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NABC wants SAT and ACT eliminated as an eligibility requirement

An interesting evolution. Initially, colleges designed the holistic admissions process was designed as a way to keep out "undesirable" populations. When that was discovered/deconstructed, people pushed for numbers based metrics like GPA and standardized test scores. Now, it seems to be shifting back as people have realized that placing too much emphasis on test scores means that students who are better off can spend more time preparing and studying these tests and achieve inflated scores. Round and round it goes.
 
My wife still points out and rejoices whenever she sees a majority of African American players in purple on the court.
 
Is this thread too uncomfortable for the board? Surely seems like it.

Hey, John Lewis died everyone. One more reason to keep the conversation going.
 
Is this thread too uncomfortable for the board? Surely seems like it.

How do you suggest that this conversation continue and evolve? Note: I'm aiming for a genuine and not a snarky tone here.

It could be an uncomfortable conversation for the board. Maybe that's why folks aren't engaging with it. Personally, I just don't have much to say.

Drop the ACT. Drop the SAT. It'll make Northwestern more competitive in recruiting, as admissions standards have always weighed us down, and we'll ditch a test that does little more than favor families with resources.
 
How do you suggest that this conversation continue and evolve? Note: I'm aiming for a genuine and not a snarky tone here.

It could be an uncomfortable conversation for the board. Maybe that's why folks aren't engaging with it. Personally, I just don't have much to say.

Drop the ACT. Drop the SAT. It'll make Northwestern more competitive in recruiting, as admissions standards have always weighed us down, and we'll ditch a test that does little more than favor families with resources.
I’m not engaging because I really don’t care. Admissions should get qualified people in regardless of test scores. If someone can succeed here and we have an understanding of what will allow for success then get them in.
 
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I’m not engaging because I really don’t care. Admissions should get qualified people in regardless of test scores. If someone can succeed here and we have an understanding of what will allow for success then get them in.
Excellent post in my humble opinion. I would also add that admission should not in any way be based upon a family's ability to pay the full freight.
 
How do you suggest that this conversation continue and evolve? Note: I'm aiming for a genuine and not a snarky tone here.

It could be an uncomfortable conversation for the board. Maybe that's why folks aren't engaging with it. Personally, I just don't have much to say.

Drop the ACT. Drop the SAT. It'll make Northwestern more competitive in recruiting, as admissions standards have always weighed us down, and we'll ditch a test that does little more than favor families with resources.

I also hope for a genuine conversation on this.

Like you said, this is a very uncomfortable conversation, but surely one that should be had. It's an incredibly touchy subject.

To answer the questions, my hope is to hear more opinions. There is no lack of opinionated people on this board. And no lack of smart people either.

I've said before on this board that the admission standards, beyond the fact that hurt us on being competitive, are, in my opinion, a form of elitism that, as a NU alumni, bother me. Elitism can easily be a nice way for me to avoid saying racist. Cowardly, maybe, I used elitist, instead of the R word, as a way to qualify it. And I now realize that. Implicit bias is a bitch.

Ultimately I do not advocate admitting anyone that can't finish a degree. But, without having any great insight into it, my sense is that, though not a walk in the park, it is not that hard to finish a degree at NU. It might require help for some, but the difficulty lies in getting admitted. And not so much in going through it.
 
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I think the cultural bias factor is real....to some extent both tests are reading comprehension tests.I do not believe intentionally but most of the tests over the years are written by white people with white people backgrounds and experiences. This means that most of the reading is from that perspective. This is where pre-knowledge comes in to play. Basically the more you already know or are familiar with a topic the better you will comprehend it.Just yesterday I was reading a book on American History and was cruising through until I came upon a section on the fight for womens equality and suffrage with which I came to a grinding halt...who knew we had a female running for president in the 1860s..not me,,,,all new , unfamiliar material , and the reading now took more concentration and time to process.....and this correlates with the language used as well. You combine this with the inequity in school systems (read Johnathon Kozols Savage Inequalities) and it is probably not a fair measure for many minority students. Also remember that these tests measure if your skills are at the point to be successful in college not how intelligent you are or if you have the ability to have those skills but if you presently have them, but I would say they do not even measure that equally for all groups....So first the school has to decide what type of student do they want. ..just students who presently have the skills? and even that is problematic...cuz what if you are a great reader.....but are not creative,,,,what if you are extremely bright but tend to be an audio learner.... and even what is the purpose of our institution....? are we just preparing kids for jobs or are we creating great citizens....(I would argue that our recent crisis show we have failed in the citizen department) etc. I would agree that GPA is an indicator of good habits and maybe or maybe not of intelligence as curriculum is not standardized.
This is a tough question...here is an opinion piece on bias in testing https://www.nextgenlearning.org/articles/racial-bias-standardized-testing
 
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... are the NU admission standards for athletes a form of institutional racism?

