U.C. Admissions in the News
9/23/2010 - JunkScienceMom's Truth or Scare Blog has sharp insight into recent biased media reports.
9/15/2010 - Bay Area Citizen's Pulse of the Bay has an interesting brief on what could actually be the cause of racial and economic disparity in college admissions. Are teachers to blame?
Check out the Silicon Valley Education Foundation's full report!
9/14/10 - Right on the Left Coast Blog: Large Public Schools Make Employers' Short List, But Our UC's Resting On Their Laurels?
Check out Right on the Left Coast for more!
9/13/10 - ANNOUNCEMENT
The College Board is again running the gauntlet as they prepare to release their latest report on the validity of the SAT. You can bet that certain members of the media are ready to jump at every chance to tear down a cornerstone of applying to college in an attempt to dumb down the admissions process and lower the education standards in California and the rest of the country’s finest universities.
These bloggers and journalists will try and point to supposed flaws in the SAT while ignoring the successes of the standardized test and its crucial role in the admissions process. They’ll gloss over the fact that an independent study within the UC system showed that the SAT had better predictive ability of first-year college success than any other measure. They’ll forget to mention that the SAT has helped raise the overall predictive ability of the admission process to a level impossible with grades alone. These bloggers and reporters won’t acknowledge that the SAT is the only objective measure in the entirety of the application process and is responsible for making a review of thousands of applicants feasible.
What they will focus on is sinking UC standards to an unacceptable low. The Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) has already eliminated the SAT-II Subject Tests, they are continuing to consider eliminating the testing requirement entirely. This isn’t enough for the reporters who will attack the SAT. They will cherry-pick their information to show that the SAT is irreparably flawed when the reality is that the UC system itself has financially backed the SAT and the test is constantly working to improve on its own success, in the process raising predictive abilities to new heights. They are attacking the SAT because they don’t want to attack the K-12 education system and what they’re failing to realize is that the SAT is a mirror of the K-12 requirements; it’s only converting the knowledge that should be accrued by every student into an objectively measured format. If there’s a problem with the scores, it’s reflecting a problem in the schools, not the SAT. But these reporters will ignore this fact. Rather than publicizing issues in the K-12 educational system, they’re going to use the SAT as their red herring and in the process destroy the UC’s reputation. What these reporters are then focusing on is tearing down UC standards, removing the UC system from the ranks of the best schools in the nation, and endangering the futures of current and past UC students.
The College Board’s report is going to be manipulated and misconstrued to fit the agendas of certain reporters, but don’t be fooled by their rhetoric. The truth is that the SAT is the only objective measure in the admissions process, the best predictor of success, and an essential part of the application process. It keeps standards high and the integrity of the UC system intact. Please join me in correcting the biased accounts that will begin emerging with the College Board’s report: add comments to these articles with the truth about the SAT, Tweet about the SAT’s importance to the admissions process, and spread the word to friends and family.
If the UC BOARS won’t fight to keep our standards high, we’ll have to do it ourselves.
8/30/10 - Public News service confirms standardized testing is an important part of the admissions process
Go to Public News Service to learn more!
7/28/10 - Former Congressman Doug Ose lights up the U.C. Regents' "Misguided Effort"
See Ose's article for his take!
4/9/2010 - Please check out this informative read regarding the state of the system under Yudof.
4/8/2010 - Linda Chavez has written an interesting article that shows what this might really be about.
Check out the OC Register artcile here!