DC: Colleges are quickly dropping their SAT and ACT essay requirements for applicants, with education experts saying the compositions “have never been of much use” and the institutions suggesting that their additional cost prevented poorer students from applying.
Brown University ditched the requirement on Wednesday, making it the last Ivy League school to do so and leaving just 21 colleges that demand the essays, according to The Princeton Review. Two additional universities are also considering dropping their SAT and ACT essay requirements.
“The short sample essays test-takers generate as part of the ACT or SAT have never been of much use in the higher education admissions process,” National Center for Fair & Open Testing Public Education Director Bob Schaeffer told TheDCNF. The group, also known as FairTest, supports test-optional college admissions.
“Institutions [that have dropped them] recognize that effective written communication requires collecting and analyzing information, determining relevance and central themes, drafting an initial response, reviewing, rewriting, and proof-reading,” he continued. “That process simply cannot be accomplished in the very limited time available on the test.”
“The current ACT/SAT ‘writing’ test format encourages coaching-driven, formulaic responses,” Schaeffer said. “Requiring scores from these exams is certainly not worth the extra cost either in money or time.”
The SAT essay asks test-takers to read a passage and then explain how the author constructs their argument using evidence from the text. Students have 50 minutes to complete the section — twice the time limit of the previous essay section, which asked students to respond to a prompt and was replaced in 2016.
“The SAT writing portion really got off to a really bad start when it was first implemented back in 2005,” education scholar Lance Izumi of the Pacific Research Institute, a free market think tank, told TheDCNF. It “relied on students using their own experiences and values [and] didn’t rely upon facts and evidence. Students could write something nonsensical and unrelated to empirical reality.”
But SAT developer and administrator College Board, as well as the ACT maintain the utility of their essay exams.
“We believe that the SAT essay provides a strong complement to the multiple-choice section by asking students to demonstrate reading, analysis, writing, and critical thinking skills in the context of analyzing a provided source text,” College Board spokesman Zach Goldberg told TheDCNF.
While colleges are spiking the essay component, Goldberg noted that the SAT has a multiple-choice writing section which tests skills such as grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure.
The ACT writing test “is a standardized, comparable, and reliable test that also provides information that students can use to improve their skills,” ACT spokesman Ed Colby told TheDCNF. “The ACT writing test is designed to measure on-demand writing skills, which are required for success in many college courses.”
Regardless, several colleges dropped the essay requirement to eliminate what they view as a price barrier to entry. Students pay an additional $16.50 or $17 to take the ACT and SAT essay portions, respectively.
“Given the significant growth in free school-day testing, it’s important to enable students from low-income families to take advantage of the tests already offered by their school districts and not place an undue burden on them to go in separately outside of normal school hours,” Brown Dean of Admission Logan Powell said after his school abandoned the standard. “Our goal is that for any talented student interested in Brown, the application process is not a deterrent — and we don’t want this test to be a barrier to their application.”
Its called dumbing down the educational process to promote “diversity”, and it’s been
going on for years. Getting worse now.
College = Business, BIG EFFING business.
That is why standards are being lowered.
Appeal to large amount of ignorant, @ Vietvet dumbed down, potential customers.
This, a college education, is only a means to get a political pickling of the brain.
Go VERY technical / engineering…if ya go.
MAGA2016
KAG2020
How will they be diverse if they have standards?
The real reason is obvious to anyone reading job applications: education hasn’t taught our children the simplest rules of written language, let alone rudimentary critical thinking and composition, which are negligible. Let’s not even begin to explore the loss of punctuation, sentence structure, spelling, and grammar; all gone.
I’m all for quitting standards that haven’t worked in decades. That’s why my kids will likely go to trade school or I’ll give ’em seed money to start something moar better than fakebook.
When you cannot find enough students that meet your standards to be admitted to the college. Lower your standards. Keep the money coming in.
As a big bonus dimmer bulb students are easier to indoctrinate. What? You thought our mission statement was to educate? Really? Noooo ya big silly. Our priorities are bringing in money to pay for leftist tenured staff & indoctrination. Educating minds to think is a cute curious notion.
@MJA. Your title contained an adverb, which threw me.
Can I get my diploma anyway?
I had no trouble w/them, sister and brother maxed them, four nieces and two nephews maxed them. They are not that big of a deal.
I can spell the SAT test. Not sure of the CAT though.
The goal is to produce Military officers that cannot calculate ballistic arcs for artillery
“The short sample essays test-takers generate as part of the ACT or SAT have never been of much use in the higher education admissions process,”
Because “Can you qualify for the student loans?” has replaced the SATs for some time now.
Burner
Dumping the SAT and ACT requirements is about fucking over white and Asian college applicants; so we can flood the job market with two digit IQ fuckheads in key jobs who have their thoughts downloaded to them from globalist central control.
So $17 (the price of two Starbuck’s Coffees) is a “price barrier to entry” that discriminates against “disadvantaged” (read “minority”) students. Bullshit. Are we supposed to believe that colleges that charge $40,000 to $150,000 per year are REALLY concerned about “price barriers to entry”?
ECP,
“I’m all for quitting standards that haven’t worked in decades.”
That’s not the writing standard’s fault, though.
Only two possible reasons to scrap the writing assessment: the kids all know how to write and don’t need it, so the assessment is redundant, or they know most (despite diplomas) can no longer come close to passing it.
Option (b) is the answer but that’s not writing’s fault.
True story: when I was getting my Master’s, there was in my class a young black man who had his Bachelor’s (else he couldn’t be going for a Master’s). One day he came in FURIOUS at being told he couldn’t continue in our program, which was already underway, until he’d passed a remedial writing course.
“Oh, so I have a college degree but I guess I can’t write?!?” he shouted. Well, I recall seeing something he’d written, or tried to write. It was abysmal. Yet there he was, ALREADY holding a Bachelor’s and ALREADY accepted into a Master’s program, but only NOW did they tell him that his writing skill would embarrass the university if he was allowed to continued. Matter of fact, I believe he wasn’t the only one.
Point is, I believe none of that was particularly his fault; he’d been cheated by the schools where he was supposed to be taught how to write, then cheated by the college that gave him a B.A. knowing his writing was well below adult level.
So here we are, 20 years later…if they can’t fix the problem (awful writing instruction), they just unplug the warning light (the writing assessment).
As I’ve said (and written) the Colleges and Universities should get the money (from the taxpayers) and hand out degrees on the basis of racial, sexual, genderer, whatever, population percentages.
The farce wouldn’t be any more farcical, the degreed stooges any less stoogical, and the taxpayers no better and no worse for wear.
The Colleges and Universities could continue their Football extravaganzas and rake in the dough through that channel, as well.
It really would be simpler.
izlamo delenda est …