Comment by pessimizer

> Around COVID times many top universities experimented with removing test requirements from admissions, under an argument largely related to equity. It's been a failure everywhere, with many, if not most, universities already reversing it.

It's the universities that have failed. They've restricted admissions to a set of people who would learn no matter what the schools did, which is what makes them lazy.

When confronted with a set of students who haven't been provided with an enormous amount of childhood reading material, and the time, encouragement and social acceptance to indulge in it (the most faithful test predictor is childhood pleasure reading, the next best is parental income), they fail horribly.

The purpose of elite colleges for students is credentialism and networking, the purpose for the schools themselves is to force cultural conformity onto smart or extremely pressured students. They generally just tell you to go learn things by yourself. They have no particular insight into teaching, because they are supplied with students who don't need to be taught.