[delichon]

Last month 2,400 University of California faculty asked for admissions to resume using the SAT "to ensure foundational fluency." Of course many employers want to ensure that too, especially when college degrees don't anymore.

  The widening abilities gap followed the 2020 elimination of the SAT/ACT, a temporary measure that has now become a permanent vulnerability. This outcome was explicitly predicted by the Academic Senate’s 2020 Standardized Testing Task Force (STTF) report, which warned that removing these tests would eliminate a vital predictor of college success and obscure the impact of severe high-school grade inflation. Unfortunately, the outcomes cautioned against in that report have now materialized in the data across our campuses. All other leading STEM institutions, including the UC’s primary peers, have resumed using SAT/ACT in their admissions to ensure foundational fluency. For the University of California to remain a global leader in STEM, it is essential to restore these objective benchmarks. -- https://ucstudentsuccess.org/

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty/learning-assessm...

[apparent]

The UC faculty opposed the SAT requirement being discarded in the first place. They were overruled by the UC Regents, and that may happen again. And even if the SAT is brought back, I'm sure it will be given much less weight and subjected to the "in a local context" process in the name of equity.

[WalterBright]

I took the SAT 50 some years ago. I kinda doubt I would do so well on it today without doing remedial prep work on the math.

[eikenberry]

Why is a lossy testing filter better than just failing out those who can't make it? Maybe allow for larger freshmen classes and smaller latter classes or adopt community colleges and have all students start there and advance into the UC system sophomore year on. Instead they bring back what is basically an IQ test for admission.

[stephenbez]

High graduation rates are an important metric to administrators. If a professor gave a failing grade to 1/3 of the class they would be in hot water.

[bigthymer]

From the students' perspective, it is better to not be allowed in than fail out midway through. One test is cheaper than years in college.

[WalterBright]

I always enjoy the advocates who claim that students have mastered their subjects, but "don't test well".

Would you want a pilot on your flight who flunked flying school exams, but somehow "really knew how to fly!"?

[lern_too_spel]

SAT score is known to be predictive of college grades. Is it also predictive for whether a mid-to-late career candidate will pass a phone screen? It is used for early career candidate filtering in finance, but I have not heard of anybody caring beyond that because of the availability of signal on the actual tasks they will be performing.

[consensus1]

It is correlated tightly with IQ, so yes it will likely be a strong predictive signal for passing a phone screen.

[cute_boi]

Maybe Maths, but english is probably not correlated tightly with IQ as it is more affected by language background and education.

[gruez]

>english is probably not correlated tightly with IQ as it is more affected by language background and education.

No, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) English and math has a 0.64 correlation.

[cute_boi]

> Is it also predictive for whether a mid-to-late career candidate will pass a phone screen?

The answer is probably no. I got many friend they got good marks in SAT, but they were average.

[doctorpangloss]

how many elected leaders are in STEM? would high SAT scores and grades exclude many US presidents and congressmen? (yes) winning elections seems kind of important to me. so if you were just like, selecting for leadership - and many of our leaders are brilliant people, just not in the sense of being good at taking tests - would that be good or bad? or... what is your real opinion? what are you actually mad about?

obviously the UC system should give spots to the kids who will use those spots the best. but it is very hard to define what "using spots the best" means.

[WalterBright]

> not in the sense of being good at taking tests

The trick to doing well on the SATs is to pay attention in class.

[lern_too_spel]

We certainly don't want them to fail out, which is what is happening. Berkeley reported 10% failure rate in the intro CS course and 35% in the pre-intro course. https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/academics/failing-grade...