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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

#231

Post by Gibbon1 »

mehrdadn wrote: post #221
knzhou wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an articulate, socially well-adjusted person who can communicate their values and opinions in an intelligent way Yes, that's me. > and who is comfortable making connections with others And that will never be me. Leadership is inherently nepotistic. You simply aren't permitted to lead if you have the wrong class background or the wrong ethnicity. (There's a reason all Senators look exactly the same.) You're literall…

> You simply aren't permitted to lead if you have the wrong class background or the wrong ethnicity. (There's a reason all Senators look exactly the same.) In what sense did, I dunno, Obama and McConnell look exactly the same?

You might consider how Obama and Clinton being president drove the over-class completely insane.

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

#232

Post by bsder »

quartzite wrote: post #205
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…

This is exactly correct. Those who fight for fair admissions on the basis of intellectual ability and academic potential should hold up the SAT and standardized testing as a cornerstone of the admissions process. Standardized testing significantly levels the playing field for students across income brackets. Returns on study investment quickly diminish, and reaching a plateau on returns doesn't require much investmen…

I suspect this is just getting rid of redundancy. Everyone taking the SAT subject tests is probably taking the equivalent Advanced Placement test anyhow.

However, the biggest problems with these tests (and the AP tests) is that they are expensive--they cost a non-trivial amount of money to sign up for and they cost a lot of time to prepare for if your school doesn't offer direct AP classes.

The expensiveness is the barrier.

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

#233

Post by strbean »

brlewis wrote: post #168
MichaelDickens wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP comment seems completely relevant to SAT subject tests to me. The point is that removing a test from consideration, even if it's not the only test considered, makes it easier for rich people to game the application process.

No. The point about replacing a test with more subjective criteria is completely invalidated when, instead, multiple tests are replaced with a single test. EDIT: Instead of completely invalidated, I should say irrelevant to MIT's change. In another context it could be an important point.

I think the top level comment is based on the assumption that a greater quantity of objective data will lead to a greater weighting of objective data, and a lower quantity will lead to a lower weighting, leading to a greater weighting of subjective measures.

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

#234

Post by mcnamaratw »

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…

In the press release MIT says they are still looking at SAT scores. What they say they stopped looking at is the "SAT subject tests." That's something like the old Achievement Tests.

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

#235

Post by ebrenes »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #211
MichaelDickens wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the SAT were a joke, you wouldn't expect scores to follow a bell curve with only ~0.3% of people getting a perfect score, but they do.

This isn't a good argument, because the SAT (and other tests of the same kind) are normalised to have this property. The SAT may not be good tests, but that fact has nothing to do with the presence or absence of a normal distribution.

The SATs have a top score, if it were easy to game you'd find many people would clump at the top. That would make it impossible to normalize that distribution into a bell-shape because they're all clustered into the same bucket with no way of spreading them.

OP's point was that the perfect scores remain consistently outside of people's grasp despite the variety of resources available to prep for the exam. I only once managed to hit perfect score and my other best scores were one or two questions off. I had been taking the test since I was 11 (for various extracurricular camps/activities) and prepped multiple times for them. The biggest scores jumps were more closely related with my age and academic achievements than anything else.

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

#236

Post by pbhjpbhj »

thedance wrote: post #138
sriram_sun wrote: post #102

> "... 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.

The only criteria for English should be abilities at least as good as the worst teaching assistant in the undergraduate college. This is the lowest possible standard of English language proficiency. """ WHEN Mark W. Eichin showed up for his course in differential equations at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this year, he found that his instructor was a Hindustani whose spoken English was ''almost incomprehe…

Wouldn't demanding English language abilities help to reduce instances of this in the future? Like if they're letting students graduate with language deficits then the chance of tutors/teachers/professors having less language ability than desirable would seem to go up?

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

#237

Post by adtechperson »

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…

SAT scores is heavily correlated with income level (the data I have is for the standard tests, not the subject ones, but I would guess they follow a similar pattern).

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280232788_Race_Pove...

I applaud the MIT decision in this area.

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

#238

Post by mattkrause »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #216
mattkrause wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

Diversity in knowledge across the working population would seem preferable to homogeneity to me. Sure you want some core things, like all engineers being able to solve 2nd order DEs, but outside that you want diversity if you're looking for innovation and application to diverse fields.

In general, sure, but how much diversity you can reasonably expect for say, high school calculus? It’s not as though schools abandoned their infinitesimal-based curricula to match the AP syllabus better.

The AP US History curriculum also kind of anticipates your critique: “As has been the case for all prior versions of the AP U.S. History course, this AP U.S. History course framework includes a minimal number of individual names: the founders, several presidents and party leaders, and other individuals who are almost universally taught in college-level U.S. history courses. As history teachers know well, the material in this framework cannot be taught without careful attention to the individuals, events, and documents of American history; however, to ensure teachers have flexibility to teach specific content that is valued locally and individually, the course avoids prescribing details that would require all teachers to teach the same historical examples. Each teacher is responsible for selecting specific individuals, events, and documents for student investigation of the material in the course framework.”

https://apstudents.collegeboard.org/ap/pdf/ap-us-history-cou... (Page 11/15)

I would argue that it’s possible to have a good yet flexible standardized system; it’s just hard.

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

#239

Post by leetcrew »

triceratops wrote: post #125
NeverFade wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how exactly will you "dismantle it"? People want to pay thousands of dollars to try to gain access to elite institutions. No matter what test you'll come up with, someone will offer an expensive prep course for it, because they will have willing customers.

Mandate that colleges accept scores from at least 3 different standardized tests, administered by different companies, and that the scores must be easily comparable. That may help break ETS's stranglehold over the market and test fees or test prep material might become reasonable.

the SAT test fee is about $65 and there's tons of free prep material (including direct from college board). what would you consider a reasonable price?

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

#240

Post by pge »

WalterBright wrote: post #176
pge wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And eliminate legacy preference and ability for sports coaches to influence admissions.

I was rejected by MIT even though my father attended. I don't think MIT does legacy admissions, or sports admissions.

Didn’t mean that comment to be about MIT (who may not do legacy preference and certainly isnt lowering academic standards to win ncaa championships). But those are both factors at other top schools including the Ivies and Stanford
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