Akil Admissions Tests, college admissions

It’s Time to Fix Standardized Testing

The global pandemic has wreaked havoc and the educational status quo and disrupted not only how students are taught and tested. Schools are radically adjusting how they deliver lessons and testing agencies are revamping how they deliver their assessment. The inability to gather in a room has forced the cancellation of statewide assessments, the shortening of AP exams, and major admissions tests (like the ACT, GMAT, GRE, ISEE, LSAT, SAT, and SSAT) to develop online at-home testing options. This is the moment to fix many of the things that are broken about assessments. 

Since their beginnings in the late 1800s, standardized tests have become an oppressive force in U.S. education and have influenced many other areas of society, yet in that same time there have been only marginal changes in the tests themselves. Despite reams of papers and scores of conference presentations, a high score on a 4 or 5 answer-choice aggressively-timed test continues to be treated as the epitome of intellectual demonstration. This has gone so far that, in the midst of a global pandemic, one (intentionally unnamed or linked to) author questioned whether epidemiologists should be heeded above economists, asking, “How smart are they? What are their average GRE scores?”

Continue reading “It’s Time to Fix Standardized Testing” →
Akil Admissions Tests, Education Policy

College, Career, and Cremation Benchmarks

As the new school year begins, I am anxiously awaiting (read: dreading) the forthcoming SAT and ACT annual reports and with them the inevitable exaggerations, hand-wringings, misinterpretations, and statistical paralogisms that will follow. The College Board’s Total Group Reports and ACT’s Condition of College and Career Readiness Reports (or Profile Reports) will not only spark the annual “sky-is-falling because district scores have dropped .005 points” responses but will also likely lead to an uptick in the “SAT/ACT scores show students not ready to succeed in college, career, life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness.”

Continue reading “College, Career, and Cremation Benchmarks” →
Akil admissions, Admissions Tests, college admissions

Are Changes Coming to College Admissions?

We know it doesn’t feel like it, but it’s been less than 6 months since the Justice Department announced the indictments resulting from Operation Varsity Blues, so it’s no surprise that few universities have announced any substantial policy changes in their admissions procedures. If most big institutions move slowly, universities look at them and wonder, “What’s the big rush there?”  There are still committees to be convened in order to create sub-committees that can issue memos that can be circulated in order to be approved as official reports by committees who can then move items forward for approval by the faculty and/or Board of Trustees. In other words, don’t expect big changes in how colleges admit students anytime soon.

Continue reading “Are Changes Coming to College Admissions?” →
Akil Uncategorized

Temperature is to Testing as ….

Recently Marten Roorda, CEO of ACT reminded us that throwing away the thermometer won’t get rid of a fever and he’s 100% right. Of course, no doctor in the world thinks that tossing the thermometer will cure an identified ailment. Mr. Roorda’s analogy in defense of the ACT (and attacking the test optional movement) was really subtle and I think many will miss all the ways in which the analogy works. Since I’m a fan of a good analogy (except when they are put on a test) I’m going to help make sure everyone understands why this is an amazing analogy.

Continue reading “Temperature is to Testing as ….” →
Akil admissions, Admissions Tests, Graduate School Admissions

GRE: The One Test

Since the 1980s, Educational Testing Service (ETS), which dominated educational admission testing from 1940 – 1980, has been hemorrhaging product lines. In its heyday (SAT word) ETS was the Sauron to US education’s Middle Earth, providing admissions tests for the vast majority of professional certification programs and higher ed admissions.  Their services ranged from teacher certification exams to the SAT, GRE, GMAT, MCAT, and LSAT. In the last decade or so, ETS business strategy has changed and the organization has begun to aggressively market their most popular remaining assessment product, the Graduate Record Exam (commonly known by its initialism – GRE), as “the One Test to Assess Them All.” This strategic market grab, while an interesting business strategy, raises significant questions about all admission tests. Specifically, the expansion of the GRE into fields beyond its design should force responsible test users to reevaluate long-held assumptions about what information is being gained by requiring the GRE (and all its brethren) and at what cost.

Continue reading “GRE: The One Test” →
Akil Uncategorized

IACAC 2019 Keynote Address

Recently, I had the honor of delivering the Keynote address at the 2019 IACAC Conference. I thought it would be cool to share some of the highlights of that talk and some of the reference resources here.

The core message of my talk was that the American educational system is not a meritocracy as most people think of the word, but instead is a meritocracy in the original sense of the word as it was satirically coined by Micheal Young in 1958.

Continue reading “IACAC 2019 Keynote Address” →
Akil Uncategorized

Why Aren’t More Colleges Test Optional?

Since the inception of the SAT in 1926, the admission world has debated (1976, 2001, 2008, 2015, 2018, 2019) the impact of and validity of the SAT (and later the ACT, CLT, CCTST, etc) on the pool of applicants and enrolled students at a university. Recently, more and more colleges have been asking themselves should they diminish the role of testing in their admission process and declare a test optional admissions policy.

Continue reading “Why Aren’t More Colleges Test Optional?” →
Akil Uncategorized

Access Organizations: Providing Social Capital

As anyone who works with low income, first generation or underrepresented students could tell you, the vast majority of these students lack not only the funds to compete with the 1% but also the “social capital” that greases the wheels of higher education access. Networks of chatty parents sharing new discoveries about demonstrated interest, hooks, gap years, PPY, ED/EDII/EA/EAII/REA, supplemental essays, recommended (not really) tests, super-scoring, super-duper-scoring, test optional/flexible, and a host of other insider secrets help the most informed more easily navigate an increasingly complex system.

Unlike their rich counterparts, low-income parents do not have the opportunities to learn the intricacies of admissions to feeder middle schools, selective high schools, and highly selective colleges and graduate schools from a social circle that includes deans of admissions, board members, CEOs, and college presidents. Instead, first generation parents rely on objective sources (catalogues and webpages), their next door neighbors (who are likely also first generation, low income, and underrepresented), their school counselors, and their friends to pool the little information they have in hopes of hitting the access lotto and gaining a spot at a selective institution.

Continue reading “Access Organizations: Providing Social Capital” →
Akil Uncategorized

Stanford shows they’re not so smart after all

Making the rounds in the college world this week is the story of Stanford University’s “demand”* that college applicant Malala Yousafzai take the SAT. Correction, that’s Noble Laureate, educational activist, assassination attempt survivor, and still “kicking ass and taking names” while advocating for education for women, 18-year-old Malala Yousafzai. Stanford University, in their apparent quest for additional bad press, has let the story of Ms Yousafzai’s desire to apply to the college become one of a “demand” for a test that many see as worthless and not indicative of any of the true characteristics of college bound students. It’s stunning to me that this university, with what I assume is a million dollar team of PR professionals, would let this potentially huge PR win become another example of the evil that colleges do in their quest for rankings and their love of test scores.

Continue reading “Stanford shows they’re not so smart after all” →
Akil Uncategorized

Did Khan Pull Out His Disruptor?

Pew Research: U.S. Smartphone Use in 2015

Over the last few days, I’ve been texted, tweeted, gchatted, emailed and called about the release of College Board’s/Khan Academy’s SAT prep resources. I’ve been forwarded article, after article, after article, about the playing field leveling that College Board is touting its partnership with Khan Academy will bring.  I’ve been asked for my opinion and thoughts on Khan’s resources and the implications for my job and industry. So here it is, my unfiltered (mostly) thoughts on Khan Academy “Official SAT Practice.”

Continue reading “Did Khan Pull Out His Disruptor?” →