In my home country Iran we had the equivalent of SAT general and subject tests. I did pretty poorly in general tests, but the subject tests saved me (near perfect scores in physics and math) and opened the door for me to go to a good university in my country. Just to get a clear understanding of my financials, I was living off 1$ per month at that time which was just enough to buy heavily subsidized food stamps in college. I ended up graduating with a PhD degree and worked at several top companies in the US later. This seems to me like a case of a cure that is worse than the disease.
MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions
281–290 of 465 posts
Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
These advantages are more subtle than even that. I was shamed by some older fellow alums when I told people that my parents had hired someone to go over my application and essays. Their stance was that my parents gave me an unfair advantage (note, both of my parents are immigrants who did not even finish high school). My retort to them was point out that most of them didn't exactly grow up in the crime ridden rural p…
>coming from a more advantageous social-economic background grants you so many benefits in many ways // It's not all benefit: you can be taught to be lazy, not to be self-reliant, you can lack tenacity and resilience, you can have perverse expectations and a sheltered view of the World. Such things can turn out to be a hindrance to self-fulfillment.
Yeah that's a fair point for sure and I've seen examples of those too. However, even then some well resourced parents will still clear a path for these children to get into selective schools as the recent college admissions scandals revealed.
Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Hard to say if that's actually reasonable, given there's exactly 1 (maybe 2, if you count the ACT) test providers. Not really a competitive market. For a multiple-choice exam, administered electronically to dozens of test-takers supervised by one proctor...is that actually reasonable? Plus they charge you $15 extra if you want more than 4 scores. Most students apply to more than 4 colleges. Are they physically mailin…
I don't mean reasonable in a market equilibrium sense, more of a "hey, that price seems about right" sense.
I'm sure it's not trivial to make multiple versions of the same test every year where the scores are all comparable with each other. then you have to distribute the materials while minimizing the chance that they leak and people come in with the answers memorized.
the college board itself makes about 15% profit each year. definitely a lot better than some market segments, but hardly exorbitant. I guess they might find some ways of trimming the fat if they had more competition, but who knows. more competitors means fewer test-takers to amortize the test design costs over.
Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The problem is that "articulate, socially well-adjusted person who can communicate their values and opinions in an intelligent way and who is comfortable making connections with others" is (a) highly subjective, and (b) only a means to an end. The end is to have a productive civil society where people do not prey on other people. Unfortunately, all these highly subjective characteristics are used by people to prey on…
If a university's objective is to select the applicants most likely to reflect prestige and wealth back onto it, the university is best served by picking those who can most effectively cause themselves to be selected (rather than the most academically gifted students).
Admissions essentially boils down to "impress me." (Not saying that's good for society, but it's good for the university.)
It's one of the exceptional cases where Goodhart's Law—"a targeted metric is no longer good"—doesn't hold.
Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The tests don't not work (I believe that within the middle of bell-curve they accomplish their goal well), but at the extremes they are prone to gamification, especially to those in the know. For example, the pre-2017 SAT had some well known (and some lesser known) tricks that you would only know by studying the test, rather than the material: - ALL sections (and sub-sections) have questions that strictly increase in…
Wow, this is a remarkable level of gaming that I never was aware of!
> - Within the grammar questions, Choice (e) "None of the above" is 99% of the time NEVER the answer.
> - The math questions will usually have (1) answer that is an outlier. 95% of the time, this is not the correct answer; (2) will be similar to the correct answer in different ways; and (1) will be the correct answer
This is exactly the reason that, when I design tests, I strive to make "none of the above" or the outlier answer the correct one about 20% of the time. I really hope the SAT writers are doing that now.
> ALL sections (and sub-sections) have questions that strictly increase in difficulty / projected "miss-rate" as time goes on.
The computerized GRE goes even further... it's like a videogame, it feeds you harder questions the better you do, then reverts to easier ones when you mess up.
Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions
#286Anybody 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…
The premise of your answer is that MIT wants good "students" and "test takers". What if that's not what they want so much anymore? A test is supposed to be a metric, an indicator of something. But metrics tend to become target as soon as they're exposed. Maybe then they still remain an indicator of something, but not necessarily what they were originally intended to filter for.
I understand that it might feel like the goalposts are being moved for people who optimize to score high on such metrics, but such is the nature of this type of games. That's also why search engine companies have to keep refining their algorithms.
Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
The tests don't not work (I believe that within the middle of bell-curve they accomplish their goal well), but at the extremes they are prone to gamification, especially to those in the know. For example, the pre-2017 SAT had some well known (and some lesser known) tricks that you would only know by studying the test, rather than the material: - ALL sections (and sub-sections) have questions that strictly increase in…
Wow, this is a remarkable level of gaming that I never was aware of! > - Within the grammar questions, Choice (e) "None of the above" is 99% of the time NEVER the answer. > - The math questions will usually have (1) answer that is an outlier. 95% of the time, this is not the correct answer; (2) will be similar to the correct answer in different ways; and (1) will be the correct answer This is exactly the reason that,…
I completely agree, and as much as I hate CollegeBoard hope they've done more to reinvent their tests, as I do think objective measurement of some kind does have a place in admissions, even though perhaps as not the end-all-be-all it used to be.
I used to be semi-adjacent to that sphere, but I do not know anything about the current format of the tests other than what is published.
Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's hard to create an accountable system to identify "smooth-talkers". We already know that perceived charisma is highly dependent on attractiveness, ethnicity, and other innate factors. What we could do is gauge students' communication ability in a way that is less subject to these factors. Which we already do, by examining students' writing.
What's the difference between perceived charisma and charisma?
Charisma that can come off in a 1 hour meeting, vs. ability to communicate and work with a team towards a goal.
Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The tests don't not work (I believe that within the middle of bell-curve they accomplish their goal well), but at the extremes they are prone to gamification, especially to those in the know. For example, the pre-2017 SAT had some well known (and some lesser known) tricks that you would only know by studying the test, rather than the material: - ALL sections (and sub-sections) have questions that strictly increase in…
The SAT is intended to test aptitude, not knowledge. It's right there in the name.
Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. I took all of the AP equivalents of the SAT2s senior year before starting at MIT. It seemed pointless. And my parents paid for each one. Edit: I meant I took the SAT subject tests along with their AP equivalents.
Aren't the AP tests far more difficult than the SAT subject tests? That's what I remember at least for chemistry (maybe?) back when I took both exams.
Yes, AP is college level, and SAT is high school level.