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University of Chicago eliminates SAT/ACT requirement
The University of Chicago will no longer require ACT or SAT scores from U.S. students, sending a jolt through elite institutions of higher education as it becomes the first top-10 research university to join the test-optional movement.
Numerous schools, including well-known liberal arts colleges, have dropped or pared back testing mandates in recent years to bolster recruiting in a crowded market. But the announcement Thursday by the university was a watershed, cracking what had been a solid and enduring wall of support for the primary admission tests among the two dozen most prestigious research universities.
[...] U-Chicago is also expanding financial aid and scrapping in-person admission interviews, which had been optional. Instead, it will allow applicants to send in two-minute video pitches, in an effort to connect with a generation skilled at communicating via cellphone clips.
Also at USA Today and Inside Higher Ed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @05:15PM (1 child)
You pay for a test. You get a test. It's not a scam.
Of course, there is a duopoly of private companies. These companies have a creepy amount of influence over who goes to college and who doesn't, and where it is that people go to college.
In the end though, it may be better than the alternatives we could have. We used to have per-college tests, to be taken on site. That has high overhead. We could have a government-provided test, but that would likely be outsourced as a sole-source contract. We have enough trouble already with politics impacting the tests; making the tests government-supplied would make them severely political. As it is, some of the answers can be determined by eliminating the choices that aren't leftist. (one choice says something non-positive about blacks, one choice is patriotic, one choice presumes everybody likes bacon... OK, it isn't any of those!) We could go based on GPA, but school districts have an incentive to please the voters with grade inflation and some school districts are just inferior.
So the test is troubling, but what realistic alternative would be better?
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Sunday June 17 2018, @01:45PM
In the USA, that would seem likely.
Maybe check how countries in the EU solve this aspect? I've heard complaints about individual tests, but nothing about the whole institution of high school exams being corrupted in any EU country.