petition<\/a> calling for the \u201creinstatement of the SAT\/ACT mathematics requirement for applicants to STEM majors beginning with the 2027 admissions cycle.\u201d<\/p>\nEndorsing their STEM colleagues\u2019 petition, more than 80 humanities and social science professors across the UC system released an open letter Thursday urging the university to go beyond the STEM\u2019s letter call by including the SAT and ACT\u2019s verbal reasoning requirement as well.<\/p>\n
The humanities letter marks an escalation of a faculty-led campaign to reverse the 2020 UC Board of Regents decision to remove all standardized testing requirements from freshman admissions. While the STEM letter focuses on declining math skills, the humanities letter argues the alleged harms of test-blind admissions extend across disciplines.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout foundational literacy, students face difficulties across university disciplines,\u201d the letter states. \u201cEliminating the metrics that diagnose these preparation gaps imposed significant barriers for underprepared students and their instructors alike.\u201d<\/p>\n
The letter additionally challenges that standardized testing requirements are inequitable, arguing that \u201cno admissions criterion is uncorrelated with social background,\u201d and asserts that extracurricular activities and essay writing style are strongly associated with social class.<\/p>\n
In a Thursday letter to the Academic Senate, chair Ahmet Palazoglu said the senate\u2019s Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools, or BOARS, approved a roadmap that will establish two faculty workgroups to \u201cundertake a comprehensive review of key admissions policies.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cConsistent with the University\u2019s tradition of shared governance between the administration and the faculty, I strongly support this approach and the deliberate, evidence-based study it requires,\u201d Palazoglu said in the letter.<\/p>\n
Palazoglu also added that the review will involve input from various stakeholders, including campus and systemwide leaders, K-12 and higher education partners and other groups \u201cwith a vested interest in UC students.\u201d<\/p>\n
Each workgroup will consist of at least 13 UC senate faculty. The workgroups will also include California State Board of Education representatives, representatives from the UC Office of the President\u2019s Office of Undergraduate Admissions and representatives from UCOP\u2019s Institutional Research and Academic Planning unit.<\/p>\n
The first workgroup will consider the use of standardized test scores in freshman admissions, while the second will focus on reviewing the UC system\u2019s current \u201cA-G\u201d admissions framework \u201cto determine whether A-G requirements adequately prepare first-year applicants for success.\u201d Both groups are required to present a final report with their findings to the BOARS chair by May 15, 2027.<\/p>\n
In 2019, the range of SAT scores for the middle 50% of admitted UC Berkeley students was 680-790 for the math section, and 660-750 for the reading and writing section, according to UC Admissions. A perfect score on each section is 800.<\/p>\n
The composite ACT score for the middle 50% of admitted UC Berkeley students was between 30 and 35 in 2019. A perfect ACT composite score is a 36.<\/p>\n
In a statement about the senate\u2019s plan, UC President James Milliken emphasized that the UC Board of Regents and UC leadership \u201ctake very seriously the critical issue of college preparedness.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are few things more important on our agenda,\u201d Milliken said in the statement. \u201cThe faculty review will focus on both preparation and admissions, including whether standardized testing should be required. It\u2019s important that UC gets this right. The UC Board of Regents and I will receive an update on the Academic Assembly\u2019s work in July, and we look forward to considering the recommendations that emerge from this important work.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The UC Academic Senate has announced that it plans to review UC admissions policies, specifically regarding the use…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358313,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1871,145859,145861,145860,145862,145863,129012,143,145,144,38369,138473,15255,138475,41249,30647,29527],"class_list":["post-358312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-act","tag-ahmet-palazoglu","tag-board-of-admissions-and-relations-with-schools","tag-boars","tag-california-state-board-of-education","tag-institutional-research-and-academic-planning","tag-james-milliken","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-office-of-undergraduate-admissions","tag-sat","tag-stem","tag-uc-academic-senate","tag-uc-board-of-regents","tag-uc-office-of-the-president","tag-uc-system"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}