I appreciate that you want to fight the good fight, Gato. But I'm sorry to say I'm not stunned by institutional racism at most major American universities.

I could applaud the NABC purpose with some enthusiasm if they expanded "combating educational inequality" to all students from "low-income areas" as well as better preparing them to graduate.

Instead, they're highlighting a symptom of a wider problem for their own selfish purposes.

It's obvious this goes FAR beyond sports or NU. And I'm not sure playing with admission standards is the real answer. It give some more opportunities, but in the end, you still have the same low income areas getting the same crappy education. I'd buy much more into an idea that NU and the top 25-50 ... 100 American universities took a major financial and vocal leadership position to combat this in school districts nationwide that need the help ... before the kids reach admissions.

It's such a complex problem that needs to be attacked on so many levels.
 
I’ll probably have more to say on this later, but a long time ago (1980 or so) when I was preparing to take the SAT, the College Board was still vociferously claiming that it purely measured aptitude, and that no amount of preparation for it could help one improve one’s score. That argument eventually crumbled under the crushing weight of scorn and laughter. Similar claims against the notion of cultural bias have long been made, and I treat those claims with a similar degree of suspicion.
 
I think the cultural bias factor is real....to some extent both tests are reading comprehension tests.I do not believe intentionally but most of the tests over the years are written by white people with white people backgrounds and experiences.
Math is the universal language. I don't see what's so white about solving math problems. We could argue about the verbal sections, but I don't know how we can argue about the math sections.
 
Math is the universal language. I don't see what's so white about solving math problems. We could argue about the verbal sections, but I don't know how we can argue about the math sections.

I'm sure loyolacat did not mean to imply that pure math is plagued with cultural bias. From Guatemala to China, 2+2 is indeed 4 . Whenever I've heard cultural bias come up in math in the past few years, it's been due to word problems. In word problems, the subject matter and vocabulary used can obfuscate the pure math behind it to demographics that historically are not well-acquainted with that subject matter or vocabulary.

Quite frankly, though, I don't even think we need to make it to the more ambiguous cultural bias discussion, because I think class-based disparities are reason enough to break up with the ACT/SAT (probably the LSAT/GRE too).

I think Gato is correct in that getting admitted to NU is likely the hardest part in most instances (excluding ISP folks and some other select groups that have particularly rigorous paths to graduation). With that in mind, I think the general question that needs to be asked of our applicants is "will this student be an exceptional alumni with the resources and connections of Northwestern?" For athletes, I think it's okay if the answer is perhaps "no" for certain traditional academic aspects of their application. I certainly had no likelihood of becoming an excellent musician or botanist by the time I applied to college. The right athletes, however, are likely to register as a "yes" to the aforementioned question if viewed in the eyes of future coaching or a professional career. Of course, some would still be exceptional if they never even touched the sport again (in any capacity). You hear stories all the time about some player from some school being a 4.0 engineer. This is all to say that I think we just need to be more open with how we evaluate who would be a great fit for Northwestern and to the idea that athletes might be a great fit in a less traditional academic sense.
 
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This is a good post and I appreciate your thoughtfulness.

For me the standardized testing issue is not so much about race as it is about money. As long as kids at New Trier can afford SAT prep classes and kids at CPS can't then the standardized testing scores will reflect the wealth gap in the country. Unfortunately, the wealth gap (largely) follows racial boundaries.

To the posters who say that math is the universal language, I agree to an extent. But when one kid has the opportunity to spend Saturday mornings at Kaplan and Princeton Review classes that teach towards the test, then the results are going to reflect certain disparities.

