Wesleyan and Bryn Mawr Scrap Standards for Blacks and Hispanics, Lie About It, and Completely Politicize Admissions (and Grading!)

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix

A tip ‘o the hate to Ann Coulter.

The only way these colored dunces will be able to graduate is via massive grade inflation and “gut” courses (e.g., black studies). Meanwhile, normal white men will endure ever worse grade discrimination. Note too that white students’ parents will be paying double—for their own children, and for the incompetent affirmative action admits, who will get a free ride.
 

Wesleyan, Bryn Mawr Scrap SAT, ACT Tests
By Janet Lorin
October 4, 2014
(Published in print: Saturday, October 4, 2014)
Bloomberg News/Valley News

A new wave of colleges including Wesleyan University, Bryn Mawr College and Temple University are scrapping standardized tests as an admissions requirement, saying there are better ways to evaluate applicants and expand diversity.

[“Expand diversity” = eliminated standards, where blacks, Hispanics, and other affirmative action groups are concerned.]

In the past two years, at least 20 U.S. schools including Brandeis University have signed on, telling applicants they no longer need to submit SAT or ACT scores. Students applying to college will find about one in five nonprofit schools that have dropped the proviso since Bowdoin College did so in 1969.

College admissions and testing are in flux. With changing demographics, schools will be competing for fewer [white] high school graduates and want to stand out to [inferior] prospective [black and Hispanic] students. The SAT, which has lost market share to ACT, is being redesigned for 2016, making a now-mandatory essay optional. Schools say going “test optional” will also benefit low-income and minority students who can’t afford test prep courses or to retake exams.

[First of all, “low-income and minority” is redundant. What it means is “minority and minority.” The black and Hispanic applicants these schools admit are middle and upper-middle-class. They do not admit poor whites, no matter how brilliant they are. They hate poor, working, and lower-middle class whites and have despicably discriminated against them for about as long as they have racially discriminated on behalf of mediocre and utterly incompetent black students. If you’re bright, there’s no need for test prep courses. You used to be able to get a sample old SAT for free from ETS, and I aced the GRE in 1983 at a prep cost of $10 for a huge, Barron’s GRE prep book, which now costs all of $10.71 at Amazon. ]

“This is a moment in time where we felt there’s growing questions in K-12 and beyond about the value of standardized testing,” said Nancy Hargrave Meislahn, dean of admission and financial aid at Wesleyan in Middletown, Connecticut, which cut the requirement in May.

[There are no such questions. Rather, there are test-bashers who hate the results that objective tests provide. See my book review, the General Patton of the Testing Wars.]

“We also see this as an access initiative. We’ve known for a long time the correlation between test scores and income.”

[What was that supposed to mean? Can someone help me here?]

A study released in February that found no significant difference in the grade-point average or graduation rates between applicants who did and didn’t submit test scores was another reason behind the school’s decision, Meislahn said. The study found non-submitters were more likely to be first-generation college enrollees. all [sic] categories of minority students, women, students with learning disabilities and recipients of Pell Grants, which are reserved for low-income students. [All but one (“first-generation college enrollees”) of the categories in question just happened to be members of the multicultural alliance. What a coincidence! And members of the alliance tended to do just as well as those who were not members of the alliance? Not bloody likely. The “study” sounds fraudulent.]

More schools are comfortable with dropping the requirement after hearing from fellow admissions officials that it improves diversity without undermining academic quality [Impossible! That’s like saying that 85=100.], said Bob Schaeffer, a spokesman for FairTest, a Boston-based nonprofit group critical of standardized testing. [I.e., leading test-bashers—Marxists who lie like Persian rugs about standardized testing.]

“It’s the most rapid growth of the test-optional movement that we can recall,” Schaeffer said.

High school transcripts are better at evaluating applicants than standardized test scores, because they give a four-year overview of a student’s ability to manage a rigorous curriculum, said Peaches Valdes, director of admissions at Bryn Mawr, near Philadelphia. [Nonsense. Standardized test scores are the most objective evaluation instrument, because everyone gets graded the same. A kid attending a third-rate black and/or Hispanic-dominated school could be a mediocrity, but get straight As, because of the school-wide lack of rigor. A straight-A average tells you that an applicant’s teachers thought she was one of the best of the bunch, but tells you nothing about the bunch. Standardized tests also prevent the sex-based grade discrimination that is also prevalent in white-dominated schools.]

