would exist in America with each of its 50 states having its own standardised test.
 
All tests are different, however have equivalent scores in other state's regimes. For this reason not all that many students in Australia to travel inter-state for university or any other tertiary education.

If there was no SAT however I believe a similar situation would exist in America with each of its 50 states having its own standardised test.

This would be, IMO, much worse.
 

boredatwork

Banned
well, without being able to rely on colleges (and the testing services) performing roles as defacto filters, companies might go back to using intelligence tests on prospective employees.

Right now, they use your standardized test scores, and failing that, you colelge/university as a proxy for those score, all of which are a proxy for 'intelligence'.

Which is funny, given that the ivy leaguers I've worked with (whether as interns or new hires) have been pretty uniformly incapable of performing at de-minimis levels of professionalism and competence. Heck, I had to fire two, one from Dartmouth and the other from Brown, last week because they just couldn't meet deadlines or even manage to make into the office before 9:30 on a regular basis (at a firm where most folks are already working by 8 am).
 
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