Author: robynsaad

Standardized Tests Determine Your Future

A recent higher ed article ( https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/04/28/new-book-based-interviews-law-deans-and-admissions-officers-details-impact-rankings ) discusses a book that was written that talks about the ranking systems in law schools. It discusses how the LSAT scores have become a main indicator of what a good lawyer or good law school student would be. It talks about how the LSATS are taken more into consideration than students’ GPAs are. Since LSATs are so important to law schools’ rankings, the deans of those schools seem to choose students based on those scores. This decreases the diversity in those schools, because minority groups tend to have lower LSAT scores than white and Asian groups.

I found this article interesting for two reasons. One reason is that I am a prelaw student who is soon going to be venturing into this world of the LSATs. I find it so frightening that four years of amazing grades could so easily be degraded by a day-long exam that requires only a few months’ study time. I agree that having the LSAT carry so much weight is wrong. One standardized test will not determine if someone will be a good lawyer/law student or not. Furthemore, a school that takes students with lower LSAT scores isn’t a worse school, even though the rankings portray it as so, because there is other criteria that can make a student worthy of acceptance.

The second reason this article attracted my attention is what it mentioned about diversity. This relates to what we’ve been discussing in class. Having standardized tests, such as LSATs, MCATs, SATs, and the ACTs, determine which student will progress in higher education creates an imbalance in enrollments. Students that are brought up in homes with higher incomes will be more likely to do well on these exams, because they’ll have the tools available to them that can lead them to success. They can afford tutors, prep courses, prep books, etc. , while the underprivileged cannot and will not have the same opportunities to prepare as they did. I agree that measures need to be taken to fix this issue and make it that diversity is just as much of a priority as high LSAT scores are. Furthermore, there should be more than one exam that can tell a students’ preparedness for law school. For example, when applying to undergraduate school, students have the option of taking the SATs or the ACTs. There should be an alternative to taking the LSAT that can allow students to have more leeway in how they study for such a significant exam.

Diversity or Discrimination?

The content discussed below will be based on this article:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/04/11/tweet-political-science-group-angers-many-women-field

When I saw that the title of this article involved a political science group, it automatically grabbed my attention (since I’m a political science major). The article is about the American Political Association’s advertising mechanisms for published articles. They use Twitter to promote others to read certain articles.

However, one of their tweets were controversial.  There was a tweet promoting an article about international NGOs. There is nothing wrong with that or with the wording of the tweet: “INGOs challenge existing social and political order on human rights. In this here article…” This information alone would be fine, but the problem is there was a photo of a smiling Asian woman attached to this tweet. While one of the co-authors was an Asian woman, Wendy Wong, it was not her photo attached to the tweet. Furthermore, the tweet and article was not about Asia. The picture had no relevance.

When speaking out against this to APSA, the response Wong was given was that “diverse stock images” are often used in conjunction with tweets and that this particular case was merely a mistake. However, Wong found that their other tweets tended to have images that actually did correspond with the topic of the article, so using diversity as an excuse was not justified. The tweet was deleted and an apology with an updated version was given, but there is a message that should be found here.

In class, we discussed the importance of diversity in college and how universities and colleges should have student distributions that represent the proportions of the population as a whole. We learned how many schools make diversity a priority, and we discussed how successful it can be based on our perspective of being students in Brooklyn College. Then, we debated about whether it would be fair for minorities to be able to get into schools with lower grades than the majority, and we concluded that it would be, because they have had less opportunities than the majority so it creates a balance of sorts.

It is sad to see how even though so much emphasis is being put on diversity, people can still use it as a way to justify discrimination. Wendy Wong is within the scope of higher education, being a political science associate professor, and unfortunately had to deal with this mistreatment. I just hope that people can learn to stop generalizing others as abstract entities and can start focusing on their depth and what they actually have to offer.

 

Chapter 10 Questions

  1. Is it a good idea to do as Altucher, who attended Cornell, advised and to invest tuition money on a business or some other venture as a replacement for attending college?
  2. Are some students just sent off to college because their families don’t know where to put them? Are some people in college just because that’s the only path option they are aware of, even though they don’t think college is suited for them?
  3. What do you think about programs that involve students getting credits for on-site work that they do? There was mention of companies that educate their workers through processes like boot camps. Do you think that is an efficient way to teach them what they know instead of them having to go to school to learn that?
  4. Is taking a year off in between college and high school a smart decision or wasteful? Is it good because people get worldly experiences, or is it bad because money just gets spent on expensive trips?
  5. Is higher education stuck in a vicious cycle due to the education gap, whereas people from higher income families have more of an ability to attend selective colleges, which can lead them to becoming rich as well and sending their children off to selective colleges as well?