To the editor: I’m extra impressed by the creator’s knowledge in youth than the op-ed’s many nuanced arguments (“UC ought to return to contemplating standardized assessments in admissions,” Dec. 14).
Having labored as a tutor on the Educational Assets Heart at UCLA within the early Eighties, my then-supervisor stated to me in an after-work chat: “I agree that if college students don’t have any such prerequisite expertise they shouldn’t be admitted. However give it some thought this manner: This can be a state faculty. If underprepared college students are all the time rejected outright, how a lot cash would we lose?”
Many years glided by however this startling revelation, shared once I was an 18-year-old second-year school scholar, stayed with me. However what about this? Not too way back, I examine a younger man with almost good SAT scores who was rejected from 16 universities, together with 5 College of California campuses. Later employed by Google in a software program engineering place, he’s now suing a number of the universities for anti-Asian discrimination.
Any numeric illustration of human means will invite infinite debates. Having a excessive rating isn’t any grounds for assured admission, and a low rating doesn’t all the time result in a closed door. So many different components are at play.
Mathilde Diaz, Lengthy Island Metropolis, N.Y.
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To the editor: I utterly agree with visitor contributor William Liang. With the onset of COVID and extra distant education, in-person attendance and general studying has been severely diminished, two of my neighbors (each lecturers) inform me.
Reintroducing the SAT to the UC system won’t assist those that haven’t attended courses over the previous few years, however it should assist determine those that lack the power to do a simple arithmetic drawback.
Michael Newton, Los Angeles
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To the editor: Setting apart the broader arguments for and in opposition to standardized assessments as a requirement for admission to the UC system, it’s clear to me, as a longtime public faculty educator, that one thing was significantly flawed with the remedial math assessments given to those college students. The pattern questions cited by the creator contain fundamental arithmetic ideas launched in kindergarten and strengthened by fourth grade.
Fixing for x within the instance offered is so elementary that it requires minimal prior instruction — definitely not past what can be anticipated of a highschool graduate, not to mention a college scholar. Earlier than drawing sweeping conclusions, we should always first look at the precise take a look at and choose it for ourselves.
Jeff Felz, Los Angeles
