Psychologists debate the meaning of students' falling SAT scores

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Novotney
Keyword(s):  
Sat Scores

College Rankings: Creating an Equitable Model of Transformation and Institutional Effectiveness

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-97
Author(s):  
Allison Hurst
Keyword(s):  
Social Mobility ◽  
Alternative Model ◽  
Institutional Effectiveness ◽  
Economic Returns ◽  
Sat Scores ◽  
Relative Lack ◽  
Ranking Systems ◽  
Working Class Students ◽  
Effectiveness Data

Colleges that serve working-class students show up poorly in traditional rankings of US colleges. Without appropriate outcome measures, measures of ‘quality’ of inputs drive most current ranking systems. The trouble is that quality is often just a measure of pre-existing privilege (e.g., selectivity, average SAT scores). In this article, I demonstrate the viability of a model that uses economic returns data while factoring in the relative lack of privilege of students attending any particular institution as a way of ranking that institution’s transformative efficacy and institutional effectiveness. The model was then tested on a diverse sample of 655 US colleges and universities for whom reliable economic returns and institutional effectiveness data are available. Unlike widely used rankings models, this proposed alternative model can distinguish between reproducing privilege (high economic returns as expected, low defaults, timely year to degree and fewer incompleters) and facilitating social mobility (higher returns and persistence than would be expected given the incoming characteristics of students). The article concludes with a discussion of the uses to which such a model could be best put.

scholarly journals Career Preparation and the Political Science Major: Evidence from Departments

2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (01) ◽  
pp. 87-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd A. Collins ◽  
H. Gibbs Knotts ◽  
Jen Schiff
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Department Chairs ◽  
Career Preparation ◽  
Sat Scores ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
University Campuses ◽  
Lack Of Information ◽  
Faculty And Administrators ◽  
Science Major ◽  
Science Departments

AbstractWe know little about the amount of career preparation offered to students in political science departments. This lack of information is particularly troubling given the state of the current job market and the growth of applied degree programs on university campuses. To address this issue, this article presents the results of a December 2010 survey of 279 political science department chairs that asked questions about the level of career preparation in their respective departments. Based on our empirical findings, we believe that political science departments are not doing enough to address their students' career preparation. Our results demonstrate that most departments rely on voluntary internships and faculty advisers to address career-related issues for political science majors. Only a few departments use required internships, required resumes, specific classes related to career preparation, and social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn to support career preparation. We also found substantial differences in career preparation across department type (BA, MA, and PhD) and between public and private universities, urban and rural universities, and universities with different average SAT scores. Our findings should interest faculty and administrators who are concerned with different approaches to career preparation on college campuses.

scholarly journals Family Background and the Responses to Higher Sat Scores

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georg Graetz ◽  
Bjorn Ockert ◽  
Oskar Nordström Skans
Keyword(s):  
Family Background ◽  
Sat Scores

scholarly journals Interdisciplinary summer bridge programs to improve student outcomes

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Easton R White
Keyword(s):  
Biological Sciences ◽  
Educational Opportunity ◽  
Summer Bridge ◽  
Sat Scores ◽  
Educational Opportunity Program ◽  
Bridge Programs ◽  
Bridge Program ◽  
And Performance ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Science Major

The Biology Undergraduate Scholars Program (BUSP) at UC Davis provides additional academic support and advising for a small (<40 students) cohort in the biological sciences each year. Students come from historically underrepresented racial or ethnic groups, the educational opportunity program, or have a disability. As part of the program, students participate in a two-week biology bridge program to prepare them for introductory ecology and evolution. The bridge program involves active learning assignments and team-based learning with a focus on the connection between biology and mathematics. We found that BUSP participants improved their biology knowledge through the summer bridge program. However, math confidence, SAT scores, Grit measures, and performance in the bridge program were not predictive of success in their biology course. We also found that BUSP students were more likely to remain in Life Science major and graduate.

Verbicide

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
David W. Orr
Keyword(s):  
Consumer Society ◽  
Young Scholar ◽  
Sat Scores ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
First Impression ◽  
Steep Decline ◽  
The Media ◽  
Words And Images ◽  
Academic Record

He entered my office for advice as a freshman advisee sporting nearly perfect SAT scores and an impeccable academic record—by all accounts a young man of considerable promise. During a 20-minute conversation about his academic future, however, he displayed a vocabulary that consisted mostly of two words: “cool” and “really.” Almost 800 SAT points hitched to each word. To be fair, he could use them interchangeably as “really cool” or “cool . . . really!” He could also use them singly, presumably for emphasis. When he became one of my students in a subsequent class I confirmed that my first impression of the young scholar was largely accurate and that his vocabulary, and presumably his mind, consisted predominantly of words and images derived from overexposure to television and the new jargon of computer- speak. He is no aberration, but an example of a larger problem, not of illiteracy but of diminished literacy in a culture that often sees little reason to use words carefully, however abundantly. Increasingly, student papers, from otherwise very good students, have whole paragraphs that sound like advertising copy. Whether students are talking or writing, a growing number have a tenuous grasp on a declining vocabulary. Excise “uh . . . like . . . uh” from virtually any teenage conversation, and the effect is like sticking a pin into a balloon. In the past 50 years, by one reckoning, the working vocabulary of the average 14-year-old has declined from some 25,000 words to 10,000 words (“Harper’s Index” 2000). This reflects not merely a decline in numbers of words but in the capacity to think. It also reflects a steep decline in the number of things that an adolescent needs to know and to name in order to get by in an increasingly homogenized and urbanized consumer society. This is a national tragedy virtually unnoticed in the media. It is no mere coincidence that in roughly the same half century the average person has learned to recognize more than 1,000 corporate logos but can recognize fewer than 10 plants and animals native to their locality (Hawken 1993, 214).

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