They'd be happy with a merit-based test if it tested the student's Leftist socio-political views.
If the University of California at Berkeley regents and policy makers concentrated in academic excellence only, and left their social engineering schemes at home, they'd be doing everyone a favor including themselves.
The National Merit Scholarships should be awarded based on these factors:
1. Queerness.
2. Hatred of America.
3. Support for Democrats.
Then there'd be no more complaints.
"Hayashi said there's no evidence the PSAT is the right way to determine eligibility for the scholarships. He also said it goes against accepted practice to depend so heavily on a test score."
What planet does this guy live on? Today, kids can't get out of high school or advance to the next grade in elementary school unless they pass a "high-stakes" test.
Yes, of course a merit scholarship should be based on one's race or financial status. After all, in today's world race determines merit and entitlements, doesn't it? And minorities and low-income students don't have many other options for grants or scholarships. </sarcasm>
As a white male, I think I qualified to apply for maybe three different scholarships worth between $25 and $50 each.
The NM scholarship is actually pretty small, compared to other scholarships that emphasize other factors. I'm sure the UC paid much more for other scholarships than for the NM winners.
Also, many NM scholarships are paid by companies of the students' parents or other companies, so the UC doesn't pay for all the NM scholarships.
What the article does not explain (typical shoddy journalism) is that PSAT is not used to AWARD the scholarships, but merely to establish an 'eligible' pool of intellectually gifted students from which a much smaller number of winners will be selected based upon grades, etc. The article does mention that the test is used to establish 'eligibility' but does not make clear that the scholarships are not awarded simply upon test scores.
The criterion that SHOULD be disputed is that (at least in the 1970s when I graduated from h.s., and I doubt it's been changed) is that the verbal score was given TWICE the weight of the math score when creating a composite score to determine eligibility - in other words, some edu-bureaucrats had determined that they should greatly discount mathematical abilities relative to verbal abilities in creating the eligibile list for the National Merit scholarships. Can we guess that the usual ed-school twits were involved in creating such a policy?? Why downgrade math prodigies who are not as verbally proficient?? This was probably an early form of political correctness aimed at keeping out of the eligible pool a small number of mathematically gifted students, overwhelmingly male, who are not nearly as verbally gifted (it did not matter to me personally, since my math and verbal scores were very close, but I always thought it was stupid to rule out from such a scholarship the kind of student who had phenomenal mathematical abilities but perhaps only middling verbal abilities, especially since math and science prowess are so terribly important to our society's success and survival).