Originally Posted by Val
Originally Posted by MonetFan
I do think some of the problem lies in the fact that we don't have the vocational training that the EU countries have and instead pretend that everyone should go to college. It's raised the stakes for families trying to send their children to a place they don't belong at a cost most can't afford, but they have so few other options to actually learn a trade or craft in this country.

Because of this, everyone fixates on GPA or some other numerical determinative of college entrance rather than simply asking "is our children learning?" (sorry for the Bush reference, I couldn't help myself)

Yes, I agree.

I think that the focus on GPA and test scores (both in college admissions at the high end and NCLB and high-stakes testing at the low end) drives people to do unhealthy things (e.g. grade grubbing & inflation, the Atlanta testing scandal). IMHO, all this is perfectly predictable.

It's true that systems using a single set of exams to determine university admissions put a lot of pressure on teenagers. But I wonder if we may have more pressure here: in this country, there's a huge amount of pressure to be a perfect student with a long list of extracurriculars, high SAT scores, etc. And then there's the lopsided nature of admissions that confer advantages for all kinds of groups (legacies, etc.). And even so, the admissions process is still pretty opaque.

And from what I've seen of European exams, the questions they ask are much more substantial than 2-minute-max multiple choice SAT questions.

At least when everything is based on one exam, the system is transparent and it treats everyone the same way. So, that's one big source of stress that doesn't exist in places like Europe.

When everything is based on "one exam", presumably for all the colleges in the country, who determines what that exam is? I don't trust the federal government to do so. In the U.S. there colleges can look at the ACT, SAT I (reasoning), SAT II (subject tests), A.P., and I.B. exams, and there also prestigious contests such as the AMC (math) whose scores some colleges ask about. Most of these exams have essay components. Multiple choice questions do have the advantage of permitting broad coverage of a subject.

In predicting college grades, both high school grades and SAT/ACT scores matter. Why shouldn't high school grades count?

I'm a staunch defender of tests on this site, but even I don't think tests and grades should be everything, even if they are of primary importance. A college could value business experience in a business major, research experience in a science major, hospital volunteering in a pre-med, and music and artistic achievement for arts majors. They could (and do) value these achievement even when unrelated to students academic plans, taking them as signs of hard work and ambition.