College admission in the U.S.
is more competitive than ever before.
Over the past five years, all Ivy League schools
have been admitting fewer students from their
total applicant pools, despite the fact that
there are more students submitting applications.
With acceptance rates at top colleges and
universities falling to record or near record
lows, high school students and wealthy families
like in the Varsity Blues scandal.
College admissions cheating scandal.
With this new charge of conspiracy to commit
bribery, Lori Loughlin can get an additional five
years behind bars. Are feeling more pressure to
do whatever they can to get into elite schools.
That's because a college degree, especially from
an elite school, has been shown to translate to
better employment prospects and a higher income.
As the stakes are getting higher to attain a
bachelor's degree, college admission has been
under increased scrutiny.
I don't think it's an achievement test.
I think it shows an achievement gap.
Now, the University of California is facing a
lawsuit from a group of students, educators and
advocates over its use of S.A.T.
and A.C.T. in college admissions decisions.
The result of this suit could heavily influence
all college admission processes in the U.S.,
as the University of California is one of the
biggest public university systems in the country.
In a statement to CNBC, a spokesperson for the
University of California wrote,
"As part of our comprehensive review process,
evaluators look beyond test scores and grades to
evaluate applicants achievements in light of the
opportunities available to them.
The plaintiffs argue that S.A.T.
and A.C.T. exams are discriminatory against
underprivileged and underrepresented applicants
because not all students have the economic means
and resources to study for them.
The UC Regents, which say there are problems with
the S.A.T.,
this exam that at best measures how a student
will do in the first year at the UC system.
We find that unacceptable.
However, proponents of the S.A.T.
believe that standardized tests are important in
predicting applicants ability to succeed in
college and leveling the playing fields.
Because testing agencies really do a lot to try
and make sure tests are not biased and to focus
on the test as the problem is to avoid the
problem.So are the S.A.T.
and the A.C.T.
actually discriminatory?
And why did they exist in the first place?
My name is Kawika Smith, I'm 17 years old and I
attend Reverend Day High School, which is located
in South Los Angeles.
The plaintiffs argue that standardized tests put
underprivileged and minority students at a
disadvantage by creating a lucrative test prep
industry and repeatedly producing test questions
that are biased against black and Hispanic
students.The tests show that only 1% of black
students and 2% of latinx students scored in the
top bracket, compared to 12% of white students,
which is to me, a shame.
A number of the youth leaders that did everything
that they needed to do.
They did really well academically, but they
didn't have the means either at home or the
support on their campuses to prepare for the
S.A.T./A.C.T. The College Board told CNBC that
the S.A.T. is achievement based and research
based.College admissions tests like the S.A.T.,
the A.C.T.
and other tests like Advanced Placement used to
provide information to admissions officers to
learn more about the people playing to their
college.Two months after the suit was filed,
University of California released a report from
its Academic Council's Standardized Testing Task
Force recommending the UC system keep the S.A.T.
and A.C.T.
as an admission requirement.
More and more, we're seeing our students receive
rejection letters even when their GPAs and their
leadership, their extracurricular activities and
what it comes down to is that their S.A.T.
score was too low.
Many colleges require standardized exams for
admission to see whether the applicant has the
potential to succeed academically and graduate on
time. In May 2019, the College Board conducted a
series of studies to show the validity of the
S.A.T. for predicting first year grades and
second year retention.
The study says the higher your total score on the
S.A.T., the higher your first year GPA.
However, the plaintiffs in the suit argue that
these studies only take two predictors of college
success into account: S.A.T.
scores and high school GPA.
It didn't control any factors relating to
socio-economic status.
The S.A.T. was first introduced in 1926 in an
effort to standardize the college admissions
process and increase access to higher education.
The College Board, a private nonprofit
organization in the United States, owns, develops
and publishes the S.A.T.
In 2017, it had roughly $1.068
billion of revenue.
Its creator, Karl Brigham, based the test on
previous IQ tests that measured intelligence and
aptitude as suggested by its original name, the
Scholastic Aptitude Test.
As more Ivy League universities and private
institutions started using the S.A.T.,
the Educational Testing Service, E.T.S
was founded in 1947 to administer and develop the
test. Then in 1959, the A.C.T.
entered the testing market and became an
alternative exam for applicants.
So the idea here is to not advantage or
disadvantage people by having different rules to
different games, but rather provide something
uniform where people can really be evaluated with
respect to the same things.
However, the notion that the S.A.T.
was founded as a test of intelligence rather than
mastery of high school subject matter is what
ignites controversies regarding race and
socioeconomic biases.
In September 2015, Inside HigherEd reported that
in each of the three sections of the S.A.T.,
the lowest average scores were among students
from families who make less than $20,000 in
family income. Meanwhile, the highest average
scores were among those with more than $200,000
and family income.
Taking standardized tests comes with costly fees
and even higher prices to prepare for them.
The basic registration fee for the S.A.T.
is $49.50.
It's $65 if you take the test with the essay.
The basic fee waiver that the College Board and
other groups make available is a first step, but
it doesn't bite anywhere in nearly the whole
iceberg of costs associated with admissions
testing.Both College Board and A.C.T.
offer their official test prep guides on their
website.But most affluent families go beyond
these test prep books to help their children
study for these exams.