One option: have a mandatory disclosure on applications of whether you took private test prep classes. It's still laudable that a kid had the drive and work ethic to voluntarily spend Saturday mornings at test prep and it should never be a negative. But having access to test prep is an important data point when trying to compare students with similar scores who come from different backgrounds.
 
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This is a good post and I appreciate your thoughtfulness.

For me the standardized testing issues is not so much about race as it is about money. As long as kids at New Trier can afford SAT prep classes and kids at CPS can't then the standardized testing scores will reflect the wealth gap in the country. Unfortunately, the wealth gap (largely) follows racial boundaries.

To the posters who say that math is the universal language, I agree to an extant. But one when one kid has the opportunity to spend Saturday mornings at Kaplan and Princeton Review classes that teach towards the test, then the results are going to reflect certain disparities.

One option: have a mandatory disclosure on applications of whether you took private test prep classes. It's still laudable that a kid had the drive and work ethic to voluntarily spend Saturday mornings at test prep and it should never be a negative. But it's an important data point when trying to compare students with similar scores who come from different backgrounds.
A mandatory disclosure on whether you took a prep course? Ridiculous.

If prep courses are all the difference, then a better solution is to offer optional prep courses in the less-privileged schools.
 
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I also hope for a genuine conversation on this.

Like you said, this is a very uncomfortable conversation, but surely one that should be had. It's an incredibly touchy subject.

To answer the questions, my hope is to hear more opinions. There is no lack of opinionated people on this board. And no lack of smart people either.

I've said before on this board that the admission standards, beyond the fact that hurt us on being competitive, are, in my opinion, a form of elitism that, as a NU alumni, bother me. Elitism can easily be a nice way for me to avoid saying racist. Cowardly, maybe, I used elitist, instead of the R word, as a way to qualify it. And I now realize that. Implicit bias is a bitch.

Ultimately I do not advocate admitting anyone that can't finish a degree. But, without having any great insight into it, my sense is that, though not a walk in the park, it is not that hard to finish a degree at NU. It might require help for some, but the difficulty lies in getting admitted. And not so much in going through it.

NU already makes significant admissions concessions for scholarship student athletes, especially in the revenue sports of football and basketball. What NU has not done (and, at least in my opinion, will never do) is simply drop all the way down to NCAA-mandated minimums for eligibility. Those levels are set almost comically low such that there are plenty of guys on college campuses without a real chance at a legitimate education because they're just simply not equipped to be there.
 
A mandatory disclosure on whether you took a prep course? Ridiculous.

If prep courses are all the difference, then a better solution is to offer optional prep courses in the less-privileged schools.

Why is that ridiculous? It provides context for an applicant's score. And your solution ignores an important reality which is that CPS is already strapped for cash and is under resourced. Where does the funding come from to offer the 350,000 CPS students (yes you read that number correctly) a Kaplan or Princeton Review course?
 
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Why is that ridiculous? It provides context for an applicant's score. And your solution ignores an important reality which is that CPS is already strapped for cash and is under resourced. Where does the funding come from to offer the 350,000 CPS students (yes you read that number correctly) a Kaplan or Princeton Review course?
I don't think you'd give the entire CPS student body a prep course, just the Juniors or Seniors. There were 106,000 kids in 9-12 so at most you'd be talking about ~25,000 students, of which perhaps half intend to go to college. Seems like there should be a way to find funding for 13,000 students......
 
I don't think you'd give the entire CPS student body a prep course, just the Juniors or Seniors. There were 106,000 kids in 9-12 so at most you'd be talking about ~25,000 students, of which perhaps half intend to go to college. Seems like there should be a way to find funding for 13,000 students......

That's a good clarification re: the numbers. I would quibble with the 50% but let's call it less than 20K students. But I still think that finding the funding (on an ongoing annual basis) would be extremely difficult.
 
Why is that ridiculous? It provides context for an applicant's score. And your solution ignores an important reality which is that CPS is already strapped for cash and is under resourced. Where does the funding come from to offer the 350,000 CPS students (yes you read that number correctly) a Kaplan or Princeton Review course?
Your score doesn't need context. You sit for a test and your score is the result.

If you have paid money out of your own pocket to take a review course, and spend your own free time to take said course and study, why should you have to disclose that? Why should you be penalized for that? And how would you enforce it? If I'm a student sitting for the SAT, why can't I just answer NO? Are they going to hire a PI to follow me around and see if I'm seeing a test prep tutor?

