(10-18-2021, 06:27 PM)Leftcoast Wrote: I'd watch the unintended consequences of throwing out SAT scores. For all their flaws they provided a measure of objectivity to an applicant pool.
That objectivity often helped show the kid from the wrong school or a school with limited AP classes was just as good as the kid from the prep school with an inflated resume. In a post SAT world it will be tempting to just select the kid from the right school with the right background of inflated extra-curriculars, travel, and charity work. Note that all of these favor the well off.
As a kid with two teaching parents who went to a rural school I'm pretty sure it wasn't my GPA that got me in. On the other hand at Stanford 4 years of FFA may have helped more than I realized at the time ... but nonetheless, I'm glad my SATs were high.
By damning SATs we may have just made successful applicants much less diverse.
Um . . . do you really believe that? If so, I suspect you are in a very small minority.
In your example, do you think there are more rural school kids with great GPAs (who will benefit from dumping the SATs), or (ii) rural school kids with medium GPAs and terrific SAT scores (who will not benefit from this change)? Apply that to question to all target sectors of diversity.
BTW, I'm not saying the decision is bad policy - there is an argument that GPA over the long term better reflects intelligence than does a standardized test. There of course is an argument on the other side, too.