Kaplan, the Princeton Review and Ivy Bound are
just a few examples of test prep academies that
offer online classes, in-person classes and
private tutoring. According to MarketWatch.
Students who work with a private tutor generally
spend 20 to 30 hours, meaning wealthy parents are
paying upwards of $10,000.
It's a great investment by middle class and
wealthy families.
According to IBISWorld, the test preparation
franchises industry is expected to report a total
revenue of $1.1
billion for 2019.
Of that, no exam preparation services are
anticipated to account for 25% of revenue.
From 2019 to 2024, the industry revenue is
predicted to increase an annualized 1.8
% to $1.2
billion.
In addition to socioeconomic biases, the
plaintiffs in the suit further added that
standardized tests have shown discrimination
against minority students.
I think seeing what the student's involvement in a
community are, their responsibility, as well as
the rigor in the course load, will kind of give
you a more comprehensive understanding of the
student and if they're the right fit for that
school.The plaintiffs claimed that by repeatedly
producing a score distribution that compares
students with one another, the test development
process continuously discards items on which
minority students perform well and retains
questions on which they do not.
In fact, UC psychometricians found that up to 12%
of items on the S.A.T.
are biased against black students and up to 10%
of items are biased against Latinx students.
For us, this is data that the UC Regents has and
it's showing that there is both a negative bias
and a discriminatory practice.
However, the College Board denied those claims to
CNBC by saying that it has very strict measures
and specifications for every question it gives
out to test takers.
The College Board stated that if students of
various races respond differently to the same
question they discarded immediately.
The Fairness Review Panel then evaluates all the
questions again before they decide to administer
the exam.The inadequate investment in schools,
in communities like South Los Angeles, really
puts them at a disadvantage when they have to do
well on a standardized test.
Why put barriers in front of talented kids who
would otherwise gain access to a great college or
university, when we didn't need to have those
barriers.
In response to growing criticisms surrounding the
S.A.T College Board relaunched its Environmental
Context Dashboard as a new tool called Landscape.
Landscape averages six neighborhood indicators
and six high school indicators and provides a
rating for each factor on a scale from 1 to 100.
This creates comparative percentiles for colleges
to look at in their application review process.
Educational tests are limited in what they can
predict with respect to success in college.
However, standardized tests provide very useful
information in addition to grades and other
sources of information.
So I think we want to give college admissions
officers as much information as possible that
they can use to make the decisions they have to
make.College Board and the National Council on
Measurement Education recognize the issues faced
by lower income students and minority students.
However, they believe that simply getting rid of
standardized exams will not solve these problems.
We know that education is correlated with income.
So the criticism that the S.A.T.
or the A.C.T. is correlated with income really
just shows that the test is measuring education.
It's measuring what it's supposed to be
measuring.Proponents of standardized exams argue
that achievement gaps across different ethnic and
socioeconomic groups exist at a very early age.
They believe that more educators should talk
about better solutions and resources for schools
rather than getting rid of the tests.
I think if we start to level the playing field at
that level, we'll start to see improvements
throughout the education system, and of course,
for college admissions too.
In recent years, a significant number of U.S.
colleges have adopted alternative admission
policies such as test-optional.
Right now, there are 1,080 accredited bachelor
degree granting institutions that will make
admissions decisions about all our many
applicants without regard to test scores.
What we label test-optional schools.
The University of Chicago is one of the higher
educational institutions that launched a
test-optional admissions in 2018.
We do know that in some cases, especially in rural
high school or in inner city high schools or
abroad do not have access to the kind of intensive
test preparation processes that other students
have available.Rather than assessing applicants
standardized test scores, the admissions officers
focus on student's secondary school report, high
school transcript and teacher recommendations.
The university also allows all applicants to
submit a wide range of supplemental materials,
such as creative writing projects, highlights
from music, dance or theater performance and
school capstone projects.
As a result, for the class of 2023, University of
Chicago saw a 24% increase in first generation
college going students, 10% increase in
African-American students, 17% increase in
Hispanic or Latino students, and a 60% increase
in applications from rural students.
The S.A.T.scores are fine, they're useful, but
they're not the end of the world.
They're not everything and we need to be more
flexible, it seems to me, in the ways in which we
think about access to these great institutions.
While the test-optional policy has improved
diversity in student bodies, some are concerned
that it doesn't completely eradicate the
stigmatization of underrepresented students as
applicants may still choose to submit their
scores. Only 10 to 15 percent of students in the
freshman class at University of Chicago did not
submit their S.A.T. scores.
It would make no sense for us to announce we are
test-optional publicly and then privately begin
to discriminate against students who don't
submit S.A.T. scores. That would be
fundamentally irresponsibly dishonest.
I think it is a step in the right direction
overall for U.
Chicago, which is a prestigious school.
I think that goes to show if they can do it, so
can the UC's.While higher education institutions
and education experts still search for better
policies. The plaintiffs in the University of
California lawsuit believe that solely making
standardized tests optional does not suffice.
If the University of California system loses the
suit, the higher education landscape could change
forever.