If an SAT review course is now deemed to be essential, then find a way for those communities. Hold a bake sale. Hold a raffle.
 
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NU already makes significant admissions concessions for scholarship student athletes, especially in the revenue sports of football and basketball. What NU has not done (and, at least in my opinion, will never do) is simply drop all the way down to NCAA-mandated minimums for eligibility. Those levels are set almost comically low such that there are plenty of guys on college campuses without a real chance at a legitimate education because they're just simply not equipped to be there.

Not that any of us know very well the admission standards. But most of us believe one of the standards is the belief that any admitted athlete stands a more than reasonable chance of graduating.

My perception though is that the "more than reasonable chance of graduating" is, and I am pulling numbers out of my arse, something like 99%. And that is BS for students from non privileged background. I'd argue something like 75% would make a lot more sense. They deserve the risk.

I do realize the hypocrisy of an untouchable standard of "more than reasonable chance to graduate" in the recruit of a guy like PBJ. If the standard was not bendable we could not go after him. Not likely to graduate :eek:
 
Not that any of us know very well the admission standards. But most of us believe one of the standards is the belief that any admitted athlete stands a more than reasonable chance of graduating.

My perception though is that the "more than reasonable chance of graduating" is, and I am pulling numbers out of my arse, something like 99%. And that is BS for students from non privileged background. I'd argue something like 75% would make a lot more sense. They deserve the risk.

I do realize the hypocrisy of an untouchable standard of "more than reasonable chance to graduate" in the recruit of a guy like PBJ. If the standard was not bendable we could not go after him. Not likely to graduate :eek:

I do know the admissions standards, at least from my time spent in the football recruiting office a decade ago. The standards are much lower than for "normal" applicants, but not quite as low as NCAA minimum standards.

Used to often talk about identifying kids who "can do the work" rather than "more than reasonable chance to graduate." It's not fair to bring in a kid who would just be overwhelmed by the work at NU.
 
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Your score doesn't need context. You sit for a test and your score is the result.

If you have paid money out of your own pocket to take a review course, and spend your own free time to take said course and study, why should you have to disclose that? Why should you be penalized for that? And how would you enforce it? If I'm a student sitting for the SAT, why can't I just answer NO? Are they going to hire a PI to follow me around and see if I'm seeing a test prep tutor?

If an SAT review course is now deemed to be essential, then find a way for those communities. Hold a bake sale. Hold a raffle.

Did you really ask why you just can't lie on your college application? You can already lie about any number of things like extra curricular activities but people (at least I'm assuming most people) believe in honesty and were raised to be ethical. I'm going to go ahead and pull the plug on responding to you.
 
Did you really ask why you just can't lie on your college application? You can already lie about any number of things like extra curricular activities but people (at least I'm assuming most people) believe in honesty and were raised to be ethical. I'm going to go ahead and pull the plug on responding to you.
Yes, there is a certain segment of the population who will lie if it gets them ahead in life. And people should all be honest and ethical, but not all people are. There are people who cheat on tests, too. I remember people storing cheat sheets as "programs" in their TI-85s.

So, is it fair for the people who would answer the question honestly, when there would be people who would not answer the question honestly? The people who did not answer the question honestly would not be penalized for the crime of using a test prep tutor, whereas the people who answered honestly would be penalized for using a test prep tutor. Is a system that rewards people who lie and punishes people who tell the truth going to invite abuse?

If you want me to take your suggestion seriously, then tell me a feasible way to enforce this. You're entitled to your safe space where you pretend you're offended by difficult questions, but everybody else can see you wimping out.

And in wimping out on the "offensive" question, you're also wimping out on the other basic question I asked:

"If you have paid money out of your own pocket to take a review course, and spend your own free time to take said course and study, why should you have to disclose that? Why should you be penalized for that?"
 
Yes, there is a certain segment of the population who will lie if it gets them ahead in life. And people should all be honest and ethical, but not all people are. There are people who cheat on tests, too. I remember people storing cheat sheets as "programs" in their TI-85s.

