College Admissions in the US is broken. This is a great move at restoring normalcy though. The SAT or ACT are the best thing for leveling the playing field between the rich and the poor. If anything I would like to see more reliance on this.
If I had my way the US would model the college admissions process on the Chinese Gao Kao. Have everyone take the the exam, have students list their preference for university, then sort from top ranked to the bottom ranked filling open positions at universities. This is fair, the only bias is ability, and it removes all legacy, wealth and athletics factors.
This is kinda how medical residency is filled in the US, med students rank their top
choices, residency programs rank their’s. It’s called The Match, and generally results in a very fair equitable outcome.
While the match isn’t completely terrible, it still has some pretty bad qualities. The most notable one is the “pay for applications” issue. The odds of getting into your top picks is constantly declining, and so the dominant strategy is to apply to many residencies to maximize your chance of a successful match - the number of picks the average applicant submits has doubled in the past 15 years. But applying to more programs can cost thousands of dollars, for no apparent reason other than the enrichment of ERAS to the tune of about $100 million per year. This obviously creates a system where people with more money to burn can artificial create better results for themselves.
The simple answer here is to give each applicant a finite number of picks regardless of means, but the ERAS admin has no interest in this for obvious reasons.
The other thing this pick arms race has done is produced far more applicants for positions than makes any sense (the average Otho placement gets 150 applicants). Not only does this irritate program directors, this has also led to an increase in automated filtering, and therefore an increase in attempts to game automated filtering though things like bogus publications (see: things like the stupid medbikini publication which seemed like a poor attempt to add another pub to somebody’s resume).
Your suggestions are terrific and I’m sure there are others that are great too. Every system that involves humans will be game-able in some way, that’s simply life. That The Match is a much better system than college placement is undeniable and refusing to implement it because it’s not perfect is foolish.
Sort of, but if you were charged money per application (so that it was more accessible to the wealthy). The pick was supposed to avoid this sort of pointless mass application and allow students to focus on the residencies that they really wanted and were competitive for, but with higher education becoming so expensive and so competitive, shovelling money at applications has increasingly become the student strategy.
This is more discriminatory though. How can a poor kid express their "passion" to University admissions offices? SATs are the best leveller we have not to mention their strong correlation with actual outcomes.
Also, passion can be developed later, you can't expect 16 year olds to know what they want to do. Recruit for high competence.
Most people aren't passionate about math wholesale. They are passionate for activities that require a strong fundamental in math. That's always been my core reservation with how we currently deem students worthy of learning and applying skills into a career. SAT's feel like the high school equivalent of what the tech industry will joke about as "well you lead a team into launching a multimillion dollar product, but you can't reverse a binary tree on the spot, so...".
But if they have data that shows that it works out for them, I don't have any capacity to argue with the results.
Agree that math on its own isn’t the truly compelling thing for everyone.
I do believe that, since it fundamentally links and describes all sorts of observable phenomena, math is a gateway to a general understanding of the universe. And so might lead someone to their true passion.
I also hear you on the “binary tree” front - focusing exclusively on particular algorithms like that is a hiring antipattern, imo. Where I differ is that I treat math as one level lower and more fundamental - the ability to understand why the algorithm works at all and to prove it to yourself if you wanted to. And correspondingly the toolset to construct algorithms of your own.
I don’t think people need to readily recall partial differential equations on a daily basis, or be able to spot recall how to factor a complex polynomial.
I do think taking practice at those things builds mental strength that is useful for detecting patterns, chasing theories, describing and testing facts, and solving puzzles, and that that’s the true value of math education.
If I had my way the US would model the college admissions process on the Chinese Gao Kao. Have everyone take the the exam, have students list their preference for university, then sort from top ranked to the bottom ranked filling open positions at universities. This is fair, the only bias is ability, and it removes all legacy, wealth and athletics factors.