MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions • Hacker News Board

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

#321

Post by tristor » Fri, Mar 20, 2020, 10:45 PM UTC

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #306

quartzite wrote: post #205

Earlier 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…

> Standardized testing significantly levels the playing field for students across income brackets. There's a correlation between parental income and SAT scores. “[S]tudents from families earning more than $200,000 a year average a combined score of 1,714, while students from families earning under $20,000 a year average a combined score of 1,326.” https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/03/rich-students-get-better-sat... An "eq…

There's a correlation between parental income and IQ scores too. There's also a correlation between parental income and GPA. It's just a correlation, though, and it does not follow that a good standardized test would result in the average score would match across different parental income groups.

Just because a test is standardized doesn't mean it completely eliminates all confounding factors outside of the test, but it does mitigate some of them. Equality and equity aren't the same thing.

Certainly, without reliance on standardized testing I'm somehow certain that Braden who got a helicopter pilot's license at 16 so he could fly the family helo from Manhattan to Westchester is going to do better in admissions than Tyrone who excelled in academics and was lucky enough to attend a technology magnet school, but grew up in the projects and had no access to anything outside of what school and the library provided. With SAT tests included, the fact Braden made a 1530 and Tyrone made a 1970 plays a factor.

That's what folks are saying.

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

#322

Post by pdonis » Fri, Mar 20, 2020, 10:47 PM UTC

tssva wrote: post #226

pdonis wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How exactly do standardized tests identify those who will or won't prey on other people?

They don't identify that directly. But they do identify the potential to do something productive. Obviously that can't be the only thing being used to judge people; but some objective standard like that has to be part of what is being used.

Also, regardless of what standardized tests do or don't do, judging based on "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, IMO, a very poor way of filtering out people who will prey on other people, since anyone who preys on other people has to have those skills (or at any rate be able to fake them well enough to pass a test for them) to be successful at it.

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

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Post by llcoolv » Fri, Mar 20, 2020, 10:51 PM UTC

ivalm wrote: post #159

mgkimsal wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A lot of people would argue that Mensa itself is a joke...

This is more of a joke story, but a few years ago a friend of mine who is neither ambitious nor succesful surprisingly scored 165-170 on their test. When they offered him a membership and told him the membership fee, his reaction was - Alright, but as I am in the top 5% of your members - should not you be paying me to hang out with you? :D :D :D

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

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Post by [deleted] » Fri, Mar 20, 2020, 10:51 PM UTC

_hardwaregeek wrote: post #292

quartzite wrote: post #205

Earlier 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…

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…

[deleted]

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

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Post by mattkrause » Fri, Mar 20, 2020, 10:52 PM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #276

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…

I think it's the testing that's the problem, more so than the standardization (although standardization can definitely be taken too far to the point that it's unhelpful). You can of course have a standardized curriculum without any testing at all. Countries like Finland put far less emphasis on test results, and a lot more emphasis on teacher's assessment of their pupils. It seems like a much healthier system to me.

I'd buy that, especially when the tests are optimized for "objective" automatic grading rather than written responses.

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

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Post by danielg6 » Fri, Mar 20, 2020, 10:55 PM UTC

snazz wrote: post #266

danielg6 wrote: post #255

Earlier 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.

To clarify, I meant to say “along with”. I took the APs and their SAT subject equivalents

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

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Post by pelasaco » Fri, Mar 20, 2020, 10:57 PM UTC

The only question that now matters: Do you like Trump? if yes, you are out.

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

#328

Post by underpand » Fri, Mar 20, 2020, 11:10 PM UTC

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.

As

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

#329

Post by bsanr2 » Fri, Mar 20, 2020, 11:13 PM UTC

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #319

jschwartzi wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is IQ really a proxy for general intelligence?

Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) An individual's performance on one type of cognitive task tends to be comparable to that person's performance on other kinds of cognitive tasks.

It's not impossible that these tests measure something other than general intelligence, that just happens to correlate with social outcomes (like historical, relative familial wealth).

IIRC general intelligence also doesn't simply measure speed of cognition, but also ability to choose what to focus on ("intuition"), which these tests do not measure.

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

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Post by jimmyvalmer » Fri, Mar 20, 2020, 11:14 PM UTC

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #313

jimmyvalmer wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MIT's grad schools jettisoned GRE consideration a while ago. As you say, the GRE quant is trivial by MIT's standards, and the GRE verbal largely irrelevant. It's fairly easy to spot the "heavy-hitters" just from recommendations, undergraduate publication record, thesis, and GPA. In short, MIT and its elite cohort (CMU, Caltech, etc.) only accept undergrads who found their way into their professor's research groups --…

GPA is difficult, because there's no uniform standard. A 3.9 GPA from Caltech is much more impressive than a 3.9 GPA from Harvard (where there's serious grade inflation), but then again, you have to look carefully at which specific courses went into that GPA. But how do you compare those numbers to a grade of 15/20 from a French university, or a 1.1 from a German university, or some other country whose system you don…

> A 3.9 GPA from Caltech is much more impressive than a 3.9 GPA from Harvard

Having been an undergrad at one of the above, I can assure you both are super impressive (in either STEM or humanities), and should garner special attention from graduate programs.

> The subject GRE is a uniform quantitative baseline.

It seems we've moved off the topic of undergraduate acceptances to elite graduate admissions. The dearth of slots at these rarefied levels relative to the global supply of smart people is such that results from an arbitrary exam coming out of New Jersey would only get a second look in the narrowest of "splitting hairs" cases.