So, is it fair for the people who would answer the question honestly, when there would be people who would not answer the question honestly? The people who did not answer the question honestly would not be penalized for the crime of using a test prep tutor, whereas the people who answered honestly would be penalized for using a test prep tutor. Is a system that rewards people who lie and punishes people who tell the truth going to invite abuse?

If you want me to take your suggestion seriously, then tell me a feasible way to enforce this. You're entitled to your safe space where you pretend you're offended by difficult questions, but everybody else can see you wimping out.

And in wimping out on the "offensive" question, you're also wimping out on the other basic question I asked:

"If you have paid money out of your own pocket to take a review course, and spend your own free time to take said course and study, why should you have to disclose that? Why should you be penalized for that?"

Why is the word "offensive"in quotes when that term is never used in my response? I don't think your question is offensive, just misinformed. The fact that you choose to fabricate the words used in my post suggest that you are not interested in having a meaningful discussion.

You act as if it will be a massive paradigm shift for people answer questions honestly on a college application. It is not. First, if you are applying for any type of merit based or financial aid you already have to submit your application under legal affirmation that the information (to the best of your knowledge) is true and correct. The concept of people trying to get a leg up is not new. Why would there be a need to employ Private Investigators? Simply asking people to answer honestly (under legal affirmation) should be enough. I believe the overwhelming majority of people are decent.
 
I don't think you'd give the entire CPS student body a prep course, just the Juniors or Seniors. There were 106,000 kids in 9-12 so at most you'd be talking about ~25,000 students, of which perhaps half intend to go to college. Seems like there should be a way to find funding for 13,000 students......
Maybe, if you and others donate the cash.
 
Your score doesn't need context. You sit for a test and your score is the result.

If you have paid money out of your own pocket to take a review course, and spend your own free time to take said course and study, why should you have to disclose that? Why should you be penalized for that? And how would you enforce it? If I'm a student sitting for the SAT, why can't I just answer NO? Are they going to hire a PI to follow me around and see if I'm seeing a test prep tutor?

If an SAT review course is now deemed to be essential, then find a way for those communities. Hold a bake sale. Hold a raffle.
Now you are just being totally silly. But that's not new, is it?
 
Yes, there is a certain segment of the population who will lie if it gets them ahead in life. And people should all be honest and ethical, but not all people are. There are people who cheat on tests, too. I remember people storing cheat sheets as "programs" in their TI-85s.

So, is it fair for the people who would answer the question honestly, when there would be people who would not answer the question honestly? The people who did not answer the question honestly would not be penalized for the crime of using a test prep tutor, whereas the people who answered honestly would be penalized for using a test prep tutor. Is a system that rewards people who lie and punishes people who tell the truth going to invite abuse?

If you want me to take your suggestion seriously, then tell me a feasible way to enforce this. You're entitled to your safe space where you pretend you're offended by difficult questions, but everybody else can see you wimping out.

And in wimping out on the "offensive" question, you're also wimping out on the other basic question I asked:

"If you have paid money out of your own pocket to take a review course, and spend your own free time to take said course and study, why should you have to disclose that? Why should you be penalized for that?"
How this? The testing companies have to pay for test prep for all testers. Problem solved.
 
Why is the word "offensive"in quotes when that term is never used in my response? I don't think your question is offensive, just misinformed. The fact that you choose to fabricate the words used in my post suggest that you are not interested in having a meaningful discussion.

You act as if it will be a massive paradigm shift for people answer questions honestly on a college application. It is not. First, if you are applying for any type of merit based or financial aid you already have to submit your application under legal affirmation that the information (to the best of your knowledge) is true and correct. The concept of people trying to get a leg up is not new. Why would there be a need to employ Private Investigators? Simply asking people to answer honestly (under legal affirmation) should be enough. I believe the overwhelming majority of people are decent.
No, it was not a quote that I attributed to you, but you were so "offended" (air quotes, as in, I don't really think you were offended) by the question I asked that you were going to "pull the plug" (that is a quote) on responding to me.

The majority of people might be decent but nobody is sinless, and in the cutthroat competition of university admissions, a not negligible percentage of those people will answer no on that unverifiable question (if not private investigators, then how WOULD you verify it?). And those people who lie will have an unfair advantage over those who tell the truth. Wasn't there a huge college admissions scandal last year? There's lots of temptation to cheat.

