Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

mitadmissions.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 465 posts

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

#291

Post by lonelappde »

RandallBrown wrote: post #127
BoiledCabbage wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Probably because many (most?) people don't take or know about the subject tests. I thought I had never heard of them, but after looking at wikipedia, it looks like they were called the SAT II when I was in high school. I remember that existing, but never knew why you would take them and never knew anybody that did. It's not a stretch to imagine people being confused. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT_Subject_Tests

It's explicitly explained in the very short article. Yet somehow people lacking basic reading comprehension are en masse bemoaning the dumbing down of kids these days.

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

#292

Post by _hardwaregeek »

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…

This is not entirely true. SAT scores can be used as ways to admit more privileged students, as they tend to have access to more test prep along with privileges such as extra time:

> In 2010 three College Board researchers analyzed data from more than 150,000 students who took the SAT, and they found that the demographics of the two “discrepant” groups differed substantially. The students with the inflated SAT scores were more likely to be white or Asian than the students in the deflated-SAT group, and they were much more likely to be male. Their families were also much better off. Compared with the students with the deflated SAT scores, the inflated-SAT students were more than twice as likely to have parents who earned more than $100,000 a year and more than twice as likely to have parents with graduate degrees. These were the students — the only students — who were getting an advantage in admissions from the SAT. And they were exactly the kind of students that Trinity was admitting in such large numbers in the years before Pérez arrived.

> By contrast, according to the College Board’s demographic analysis, students in the deflated-SAT group, the ones whose SAT scores were significantly lower than their high school grades would have predicted, were twice as likely to be black as students in the inflated-SAT group, nearly twice as likely to be female and almost three times as likely to be Hispanic. They were three times as likely as students in the inflated-SAT group to have parents who earned less than $30,000 a year, and they were almost three times as likely to have parents who hadn’t attended college. They were the students — the only students — whose college chances suffered when admissions offices considered the SAT in addition to high school grades.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/10/magazine/coll...

The article goes on to explain that while grade point average is relatively consistent across income level, SAT scores are skewed towards the rich. Schools have realized this, which is why many schools no longer require the SAT or ACT.

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

#293

Post by fyz »

knzhou wrote: post #285
thebradbain wrote: post #254

Earlier 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,…

> 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.

Isn't that one of the better ways to finely calibrate a score? Rough approximation of heapsort?

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

#295

Post by 0xff00ffee »

saithound wrote: post #55
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…

The SAT is not fair. By taking an expensive prep course, you can potentially increase your SAT score by 100 (although that's quite extreme, the average improvement attributed to SAT prep is closer to 20 points). That's a significant, but not earth-shattering improvement: it moves you from the 75th percentile to the 84th, or from the 97th percentile to the 99th. Now let's compare that to other criteria used in the col…

MIT requires interviews, too. But complaining that rich people have advantages is a bit of a "no shit, sherlock."

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

#296

Post by johnmarcus »

>For all applicants: We require the SAT or the ACT. We do not require the ACT writing section or the SAT optional essay. > we still require the score because it is predictive in conjunction with other acedemic factors

So.....basically nothing has changed and the headline is extremely misleading.

Edit: so apparently this applies to the "subject" tests. I never took those and didn't know they were a thing, now I do.

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

#297

Post by lonelappde »

newen wrote: post #130
BurningFrog wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Exactly. People don't talk about class enough in this topic. The kind of people that college interviewers appreciate (in terms of behavior) will almost always be upper middle class people and those who know enough to behave like upper middle class people.

That's not true anymore in the "diversity" era.

Harvard just had a huge lawsuit about that.

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

#298

Post by pfranz »

knzhou wrote: post #241
adtechperson wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And everything else I mentioned is correlated even more strongly.

Is it? I've heard about the movement to make the SAT optional for years. The argument was that grades correlate with success much more than SAT scores. That SAT scores were how privileged were "gaming the system" because they could afford tutors, can take it multiple times, and appeal for phony disability claims allowing extra test taking time.

I'm all for objective tests, but a single test mostly shows subject knowledge, not necessarily success. When I studied and took them, I always felt like it mostly evaluated standardized test-taking skills (which is a trained skill I feel many smart and successful people lack). It doesn't show anything if people cheat or if the process is gamed.

I don't really have a strong opinion either way--this is just what I've gleaned from following the news over the past few years. Here's an article I found that mirrors what I've heard:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/03/19/is-it-fi...

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

#299

Post by RedBeetDeadpool »

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…

Personally I feel most standardized tests, including the SAT can be gamed. If you have the right teacher or book or w/e you should be able to learn how to get a certain score. Granted a lot of people simply don't because they never learn the techniques properly.

They should still take it into consideration, but more of as a baseline aptitude level, smart enough to actually get past a certain score, but it shouldn't be a ranking system based on performance on the test. More to weed anyone out who are so incompetent they can't figure out the basics. Like everyone above 75% mark should be considered equally, but people beyond that point aren't ranked based on their test scores. As in, if someone scores a perfect score but the only thing they've done is get good grades and get good test scores and someone else scores at the 75% mark but started a small business, or did something remarkable to help with a disaster, then the latter should take precedence in my book.

After a certain point, IQ doesn't correlate with success either. Too much focus is placed on objective intelligence, when part of the objectivity is how well someone gamed it.

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

#300

Post by knzhou »

fyz wrote: post #293
knzhou wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> 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. Isn't that one of the better ways to finely calibrate a score? Rough approximation of heapsort?

Yes, it definitely is!

It does feel a little crazy, though, when suddenly all the vocab words are like, "tergiversate" and "pulchritudinous". And then when you get them all wrong it's back to "the cat sat on the mat". :P

Post reply on HN