The SAT and the ASEA

The SAT test was invented when James Bryant Conant and a few others decided that smart kids from modest backgrounds should get a chance to attend university.  Lately, though, many top universities have gone to a test optional stance on admissions.  The purported reason for this is that such exams give an advantage to students with the resources to prepare for and do better on such exams.

A more honest justification would call such policies the Asian Student Exclusion Act, or ASEA for short.  Elite schools at every level have seen their test qualified classes filling up with students of Asian ancestry, while the number of whites and especially students of color has shrunk.

Similar reasoning has changed the admissions policies at our highly selective public high schools.  These schools have famously been incubators for some of our top scientists, mathematicians, and others.  A good question is whether eliminating the highly selective admissions tests will dilute student quality to a point where the atmosphere of intellectual excitement will be lost.

Top universities faced a similar question many decades ago when their test busting student classes filled up with Jewish students.  They responded with their eras version of more "holistic" admissions criteria to keep the student body safely WASPy.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anti-Libertarian: re-post

The most pointed critique of social security and liberalism in general is the libertarian critique. The problem with libertarians, for a liberal, is that we have too much in common. We both believe in individual rights, tolerance of individual differences, and dislike government prescription of religion. The basic difference, it seems to me, is the different answers we give to Cain's (with thanks to the Captain - my original version had the corpse asking the question!) famous question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" That's not really my basic bitch against the libertarians though. My real complaint is the same as my complaint against most religion - its premise is a fraud. For those who can't stand to wait for the punchline, I believe that trying to implement libertarian principles leads to tyranny or social disintegration. Demonstrating that takes some historical (and pre-historical) context. For all but the last 15,000 or so of the 100,000 years the human spec...
Read more

Uneasy Lies The Head

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown ........... Shakespeare Henry IV, Part II. So it is with us and our slightly distant primate cousins , so it seems. A 9-year study of wild baboons in Kenya by Princeton University and the Institute of Primate Research may turn conventional assumptions of alphas males upside down. The study found that alpha males have high testosterone levels, which allows them to dominate other baboons, get access to more food, and attract better mates. This is expected. Surprisingly, though, the alpha males also have high levels of stress hormone glucocorticoid, which scientists measured from their feces samples. In fact, the stress of alpha baboons was on par with low-ranking baboons. The convention wisdom is that access to food and females provides life security and thus less stress for dominant males. Conversely, weak males who are constantly threatened by starvation and physical violence from stronger males are thought to be more stressed. The st...
Read more

We Call it Soccer

The US played its best, and maybe only good game of World Cup, but lost thanks to brilliant goalkeeping by the Swedish keeper and the bizarre method soccer uses to settle ties when three US stars could not put the ball on frame from the 12 yard spot.  At the end it came down to a blocked shot that spun in by maybe a couple of centimeters. Well, that's football - too much like life.   Which brings me to a modest proposal.  Replace the thirty minute overtimes with as many 7-player 15 minute periods as needed to settle it.  Scoring should be much easier with fewer players.
Read more