I just don't think your suggestion is a good one if it rewards liars. And again, I ask the question for the third time:

"If you have paid money out of your own pocket to take a review course, and spend your own free time to take said course and study, why should you have to disclose that? Why should you be penalized for that?"
 
No, it was not a quote that I attributed to you, but you were so "offended" (air quotes, as in, I don't really think you were offended) by the question I asked that you were going to "pull the plug" (that is a quote) on responding to me.

The majority of people might be decent but nobody is sinless, and in the cutthroat competition of university admissions, a not negligible percentage of those people will answer no on that unverifiable question (if not private investigators, then how WOULD you verify it?). And those people who lie will have an unfair advantage over those who tell the truth. Wasn't there a huge college admissions scandal last year? There's lots of temptation to cheat.

I just don't think your suggestion is a good one if it rewards liars. And again, I ask the question for the third time:

"If you have paid money out of your own pocket to take a review course, and spend your own free time to take said course and study, why should you have to disclose that? Why should you be penalized for that?"
Because others, lots of others do not have the money to hire tutors.
 
I don't think you'd give the entire CPS student body a prep course, just the Juniors or Seniors. There were 106,000 kids in 9-12 so at most you'd be talking about ~25,000 students, of which perhaps half intend to go to college. Seems like there should be a way to find funding for 13,000 students......

Thanks for contributing to the discussion. This is an interesting point. I do have a couple of qualms with it, however.

First, this would probably cost a few million dollars to put together a program that even comes close to Kaplan/Princeton Review. I don't mean to be hyperbolic here. I think that's a reasonable assessment.

To put together such a program, the city needs to develop a curriculum for the ACT/SAT. To some degree, they can use Kaplan and other prep books/sites for guidance, but they'll probably want to make the test more individualized to CPS students. Kaplan is casting a nationwide net, but CPS would have the luxury of designing a prep curriculum for the CPS system. That luxury, however, is going to be more expensive. There will probably need to be some internal analysis done, maybe even hiring outside consultants, and there might need to be a curriculum committee put together to manage the process. An internal analysis or curriculum committee might not cost anything if you can add it on to somebody's plate, but if they spend time on that then they have less time for other things, so there really is no free lunch and it is a de facto expense.

At this point, we've got a curriculum, now we need to actually write lesson plans for this whole program. That's going to take time and require teacher compensation for the extra work. This curriculum is also going to need to be revised whenever there are updates to the test or CPS curriculum. That will, again, cost money.

Okay, now we have a curriculum and a lesson plan. All done, right? Well, if we record it, we probably need to get some IT people involved or at least have the IT people train the teachers on how to do it. We might run into video storage costs, depending on how we store it. We also probably need legal compliance to run over this thing and make sure we didn't accidentally (or intentionally) steal from the test companies. If we don't have recording equipment, that all needs to get purchased, maintained, and stored.

Alright, we're almost ready to go. We need to now generate hundreds of practice problems in multiple subjects that do not contain errors and are challenging and accurate enough to reflect the exams, and then we also need to put together entire practice exams that reflect the exams administered. All of these practice problems and exams will need to be updated with changes to CPS curriculum and the actual exam. This is likely to require hundreds or thousands of teaching hours initially and quite a bit for maintenance.

One last thing, we now need to make sure we have the facilities to teach all of these students and administer practice exams. It might be cheaper to do it in the schools, but it might be easier to rent out 200-300 person spaces to teach more students. Regardless of how it's done, we're going to need to pay the teachers for the actual time spent teaching, and we're going to need to compensate any proctors involved. We will also probably increase the burden on the Dean of Students, as cheating will inevitably be caught. Counselors will probably also see an increased burden with more kids getting anxiety over the process. Again, we already pay those people, but it's not a free lunch if they have to put other work aside. We either need to pay them overtime to catch up, hire more people to take care of greater burdens, or have more "deferred maintenance," so to speak, none of which are great.

Second, this whole exercise makes the assumption that CPS and New Trier (or the equivalent) kids are on the same footing by the time they hit Junior/Senior year. Quite frankly, New Trier kids are probably on average performing at their grade level or above, and CPS kids have probably, on average, been performing below their grade level for a decade of schooling. A quick Google search showed that only 10% of CPS students were at grade level in math by the 4th grade (I'm assuming things don't improve going all the way through high school) and 25% of CPS students were at grade level in reading. While the content might be the same, a multi-year gap in educational proficiency is going to make it significantly harder to bring kids up to the same level on the ACT/SAT. The solution to this problem is obviously not so simple as "well, just bring kids up to their grade level proficiency."

