Picture of Alex Balekian

Tuesday, October 21, 1997

SAT good indicator of academic merit

STANDARDS University must preserve integrity over diversity of
campus

Just when I think that the world has reached its capacity for
dumb ideas (like affirmative action and race-based hiring
preferences), some self-empowering task force takes the crusade for
producing dumb ideas even further.

The latest concept of which I write is a recommendation by the
Latino Eligibility Task Force for the University of California
campuses to optionally use Scholastic Assessment Test scores when
determining admission eligibility. After we clear away the
politically correct jargon and the legal mumbo-jumbo, we find that
the task force wants to stop using the SAT in order to boost the
number of Latinos eligible for enrollment at UC campuses.

I will never understand this unfathomable desire of task forces,
professors, and students to dumb down the intellectual level of our
campus. Why do these people feel that they have to sacrifice
intelligence for diversity?

I have heard several different reasons from supporters of the
"optional SAT," and those reasons have, to say the least, surprised
me with their simple nature. The first cheap shot takes a hit at
social class structure. According to a recent Viewpoint column, the
Scholastic Assessment Test provides an unfair advantage to rich
students because they can afford to take the ridiculously priced
preparatory courses. For several hundred dollars, these rich
(white) students can boost their scores by over 100 points. Spare
me the poor excuse.

I would expect an educated university student to discern between
fact and opinion. FACT: Kaplan offers a prep course for an
embarrassingly high amount of money. OPINION: Kaplan maintains that
their course will increase your score by 100 points.

Enterprising companies never deliver completely on their
promises; this pledge is nothing more than an attempt to draw
students in and take their money. What is a high school student
going to learn in a six-week course that he has not been able to
learn in 12 years of school? Do the task force and its allies
believe that there is an uncontrollable epidemic of uneducated,
rich students winging 12 years of school with the flash of a few
c-notes?

Another equally weak argument concerning the SAT is that the
words used in the test discriminate against minorities. For
example, an analogy containing the word "foyer" is meant solely for
an upper-class student who can afford to tour impressive houses and
theatres. Other words like bourgeois, pate, and nouveau riche also
tend to favor richer students with more "culture." (I guess the
Latino task force is peeved that the upper class uses French-based
words rather than Spanish-based words). I can think of two
arguments to discredit this point.

First, a truly talented and educated student knows more than he
is culturally and minimally required to know. Second, if the words
in the SAT really do disfavor minority students, can we blame a
student’s low score on a few specific questions? Who has ever seen
a test abundant with French-based, upper class words? What are the
chances that the Educational Testing Service would do something
like that in the SAT? Students are not expected to know every
single question, and the inability to answer a few "upper class
word" questions will not mean the difference between acceptance and
rejection.

To complete the trilogy, the proponents have also argued that
measuring a student’s 12-year education in one day is misleading.
If that student is having a phenomenally bad hair day, it will
affect his performance. Some students may not also work well under
pressure or take tests well, and their 3.5 GPA will go to waste
with a combined score of 750 on the SAT.

Any student with a 3.5 average will have a respectable showing
on the SAT. Having a bad hair day? All students have the right to
take the test over as many times as they wish; I took mine 3 times
until I had the score that I wanted.

For those students who do not test well, I would think twice
about their applications. What student can get a 3.5 average
without taking any tests? If an applicant does horribly on tests,
then on what basis did he get that high grade point average? Would
his high school be reputable? After all, I do not know any students
who would want to be gauged equally with others who came across
high grades more easily than they did.

Let us suppose that we let students in only by GPA. At a magnet
school, the curriculum is more trying than it is at other, average
schools. Should a magnet school senior who receives a B in Advanced
Calculus with Differential Geometry be rejected because a senior at
an average high school lucked out and got an A- in Trigonometry?
Shouldn’t we have a way to norm the different high schools? The
SAT, which gauges the performance of high school students across
the country, is one of the only ways we can compare the
preparedness and education of students from different schools.

If we slacken our standards and forget the SAT as a factor for
admission in order to increase the number of Latino students
accepted, we will sacrifice the integrity of this school. Why have
any of us chosen to come to UCLA? We know that by attending this
university, we have already accomplished a daunting task.

UCLA has a nationally recognized faculty with several Nobel
Prize winners, an extensive research program with major
benefactors, and most importantly, a diverse student body
comprising the top 12 percent of California high school graduates.
Other public universities and community colleges do not have the
resources that we have here. At many other institutions, the
faculty is much less recognized, the research pales in comparison
to ours, and lower qualifications allow for the acceptance of
almost any student. At Cal State Los Angeles, for example, a 2.0
GPA is sufficient to qualify for automatic admission.

Do we want our university to sink down to the levels of other
schools for the sole purpose of forcibly diversifying our campus?
If the task force would like to see more Latinos go on to higher
learning, why don’t they campaign for more spaces at other, more
lenient schools instead of dragging down one of the best
universities in California? Many less-qualified students can go to
community college and gain an equal foothold in order to transfer
to UCLA in two years. Why are the proponents of this measure
getting hot and bothered over slackening our standards when there
are already many other, more feasible solutions?

At present, Latinos make up 16.7 percent of the freshman class,
or three times what they used to comprise 15 years ago. In those
same 15 years, enrollment for "white students" has dropped from 75
percent to 34.5 percent of the freshman class. Now, roughly one out
of every six students is Latino, while one out of every three is
white. Do we want to decrease this already-shrinking gap by opening
the floodgates and letting in improperly qualified students?

I think the Latino Eligibility Task Force has committed a crime
against the Latino community. Their proposal essentially says that
Latino students cannot be accepted because their test scores are
substandard. Instead of recruiting the smartest students in the
community and educating the less-educated ones, we should go ahead
and remove the only sieve that sorts them.

A good color scheme in a campus photograph comes with a hefty
price tag. If we let less-prepared students in, do we take it upon
ourselves to slow down the academic pace to let these newcomers
catch up, or do we force these students to sink or swim on their
own?

Rather than make the best comparing tool an optional one, we
should instead strive to lessen the number of poorly educated
students. Already, 29,000 semi-qualified students apply to fill
3,750 qualified positions. Wouldn’t it be better to make these
applicants more qualified instead of lowering the qualifications
for admission?

It is a sad trend on this campus that we tend to punish students
who have already run the 12-year educational gamut instead of
helping the disadvantaged students who are just starting on that
path. Fixing the educational gap that starts in our elementary
schools, instead of waiting to rectify them at the university
level, will effectively solve our SAT and affirmative action
problems in the long run.

Alex Balekian