this is a perfect example of why governmental services are so important - even if they are often run poorly. Without them, dis-equities inherently perpetuate due to external incentives.

The SAT is treated as a standardized test but it, as you note, is inaccessible to many. It is not government run or organized. I've found, from teaching undergraduates, that most of the students who go to college presume that everyone takes the SATs, that it is government administered, and that it is free.

compare this to the, still far from perfect and problematic in other ways, centralized university admissions testing system in many other countries.

Wow. As someone that isn't in the US, but grew up watching a lot of US TV, I had this same assumption. How the fuck is the primary method of judging student admission to University not a government run service? Wow.

As you say, contrast that to my experience where everyone took University Entrance exams in their final year of school. Score over X and you have the right to go to a university. Don't score high enough? The university can still choose to admit you at their discretion.

> How the fuck is the primary method of judging student admission to University not a government run service?

Because it's only de facto the primary method, as evidenced by MIT dropping it for a while there. They didn't need government permission to do that. Even public universities here generally have a high degree of autonomy regarding such things.

MIT is private unlike most of the other land-grant schools.

College Board is a nonprofit organization[0] and thus is partially funded by the government to say nothing of any other grants they may have received. ACT Inc is the same way.

Instead of funding The One True Test, the US government partially funds every test competing to be the best college placement test.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_Board

How does being a nonprofit imply "partially funded by the government"?

Tax exemptions.

Assuming you claim tax exemptions annually, are you partially funded by the government? :-P

To a much, much lesser degree, yes.

Uk qualification exams (GCSE and ALevels) are run by private boards. (Cambridge and Edexcel are the two big ones). These are effectively entrance exams, in that university offers are strongly dependent on them.

> How the fuck is the primary method of judging student admission to University not a government run service?

Well, I mean.. America is experimental capitalism. Why run anything government when it can be for profit and 'the market' will solve any and all issues with it?

It turns out 'the market' will skew in favor of making a small amount of people rich over actually improving the lives of anyone, but hey, that's freedom baby!

They're really precious about it though, so don't criticise this system out loud.

That's nice and all but the College Board is nonprofit and they administer the SAT.

It’s a multibillion dollar nonprofit who’s ceo makes over a million a year.

Do with that what you will.

many schools are not public as with the SAT which is also "not-for-profit"

I wonder how one could codify a regulation for schools requiring entrance test to provide "reasonable" accommodations for prospective students to take it; like some parent comments mentioned not everyone can feasibly get to a testing center

> How the fuck is the primary method of judging student admission to University not a government run service? Wow.

Probably the same reason that the Federal Reserve Bank is not a government entity (they only have a meaningless government "oversight board") even though it loans all money to the US Government with interest and has never been audited.

I really hate this meme. The federal reserve is very much under the purview of the legislature. If the legislature isn't choosing to act in the way you would like, well, then that's a completely separate complaint. Implying that the federal reserve is somehow independent from the government is dishonest.

You think the Board of Governors is meaningless? Do you realize the Fed turns over interest it earns to the US Treasury? What an odd thing to bring up in this context.

Now that we know that you have a dislike of the Federal Reserve system, you didn't actually answer the question by stating a reason. What would "the same reason" be?

How can you seriously believe the Fed isn't a government entity? I'm legitimately struggling to understand how you came to such a misguided conclusion.

The ownership structure of the Federal Reserve's 12 constituent reserve banks makes the Fed a mix of private and public banking. Commercial banks hold shares in each of the reserve banks. As shareholders, they elect 6 of the 9 regional directors. So while it's largely a governmental organization, ownership and influence from private banking is certainly present.

How can you believe it is? I'm legitimately struggling to understand how you came to such a misguided conclusion.

Because it:

- was created by the US government

- is ran by US government appointees, who are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate

- has to make annual reports to Congress

- returns all its profits to the US government

- describes itself as a government agency. [0]

Does the Fed have more independence than, say, the Department of Agriculture? Yes, but an independent government agency is still a government entity.

