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On 06 Mar 2022, Molly Bolt <mollythebolt666@gmail.com> posted some news:2106bdaf-b723-4ae0-9c67-5c310008843dn@googlegroups.com:

It won't help those morons. They are dumber than shit. The women are
all whores and the "men" are sucking their family dicks for
allowances.

Dartmouth College will require applicants to provide standardized test
scores for the undergraduate class of 2029, school officials announced
Monday, a return to its pre-pandemic policies.

Like many colleges, Dartmouth dropped its standardized-test requirement
for applicants when the rapid spread of the coronavirus disrupted
testing nationally. Admissions were test-optional for a few years,
meaning students could decide whether to submit scores.

But after studying the impact of testing on admissions and as a
predictor of student success, Dartmouth officials decided to reinstate
the requirement that students provide an SAT or ACT score when they
apply.

Sian Leah Beilock, Dartmouth’s president, wrote in an email to students
Monday that researchers who analyzed admissions data at the college and elsewhere found that SAT and ACT scores “can be especially helpful in identifying students from less-resourced backgrounds who would succeed
at Dartmouth but might otherwise be missed in a test-optional
environment.”

It is the first Ivy League college to announce that it will require the
tests again. The others remain test-optional — although most say the
policy is provisional and being studied.

Harvard won’t require SAT or ACT through 2026 as test-optional push
grows

Also on Monday, Cornell University announced that it would extend its
test policy for applicants next fall: Three of its undergraduate
colleges don’t use test scores at all, while the other five will
consider but don’t require them.

Last year, Columbia University took a more lasting stance, announcing
that it would continue to be test-optional for undergraduate admissions, without any timeline for lifting the policy. The school also said it continually examines data and admissions policies to align with
institutional goals.

Meanwhile, among public institutions, the University of California
system instituted a test-free policy in 2020 and has no plan to end that
policy for the foreseeable future, according to a spokesman for the
massive university system. “UC remains committed to maintaining a fair admissions process that reviews every applicant in a comprehensive
manner and endeavors to combat systemic inequities,” spokesman Ryan King
wrote in an email.

The issue of whether to require standardized tests has been closely
watched because selective college admissions are perceived by some as a
gateway to dramatically improved opportunities, the tests have been
criticized by some as unfair to disadvantaged students, and millions of students take — and retake and stress about — the SAT and the ACT.

MIT resumes mandate for SAT or ACT scores. Many other colleges have not.

Admissions offices at selective schools typically consider many factors
in assessing students, including the academic rigor and grades of an applicant’s high school classes, as well as essays, recommendations and activities the student has pursued outside of class. For many years,
test scores were part of that package, until the public health emergency scrambled admissions.

Harry Feder, executive director of FairTest, which is critical of the
SAT and the ACT, called Dartmouth’s decision to restore the requirement misguided: “I think they really don’t care. I will say this quite
bluntly: They are not there to be an institution of broad opportunity
for the American student body. They are there to pluck and craft and
create a perceived elite. And I’m sorry that they operate that way.”

However, Lee Coffin, Dartmouth’s vice president and dean of admissions
and financial aid, wrote that officials “believe a standardized testing requirement will improve — not detract from — our ability to bring the
most promising and diverse students to our campus.”


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“The finding that standardized testing can be an effective tool to
expand access and identify talent was unexpected, thought-provoking, and encouraging,” Coffin wrote. “Indeed, their study challenges the
long-standing critique that standardized testing inhibits rather than
broadens college access.”

Four Dartmouth professors studied admissions data from years when tests
were optional and how it compared with data from years when tests were required, as well as other analyses, and concluded that the scores —
when considered in the context of the norms of the applicant’s high
school — were helpful. The scores and high school grades gave the best indications of success at Dartmouth, the researchers found. And they
were especially helpful in identifying applicants who were the first in
their family to go to college, those from low- or middle-income
families, and those from rural and urban areas.

They found that the tests were very predictive of how well students do
in college, said Bruce Sacerdote, a professor of economics at Dartmouth
who was part of the group studying the issue — and that held true across demographic groups.

Another revelation was that “we were missing out on all these great,
talented kids who were withholding their scores,” not realizing that the
school considers scores in the context of the applicant’s high school or neighborhood. Given the option of not submitting scores, some students
were choosing not to send in theirs, presumably because they were below
the median of admitted students’ scores — even though the numbers would
have helped their shot at getting in.

The number of applications went up when they dropped the requirement,
but it didn’t diversify the applicant pool, Sacerdote said.

“SAT and ACT scores reflect inequality in society and in educational
systems across the nation. The research does not dispute that,” Beilock
wrote. “Crucially, though, the research shows that standardized test
scores can be an important predictor of academic success at a place like Dartmouth and beyond — more so even than just grades or recommendations,
for example — and with a test-optional policy, prompted by the pandemic,
we were unintentionally overlooking applicants from less-resourced
backgrounds who could thrive here.”

Beilock acknowledged that testing causes stress for students, but she
wrote that she hoped that clarifying Dartmouth’s policy, and explaining
the reasoning behind the decision, would ease that stress.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/02/05/dartmouth-reinstates- sat-admissions-requirement/

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