Title nitpick, "SAT Subject Tests" is in a specific case in the original title, and the lack of title-case on "Subject Tests" is making it hard to understand the true announcement.
IE. SATs are staying, SAT Subject Tests are not.
MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions
141–150 of 465 posts
Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anyone can study the SAT prep books for free at a bookstore a few hours at a time daily. If your offended by that, what about professors or HS teachers who teach certain sections of the textbook because it's going to be on the exam. One can self-study the SAT prep book or self-study their biology book and in both cases can potentially be more knowledgeable than those who attended a formal university class or prep wor…
> If your offended by that, what about professors or HS teachers who teach certain sections of the textbook because it's going to be on the exam. Yes, this another big problem caused by (too much emphasis on) standardised testing. I learnt the most in classes that didn't do this. But people do better on tests when they do do this. Standardised tests are destroying our education system.
Surely the standardization matters?
Teaching to an aptitude test is clearly counterproductive (and ditto tricks for hacking the test--like just testing each multiple choice answer instead of solving an equation).
On the other hand. the AP classes I took in high school (admittedly, a long time ago) seemed pretty reasonable. Perhaps you could quibble with how the syllabus weighted various subjects, or the (mercifully few) classes on how structure exam answers. Overall though, I felt like I got a decent education in Spanish/History/Physics/etc from those courses.
Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions
#143To clarify, SATs are still required, subject tests are different.
From page:
"Will you still require the SAT or the ACT?"
"We will continue to require the SAT or the ACT, because..."
edited: formatting
Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions
#144Is there some other standardised exam (AP? IB?) that they will be considering instead? I went through a very non-traditional route to university, and standardised exams were an important part of me being able to demonstrate preparedness for university. I hesitate to just go on what grades someone gets at school, as it simply puts them at the mercy of their teachers and administrators, and some people like me didn’t really go to school...
Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions
#145Is SAT prep known to make any difference?
Back when I applied to MIT (early 80s) our entire SAT prep was "fill in the circles completely, bring only #2 pencils to the test and if you can't eliminate even one possible answer skip the question." Back then I never heard of anyone using any more advice than just that.
A few years ago I bought some SAT prep books for my kid and he never cracked them.
Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
On top of that exam dumps are much less efficient when it comes to SAT IIs, where questions are much more diverse an subject knowledge is essential. SAT I is the one that is easy to game.
Eh its all easily game-able. The SAT (and ACT) is a joke. So are the subject tests. The only subject test that wasn't laughable are the language ones (since you can't "intuit" spanish as easily as math or physics or chemistry). Its not bad if you are a good test taker (a dumb skill but a useful one) or wealthy. My friends were tutored idiots and did well (2200+ SAT, 700+ subject tests) and i was a good test taker (sa…
30 years ago, the ACT test changed enough that it was no longer a valid test to use as entry for Mensa. Prior to 1990, an ACT test could be used as evidence for Mensa admission.
So... the ACT wasn't always 'a joke', but doesn't have the same impact that it had decades ago.
Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
SAT prep courses advertise that they can increase scores by 100 points but generally they're lying in order to sell more test courses. But the real number is closer to "11 to 15 points on the math section and 6 to 9 points on the verbal."[1] [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228337033_Using_Lin...
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?
Students naturally do better without test prep, too. They get older, their brains grow more, and they’re more intelligent. Much of the score increase people see is attributable to that. And most kids bright enough to exercise good test taking skills will have them without special training, I guess? 11 years of school will do that.
Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions
#148Is SAT prep known to make any difference? Back when I applied to MIT (early 80s) our entire SAT prep was "fill in the circles completely, bring only #2 pencils to the test and if you can't eliminate even one possible answer skip the question." Back then I never heard of anyone using any more advice than just that. A few years ago I bought some SAT prep books for my kid and he never cracked them.
Practice definitely helped me.
Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions
#149Anybody 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…
>mean more advantage for smooth talking, photogenic, well-connected people. The whole point of the American University is to produce these kind of people so that shouldn’t be surprising. Otherwise you could earn a degree via self study proctored exams. Lack of objectivity during the application is a symptom not a cause.
I'd like to see more people being able to take self-study proctored exams, for those fields that can do it. There's a lot to be said for what is essentially a vo-tech education. It's purely objective and very useful.
That would leave a lot more space open in schools for creative work. That includes both academic research and the humanities, which are less objective but nonetheless valuable. As has been pointed out before, during the current health crisis, people turn to the arts: TV, books, podcasts, video games, etc. These are things that are hard to learn with self-study and impossible to test for -- except for the test of whether people will want to consume them.
Even programmers eventually need at least some of this. A development team requires a lot of people trained at a purely vo-tech, objective level to be experts in the various technologies. But for a product to be successful, it also requires people who know what its users want, which is much harder to judge objectively, and harder to learn from a book.
I believe too many programmers go to university to learn what they could learn on their own, or at a much less expensive school that doesn't try give a broad education. We need a lot of those, and employers make a mistake in rejecting people who don't have that university degree. Worse, even among those with that university degree, they test them purely on their objective skills, and then later complain that they produce ugly interfaces and write terribly.
Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions
#150Ah man, 20 years too late for me!