[JoeAltmaier]

Substituting one test for another? Why is that helpful to promoting diversity?

The whole point of standardized testing is to level the playing field, so folks are admitted by demonstrated ability and not what prep school they went to or what neighborhood they grew up in.

[bilbo0s]

Actually, the original point of standardized testing was not to "level the playing field", but rather to identify the academically talented. The job of Ivy Admissions Officers is to identify students that will enrich the environment of the universities by which they are employed. These are two separate problems.

Just as an illustration, consider one of the "goals" of Admissions Officers at one of the Ivies. This particular Ivy, some time ago, set itself a goal of admitting one male, and one female, from every state in the union. Simply selecting the top candidates via "demonstrated ability" will not allow them to meet this goal. It would be difficult to find elite students in Arkansas, Alabama and Montana who would compare favorably to elite students from Massachusetts, New Jersey or Minnesota. So it's plain that this goal had to be satisfied via other means. Programs like those the article talks about are a part of achieving these lesser known admissions goals.

[JoeAltmaier]

Not fair! They can simply look harder. How can it be said with a straight face that there are zero qualified candidates in those example states? Preposterous. It just takes time to find them.

[CapitalistCartr]

Wyoming has about 580 thousand total population, and no prep schools comparable to the East Coast ones. Its not simply raw intellectual ability. The most qulualified student in each year from that state will most likely find an Ivy League overwhelming. If each such school wants at least one man, one woman from there, it's not going to work.

[lighthawk]

The standards should be on the school. If the top 5% of students from any accredited school have a chance to get in, it would bring up the percentage of students from lower income brackets and better identify schools that have problems. In theory, if a school is really capable and has fairly distributed abilities within its pool of students, regardless of income, the top 5% should be capable of getting into an Ivy League school.

[JoeAltmaier]

We live in the real world, where some high schools are in rich neighborhoods with lots of resources, and some not. Relying on the local school is another way of saying 'enforce the status quo'

[lighthawk]

How and why should we not be relying on our local schools for education?

If a student can get into the top 5% of their class by GPA, and if the university believes that school is capable of providing the standards required to judge which students make up the top 5%, how does that not help choose the most elite students from each school while giving the school the flexibility to determine how and what they can teach, as long as it meets the university's standards?

If a school doesn't have the resources to teach the students effectively, why do we even send our kids to that school? Saying "because we have to" is a cop out. The school needs to be fixed or realized for what it is- a school that is ineffective at teaching at an elite level.

[verisimilidude]

You contradict yourself. If the top 5% of any school is magically qualified to attend the top universities, then what incentive would any school really have to improve? You'd literally flip the incentive structure in education, such that parents would eventually be fighting to get their kids into the worst schools, with less competition, in order to increase their chances at college admissions. It's a race to the bottom.

[lighthawk]

I didn't say they were magically qualified.

I said the school had to meet the standards of the university. If the school is extremely difficult and the top 5% of the class doesn't have the same GPA as someone from another school that is less stringent but still meets the standards of the university, then students from the top 5% GPA of both schools would be able to apply.

And what is wrong about providing incentive for the best students to get into schools that are not performing quite as well but are still certified by the university as being adequate? It is much better for top performing students to spread out and raise the bar.

It is far from a race to the bottom. It's about bringing up the bottom.

[verisimilidude]

It's not going to work with the Ivies, in the US, because the whole process will surely become scattered. Each remotely capable school will find a way to game the system and get qualified. You're really screwed if you go to a school that cannot qualify, which would likely include most of the students who need this help the most. The system is still money chasing money.

The only way this works is through public education, where the K-12 system is tightly coupled with an elite public university system, and public policy can drive both into a tight partnership. There's a system somewhat like this in California called TAG; any student who signs up and makes grades in community college can usually get guaranteed entry into a UC. It only works because the California community colleges are required to teach all "transfer courses" at the UC level in terms of content, etc. It might be possible to extend this kind of guaranteed enrollment down to K-12.