To the editor: I’m extra impressed by the writer’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 Tutorial Sources Middle at UCLA within the early Eighties, my then-supervisor mentioned 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 fashion: It is a state faculty. If underprepared college students are at all times 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 pupil, stayed with me. However what about this? Not too way back, I examine a younger man with almost excellent 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 capacity will invite limitless debates. Having a excessive rating is not any grounds for assured admission, and a low rating doesn’t at all times result in a closed door. So many different elements are at play.
Mathilde Diaz, Lengthy Island Metropolis, N.Y.
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To the editor: I fully 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 is not going to assist those that haven’t attended courses over the previous few years, however it would assist determine those that lack the flexibility to do a simple arithmetic downside.
Michael Newton, Los Angeles
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To the editor: Setting apart the broader arguments for and towards 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 improper with the remedial math assessments given to those college students. The pattern questions cited by the writer contain fundamental arithmetic ideas launched in kindergarten and bolstered by fourth grade.
Fixing for x within the instance offered is so elementary that it requires minimal prior instruction — actually not past what can be anticipated of a highschool graduate, not to mention a college pupil. Earlier than drawing sweeping conclusions, we must always first study the precise take a look at and choose it for ourselves.
Jeff Felz, Los Angeles