The school said in July it was switching to a test-optional policy from “test flexible” — where students could submit a combination of scores, such as SAT subject tests.

Of about 1,800 four-year nonprofit colleges in the U.S., 22 percent, or about 400, didn’t require an entrance exam in 2013, compared with 18 percent a decade earlier, according to the College Board, the New York-based group that administers the SAT. Among that rank are Wake Forest University in Winston- Salem, North Carolina; Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts; and Pitzer College in Claremont, California.

ACT Inc., based in Iowa City, Iowa, had 1.85 million members of the high school class of 2014 take its entrance exam, up 2.6 percent from a year earlier. Wayne Camara, ACT’s senior vice president of research, questioned the motive of schools that drop the exam requirement.

“Research suggests that test-optional policies are not increasing diversity in schools beyond other institutions,” Camara said by telephone. Colleges that require the test “admit students with low test scores if they excel in other ways,” he said.

[“Other ways” is a con. It means they can’t cut it academically.]

Camara cited a study released in June of 180 liberal arts colleges by researchers at the University of Georgia, who found that test-optional policies as a whole “have done little to meet their manifest goals of expanding educational opportunity for low-income and minority students.”

[Translation: Their manifest goals of eliminating academic standards, where affirmative action groups are concerned.]

Some test-optional schools recommend submitting test scores for other uses such as consideration for merit scholarships and course placement, according to the nonprofit College Board, which hasn’t released its class of 2014 statistics yet. The previous year, 1.66 million students took the SAT.

“The predictive validity of college entrance exams like the SAT is an essential part of the admissions process for the vast majority of colleges and universities in this country,” Carly Lindauer, a College Board spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. “We will continue to listen to our members, evolve our programs and work to expand access to opportunity for all students.”

Last month, Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pennsylvania, made the switch, while Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, recommended it in a strategic plan. A final decision is expected in January, said Macalester President Brian Rosenberg.
Philadelphia-based Temple and Beloit College in Wisconsin both will become test optional with the class entering in fall 2015.

For applicants who don’t submit scores, Temple requires they provide short answers to four online questions to show qualities of “grit” such as self-awareness and coping mechanisms, said William Black, senior vice provost of enrollment management. The school announced its decision in July.

[“Grit” is the edschool fad du jour. It is supposed to substitute for intelligence, but a hard-working dunce is still a dunce.]

Beloit wants to see examples of students responding to life circumstances, including their ability to adapt and reach goals, said Robert Mirabile, vice president for enrollment at the college, which disclosed its decision in August.

“You might see it in an essay, you might see it in a recommendation, a pattern of grades in a transcript or through other means,” Mirabile said. “Many times, it’s the students who encounter a challenge of failure early on who wind up the most motivated or successful.”

Ohio Wesleyan in Delaware, Ohio, said its move away from entrance exams will help it appeal to more students, said Alisha Couch, director of admission. [An institution of higher learning isn’t supposed to “appeal to more students.” It’s not selling hamburgers. Or is it?] The school tried out a new policy last year, letting high school juniors with a 3.5 cumulative grade-point-average skip the test requirement. It lowered the minimum GPA this year to 3.0 to be more in-line with competitors, she said.

“I don’t want to say it’s market driven, but it kind of is,” Couch said. “Anything you can do to be more attractive to high-achieving students is a good thing.” [This is Orwellian. How would destroying standards maker a school “more attractive to high-achieving students”?]

Most U.S. colleges -- including the eight members of the Ivy League -- require SAT or ACT test scores. In May, Harvard University’s undergraduate college dropped a requirement that applicants additionally submit two SAT subject tests.

Brandeis in Waltham, Massachusetts, is in the second year of a two-year pilot program, said Andrew Flagel, senior vice president for students and enrollment.

U.S. applicants can submit results of three exams that assess subjects including English or math, such as an AP test, or a graded analytical paper along with a teacher evaluation.

While applications to Brandeis increased by almost 6 percent last year, the policy wasn’t widely marketed, Flagel said. In the current freshman class, about 10 percent of the 860 enrollees didn’t submit an SAT or ACT score, he said.

He said a common misperception about test-optional policies is that schools become easier to get into. [That’s not a “misperception” at all!]

“The reality is that they’re often even more competitive” because admissions offices are looking more deeply at other criteria, such as academic record, Flagel said.

[Less competitive = “more competitive.”]