Why is the university of California dropping the SAT?
Higher Ed Number cruncher here (who also read the report, which apparently was a big deal to the author since they cited the page count - and many of their arguments hinge on you taking their word for it and not reading at least the exec summary yourself - which is only 8 pages):<p>So, fun thing about the actual study that the author references... the committee actually __DIDN&#x27;T__ tell UC regents to not get rid of the test; they recommended against making it test optional due to variability in assessment requirements between institutions - and the exec summary doesn&#x27;t include any recommendation for or against fully excising standardized testing from their eval process.<p>Further, the committee found that while the tests over HSGPA (high test score, low GPA) weighting was used in a subset of cases it was more likely that a student was admitted with just the opposite (low test score, high GPA); and overall it looks like the strongest recommendation was to disincentivize the HSGPA due to it losing almost 25% predictive effectiveness over the tested time period.<p>This article reads fine until it gets to the last couple of paragraphs, covering &quot;affirmative action&quot; and over-representation of AAPI students; and this is where a glaring issue comes through with their analysis.  Like any higher ed institution there is a monetary incentive to get international students; as there isn&#x27;t usually an out for lower tuition like WUE&#x2F;WGE (which coincidentally the UC system no longer participates in), interstate compact agreements, and the like for tuition reduction; and the home country in many cases subsidizes the student so the higher ed institution gets full out-of-state tuition rates on a nearly guaranteed basis.  So, by using AAPI students as a proxy argument for their weird screed at the end while leaving off factors like what percentage of that UG population is in-state v. out-of-state v. international does a disservice to that over&#x2F;under-represented claim; while also leaving them off of the earlier analysis pieces moves the slant of the article in a weird way.<p>For further reference; AAPI students are __NOT__ included in Underrepresented Minority (URM) calculations - even though in many cases a layperson __WOULD__ include them; so by not mentioning them until you reach the point you&#x27;re calling out the discrepancy they end up begging the question around the &quot;model minority&quot; bs; when it really may be explained more concretely through international and out of state student draw.