A Candid Admission – There May Be Some Value in Standardized College Application Testing

A Candid Admission – There May Be Some Value in Standardized College Application Testing

Getting In…. and Why Bother?

I guess you cannot be a top-rated, even “elite,” college or university without the most qualified students. But who are they, how do you determine their qualifications, and why are so many universities disposing of standardized test scores? The Supreme Court has dispensed with most DEI criteria – mostly race and ethnic heritage – and the demand for the top schools remains very high, but how do admissions officers choose? Because you play a tuba, and the university orchestra needs a tuba player? You are an amazing running back? Because you have straight A’s, but 85% of your high school also has straight A’s? It ‘s a big question for college admissions officers, and many of the reasons why some colleges have dispensed with those tests may be based on flawed assumptions and biases.

David Leonhardt, writing for the January 7th/8th NY Times The Morning news feed has some relevant observations on point: “Without test scores, admissions officers sometimes struggle to distinguish between applicants who are likely to thrive at selective colleges and those likely to struggle. Why? Because high school grades do not always provide enough information, especially because of grade inflation in recent years…

“I understand why many people dislike standardized tests. They’re unpleasant to take, and they have their flaws. The most significant concern is that they may be racially and economically biased… But the emerging data from academic research tells a different story: Standardized tests are less biased than many other parts of the college application process, like extracurricular activities, college essays and teacher recommendations. An admissions system that drops mandatory tests in favor of these other factors gives big advantages to affluent students.

“Test scores, by contrast, seem to be useful at identifying students from disadvantaged backgrounds who have enormous potential, even if their scores aren’t quite as high on average as the those of well-off applicants. ‘When you don’t have test scores, the students who suffer most are those with high grades at relatively unknown high schools, the kind that rarely send kids to the Ivy League,’ David Deming, a Harvard economist who has studied the issue, told me. ‘The SAT is their lifeline.’… Advantaged students who do better on the SAT or ACT do better in college, and the same is true of disadvantaged students…

“M.I.T. became one of the few colleges to reinstate their test requirement… Tests scores are not the main factor that M.I.T. uses, but they are part of the process. ‘Once we brought the test requirement back, we admitted the most diverse class that we ever had in our history,’ Stuart Schmill, the admissions dean, said. In M.I.T.’s current first-year class, 15 percent of students are Black, 16 percent are Hispanic, 38 percent are white, and 40 percent are Asian American. And M.I.T. is more economically diverse than many other elite schools… [Is abandoning standardized tests a mistake?] Melissa Kearney, a University of Maryland professor, wrote that standardized tests had become ‘another policy instance where doing what ‘feels good’ turns out to be counterproductive…

“Without test scores, admissions officers sometimes have a hard time distinguishing between applicants who are likely to do well at elite colleges and those who are likely to struggle. Researchers who have studied the issue say that test scores can be particularly helpful in identifying lower-income students and underrepresented minorities who will thrive. These students do not score as high on average as students from affluent communities or white and Asian students. But a solid score for a student from a less privileged background is often a sign of enormous potential…

“An academic study released last summer by the group Opportunity Insights, covering the so-called Ivy Plus colleges (the eight in the Ivy League, along with Duke, M.I.T., Stanford and the University of Chicago), showed little relationship between high school grade point average and success in college. The researchers found a strong relationship between test scores and later success.” But there’s a bigger question, when the cost of a college education has increased at a multiple of the cost of living over the past few decades… and student loans now aggregate far more than all the US credit card debt. With more than a few billionaires having been college dropouts, is a college education worth the cost?

Writing for the January 9th, FastCompany.com, Stephen Moret and Jeffrey Selingo examine this most interesting issue and an often overlooked alternative “education”: “The U.S. labor market has not been particularly kind to America’s latest crop of college graduates. Estimates from the New York Federal Reserve indicate that recent college grads have faced higher unemployment rates than other workers, a shift from typical historical patterns. What’s more, roughly 40% of recent college grads are considered ‘underemployed,’ meaning they are not working in a college-level job. With those sobering statistics in mind, it’s not surprising that more than half of Americans no longer believe college is worth the cost.

“Of course, cost is just one part of the higher education equation. Whether an education investment is worth it depends not just on what we pay, but on what we get in return. While most grads do reap economic benefits from their college experience, the lack of confidence among the general public should be taken seriously.

“Research shows that students go to college for many purposes, but getting a good job consistently ranks among their chief reasons for pursuing a degree. Without the opportunity for meaningful work and economic security, the many other benefits of higher education are unlikely to be fully realized.

“Unfortunately, one of the most promising ways to improve that return on investment remains out of reach for most students: internships.. We believe internships are a crucial component of translating the college experience into a career. One year after graduation, students who completed a paid internship, for instance, earn $3,000 more than those who didn’t have one. Grads who participated in paid internships during college are far more likely to be satisfied with their careers and report higher annual income… If students and employers agree internships are valuable, why don’t more students complete them?

“As with so many challenges in education and the workforce, there’s no one answer. But the problem stems, in part, from the fact that many internships are unpaid. Even when students can cover tuition, room, and board—which they must often cobble together different funding sources to do—they often don’t have the resources to take an unpaid job, particularly if it involves forgoing other work they’re doing to support themselves or their families. That’s particularly true for students from low-income backgrounds, including many of those who are the first in their families to attend college. Research from Strada shows that while first-generation students are less likely to participate in internships, they are much more likely to work 20 hours per week. For continuing-generation learners, the opposite is true.” In a world of rising polarization and escalating income/wealth inequality, is higher education still the path to upward mobility… or is upward mobility now relegated to the scrapheap of American history?

I’m Peter Dekom, and perhaps our focus should be more on creating “equal opportunity” and upgrading our primary and secondary public schools to meet that challenge.