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MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

mitadmissions.org

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Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

#101

Post by thaumasiotes »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #97
thaumasiotes wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those studies were mostly funded and influenced by the college board, and they needed that to be true, so that’s what they found. The SAT draws a huge amount of overtly hostile attention. So does SAT prep. But these highly motivated SAT-hostile researchers haven't been able to produce the results they need.

That simply isn’t true, eg see https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/05/... The College Board can’t really have it both ways. And of course: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/college-... Which is just one example of pulling out all the stops.

Yes, no one disputes that memorizing an answer key can give you a higher score. But by the same token, no one believes that the influence of cheating is of interest when studying potential gains from "test prep".

Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

#102

Post by sriram_sun »

> "... for non-native English speakers, we strongly recommend taking the TOEFL if you have been using English for less than 5 years or do not speak English at home or in school..."

I hope that TOEFL is offered on a pass/fail criteria. For. e.g. if you score (say) 85% or more, it shouldn't matter if you score 100% for purposes or communication or comprehension.

Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

#103

Post by BurningFrog »

dawg- wrote: post #91
knzhou wrote: post #57

Anybody cheering the exclusion of some test or other, because it was a pain to study for in high school, is simply not noticing the frog-boiling secondary effects going on. Every bit of emphasis taken out of objective results mean more advantage for smooth talking, photogenic, well-connected people. Yes, some misguided parents waste thousands of dollars on SAT courses. But students can also prep using the $20 officia…

What you call a "smooth-talker" is what someone else would call an articulate, socially well-adjusted person who can communicate their values and opinions in an intelligent way and who is comfortable making connections with others. Perhaps if this was the standard college admissions used, public schools would have more incentive to educate students as functional humans rather than test-taking drones.

Well, maybe.

But being the kind of articulate person college people appreciate is also a strong cultural marker that you come from the "college tribe".

Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

#104

Post by jimmyvalmer »

These were called "Achievement Tests" in the early 90s, and man, they were much harder than the SAT. If the current "Subject Tests" approximate their level of difficulty, then it's a clear mistake for MIT to disregard these datapoints. When I was applying to college, yes, people paid for SAT prep but very few paid for Achievement Test prep, and so Achievement Tests were a superior indicator.

Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

#105

Post by j88439h84 »

dawg- wrote: post #91
knzhou wrote: post #57

Anybody cheering the exclusion of some test or other, because it was a pain to study for in high school, is simply not noticing the frog-boiling secondary effects going on. Every bit of emphasis taken out of objective results mean more advantage for smooth talking, photogenic, well-connected people. Yes, some misguided parents waste thousands of dollars on SAT courses. But students can also prep using the $20 officia…

What you call a "smooth-talker" is what someone else would call an articulate, socially well-adjusted person who can communicate their values and opinions in an intelligent way and who is comfortable making connections with others. Perhaps if this was the standard college admissions used, public schools would have more incentive to educate students as functional humans rather than test-taking drones.

Valuable point, I don't see this framing enough.

Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

#106

Post by JamesBarney »

yardie wrote: post #8

I used to think the SATs were fair. Until I found out how much money was being spent on SAT prep. And those expensive prep courses had the potential to increase scores over 100 points. I took the recommended SAT prep course through my high school. It was 2 weekends of going over material that might be on the exam and a workbook recommended by The College Board. Imagine my surprise going to university and meeting stud…

You can get like 80% of the value of an expensive sat prep course from a cheap sat book.

But money also buys you grades, gpa, extracurriculars, and recommendations.

Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

#107

Post by fallingknife »

knzhou wrote: post #57

Anybody cheering the exclusion of some test or other, because it was a pain to study for in high school, is simply not noticing the frog-boiling secondary effects going on. Every bit of emphasis taken out of objective results mean more advantage for smooth talking, photogenic, well-connected people. Yes, some misguided parents waste thousands of dollars on SAT courses. But students can also prep using the $20 officia…

But that's entirely the point. The people bitching about how the SAT isn't fair aren't smart poor people who are being beaten out by upper middle class losers, but rather upper middle class losers being beaten out by smart poor people. They tell themselves that the test isn't fair, but a part of them knows that they could never get into the 1500's even with all the prep in the world, so they try to get the admissions changed to a more bullshit-centric approach that they know favors them. And they say they are doing it to help the poor and disadvantaged to give themselves moral cover.

Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

#108

Post by BoiledCabbage »

knzhou wrote: post #57

Anybody cheering the exclusion of some test or other, because it was a pain to study for in high school, is simply not noticing the frog-boiling secondary effects going on. Every bit of emphasis taken out of objective results mean more advantage for smooth talking, photogenic, well-connected people. Yes, some misguided parents waste thousands of dollars on SAT courses. But students can also prep using the $20 officia…

How is this comment upvoted? MIT has not removed the requirement to take SAT tests.

> We will continue to require the SAT or the ACT, because our research has shown these tests, in combination with a student’s high school grades and coursework, are predictive of success in our challenging curriculum.

This is typical of a knee-jerk reaction without even understanding their policy. Let alone reading the actual post. It's the answer to the very first question at the top of the post. I thought HN would do better than this.

Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

#109

Post by seanmcdirmid »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #101
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That simply isn’t true, eg see https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/05/... The College Board can’t really have it both ways. And of course: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/college-... Which is just one example of pulling out all the stops.

Yes, no one disputes that memorizing an answer key can give you a higher score. But by the same token, no one believes that the influence of cheating is of interest when studying potential gains from "test prep".

That isn’t just it though: they have access to old tests, they have access to test takers who memorize questions, given the importance and popularity of any test, these options will arise and people with means will have access to them.

There is no avoiding Goodhart’s law.

Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

#110

Post by bermanoid »

closeparen wrote: post #52
asdfman123 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former SAT tutor (and a guy who gamed the hell out of the SAT) I have trouble believing that. There are only a few classes of questions they ask on the test, and if you master them the whole test is a walk in the park. Maybe the problem is most students just don't give a damn about the classes their parents make them take? Can someone explain the findings in this paper?

The SAT is designed to be an intelligence test, not a course final, and it's possible that the large team of education and psychometrics people who've been working on it for decades know what they're doing. Armchair speculation: there are probably some really bright kids out there with poor test-taking skills, and prep likely has a dramatic effect on scores for them , but most students are not that. Did you actually…

Not GP, but also a test prep teacher in a previous life. I always scored well on the SAT and test well in general, so I can't speak to personal improvement there, but a few points:

First, the test prep companies heavily encourage (and may even require?) students to take the test multiple times. That change alone will boost most people's top score by a solid margin, because it's a noisy test. The first response they always gave to people complaining about lack of improvement was "take the test again, and if you still haven't improved, take the course again for free, and then take the test again".

Second, psychometric expertise is great, but the goal of the SAT is not to be impossible to train for except as a secondary thing. It's really hard to do, especially when you are such a high value optimization target and have to build a test that doesn't rely on much specific knowledge and can be quickly scored. A lot of what the SAT courses do is just teach students to make slightly more accurate guesses on multiple-choice questions where someone unfamiliar with test strategy would leave things blank. That alone tends to boost scores, and some of the other strategies are fairly clever to help avoid common mistakes.

Last, though I didn't have room to improve on the SAT, I also taught GRE classes and can speak to my improvement there. The math section is trivial to get an 800 on (it's easier than the SAT math, or at least it was when I taught 15+ years ago), but the verbal section is quite tough if you haven't studied, and in a lot of ways is a glorified vocabulary test, and the reading comprehension sections can be pretty tough as well. Before I trained to teach the courses, my verbal score was a 490 (on the real test, not practice), so I was considering not even trying to teach (there's some threshold you have to hit, maybe 700 at the time?), but the trainer encouraged all of us to try anyways because he said the content made such a difference. After just two weekends of intensive teacher training, I tested again and ended up with a 740. After teaching the course around a dozen times, I'm pretty confident I could have hit 800 without any difficulty, you basically just have to get used to the types of questions that they ask and get in the headspace of the question authors. Just one data point, but I definitely believe that this stuff is effective.

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