[gao8a]

As a Canadian who never grew up with standardized testing, and also graduating with an IB cohort (from a public school) whom none of them actually went to the US (just took their boosted canadian grade equivalents or went somewheres in europe), I really fail to see how this could be that bad of a thing. The first year, or semester even is a great filter that cuts a significant amount of folks where school isn't for them.

I can also see this as a move like china did to kill tutorial services to give kids back their teen years. In a land where school is so expensive I think its worth it to spend summers working a job (and all the merits that come with that) to better prep for possibly the biggest financial decision ever for a still developing brain.

[Kranar]

It's one of the worst aspects of some (not all) Canadian universities that they use the first or second year as a way to filter students out and the impact it has on students is rather devastating in terms of lost opportunity.

Almost 20 years ago I went to the University of Toronto's computer science program which is notorious for this practice and can see first hand the effect that this practice has on friends of mine even decades later. It's not just a matter of filtering students out, the issue is that there is a strict cut-off point that is unknown to people in advance, so you have students investing one to two years pursuing a program and then having those years go to waste because they're below the cut-off. It's basically a system that traps students with aspirations of going into one program and then when most of them fail due to uncertain admissions guidelines, those students end up with a great deal of pressure to continue studying at the university but under a less prestigious or financially sound program.

The result of this system speaks for itself, with the building used by the computer science department being the site of 3-4 suicides per year (which I am admittedly speculating is due to people not hitting the admissions cut-off).

Whatever one's opinion of standardized testing may be, the Canadian model of accepting as many students as possible into a program and then kicking them out or shoving them into a different program on the basis of rather volatile and uncertain criteria is not the one to go by.

[pavitheran]

I believe this is a more of a UofT practice rather than a general Canadian practice? As a Waterloo grad CS grad once you were in the program, you were in. I I agree it's really cruel to students to have this kind of 1st/2nd year cut off system though.

[opportune]

In the US private universities do not use the first 1-2 years as filters deliberately. It’s common to see 4 year graduation rates above 90% especially for schools like Harvard

[annexrichmond]

I am also Canadian. Was not a fan of the lack of standardized testing because I was very aware that many schools (and not mine) was in the practice of inflating grades to help their students’ acceptance and scholarship applications.

This is one problem that standardized testing aims to solve — how does a university compare a student with 95% avg from one school and 85% from another?

[impostergc]

Your point about schools filtering students who are not able to cut it is moot. Do you think standards won't (or haven't already) change to keep as many students as possible? Universities want money, the more students the better. The idea that this change happens in isolation shows a lack of systemic thinking.

[davidgay]

My undergrad (EPFL) would like a word with you... Pass rate for the first year was 50% (as was the overall pass rate over 4 years).

Of course, it is a public university, so money is a bit different.