Third, we've tackled the problem for poor (generally, minority) students in CPS. Now, we've got to tackle it in two dozen more major American cities... That, or Northwestern needs to start pulling all of its recruits from CPS.

I apologize for any spelling or grammatical errors.
 
No, it was not a quote that I attributed to you, but you were so "offended" (air quotes, as in, I don't really think you were offended) by the question I asked that you were going to "pull the plug" (that is a quote) on responding to me.

The majority of people might be decent but nobody is sinless, and in the cutthroat competition of university admissions, a not negligible percentage of those people will answer no on that unverifiable question (if not private investigators, then how WOULD you verify it?). And those people who lie will have an unfair advantage over those who tell the truth. Wasn't there a huge college admissions scandal last year? There's lots of temptation to cheat.

I just don't think your suggestion is a good one if it rewards liars. And again, I ask the question for the third time:

"If you have paid money out of your own pocket to take a review course, and spend your own free time to take said course and study, why should you have to disclose that? Why should you be penalized for that?"

The question posed by OP was whether standardized test scores used in the admissions process are a form of institutional racism. The answer is to a certain extent yes although it certainly is not intentional. There is a tremendous wealth gap in this country which is directly tied to the legacy of slavery, segregation and the foreclosure of lines of credit and economic opportunities to African-Americans. Because of this wealth gap there are certain educational opportunities that are not realistic for most kids at CPS, one of them is taking prep classes and having tutors for the SAT/ACT. If taking these prep classes will generally improve a student's score, then when elite schools like Northwestern use test scores as a gatekeeping function (totally reasonable) then it can perpetuate (not intentionally) existing inequalities.

No one is being punished if a student discloses whether they took SAT/ACT prep classes or had an individual tutor. It simply provides context for a student's score and more context is always a good thing when making admissions.
 
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No one is being punished if a student discloses whether they took SAT/ACT prep classes or had an individual tutor. It simply provides context for a student's score and more context is always a good thing when making admissions.
Really? Then why ask the question at all if you're not going to take into account during admissions whether the student was tutored?
 
Really? Then why ask the question at all if you're not going to take into account during admissions whether the student was tutored?

Context.

Currently, students have to list their parents annual income. Are students with parents who make $1M being punished?

What about students who are asked to list their extracurricular activities? Are they being punished?

Students are also asked whether they were employed during the high school year. This is done to calculate financial aid, but also to provide context about a student's performance in the classroom.

Are those students who were not employed in high school being punished?

I see no problems in trying to get a more holistic view of a candidate. It should be taken into account but it should just be one of many factors and is a way to bring more context to a raw score.
 
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Context.

Currently, students have to list their parents annual income. Are students with parents who make $1M being punished?

What about students who are asked to list their extracurricular activities? Are they being punished?

Students are also asked whether they were employed during the high school year. This is done to calculate financial aid, but also to provide context about a student's performance in the classroom.

Are those students who were not employed in high school being punished?

I see no problems in trying to get a more holistic view of a candidate. It should be taken into account but it should just be one of many factors and is a way to bring more context to a raw score.
Income pertains to financial aid.

Extracurricular activities are for burnishing the application, enhancing it. Those who did not participate in extracurricular activities are definitely at a disadvantage compared to those who did. But you're building the best application that you can, not penalizing or detracting from it. Yeah, I worked a summer job, I participated in extracurriculars, I was in NHS which carried community service requirements. These are things that add to the application.

The test score is a test score and it speaks for itself. You don't need to know how I studied to achieve my test score. I sat for the test and achieved the score; nobody else sat for the test in my stead. The only reason you would ask about tutors or test prep would be as an excuse to penalize an applicant, an excuse to downgrade the application. You don't need to know for financial aid and it adds nothing to the application.
 
Since this is the basketball board, at this point I will agree to disagree with you on whether the use of test preparation that is largely unavailable to one segment of the population is a useful metric in evaluating and contextualizing differing test scores between those populations.
 
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