[0] "The Federal Reserve, like many other central banks, is an independent government agency..." https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_12799.htm

Because beliefs tend to emerge from ideology as opposed to the other way around. Then those beliefs become the api for interacting with information

It's really weird to see this as the top comment.

Is there evidence physical access to the test center still a problem today (small or large)?

Is SAT worse than other criteria (such as extra-curriculum achievements) when looking at those poor suburbun middle of nowhere students? i.e. even in this example, did SAT actually made thing worse for those people when comparing against the alternative.

Sorry buddy, I can't give you anything other than my anecdata. No knowledge on whether anyone has done any studies on this specifically but lack of public infrastructure contributing to the income disparity has been widely studied.

It was hard enough for me to take the GRE when I went to a uni of 50,000 in a city of around 1 million. The testing center on campus naturally was booked out long in advance. Nearest center was 35 mins away in the outerbelt suburbs in another county at that point I believe, in some huge office park on a stroad without sidewalks nowhere near any bus lines. If I didn't have a car to borrow, there would have been zero way for me as a college student to get to this student testing center short of reserving three hours per leg to bike on de facto highways, which is baffling, but that was the reality.

Is there evidence that physical access has improved? The idea that you’re espousing, that things must have gotten better, is a belief that needs to be backed up.

It’s not just the getting to a testing center, it’s awareness (and cost) of the process.

Was a long time ago now, but parents weren’t really worried about or involved in my college prep process, so I had to figure it out for myself.

It wasn’t until later I realized it would have been better to start taking the test way before graduation. To say nothing of the benefits of test prep..

I took AP classes in high school, but couldn't afford to pay $65 per exam (at the time) to take the AP test for college credit.

That was my situation, also. It sucked because in general, all the other kids in school who were academically gifted were from well-to-do families, and I think I was the only one taking AP calc or physics whose family couldn't afford the test.

How were you able to afford taking the classes for credit instead, at a cost of over two orders of magnitude more per class?

I imagine through either scholarships or taking on bunches of debt. I was nowhere near as aggressive as some other classmates, but I managed to grab ~20k of total scholarships that helped me out immensely for college. Still a small chunk of what was needed for college, but it was an option I had compared to high school just making me eat the admissions and AP test costs wholesale.

Fortunately my parent did cover these costs, but I know others weren't so fortunate.

Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems like you assuming they took the class for credit at university. Community college is also a possibility where it would be cheaper or around the same price. That also comes with the benefit of financial aid.

Community college is cheap, but isn't $65 for four credits cheap. Most financial aid I've seen has been in the form of loans, which also won't be as cheap as getting credit for those classes from testing out.

> The real culprit here is the lack of public infrastructure.

What was your area like? I grew up similarly poor but in a wealthy area and would walk several miles to a public library for early computer access, biked to school, etc.

Even then, our school offered SAT, etc.

My SAT's weren't on campus. It was on some other campus I never heard of on the other side of town. I biked the school but without a parent would have needed to trek across town on a saturday morning (easily 20+ miles, in the mid 00's right before smartphones would just provide a GPS, so I'd be juggling printed MapQuest directions on a bike) to get there. I'd be cutting it if I took a bus since they ran hourly and I believe the weekend buses started at 8Am for a 9AM test time.

Also note that I could drive by this time but we only had one car between my mother and I.

Not sure I would call the area I lived in wealthy. Probably middle-class suburban area. My high school at the time did not offer SAT/ACT testing on campus. If I recall correctly, and it's been a while so I might be misremembering, the closest SAT/ACT testing location was at the community college in the next city over.

That's not the political argument being made against them though.

Yes, I'm aware. That's why I'm giving a different perspective.

Have you ever tried using a bicycle?

I heard bicycles works great with bootstraps. Maybe you should suggest bootstraps as well - they'd probably do the trick!

Have you ever been to the rural US? Things are very far apart (often 10s of miles) and riding a bike may not be practical for things in the same way as in an urban or suburban area.

Yep - this. I wasn't even in /that/ rural of an area, but I was still ~20 miles (32 Kilometers) away from the nearest testing center. No vehicle to take myself.