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Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

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Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#111

Post by nordsieck »

dwaltrip wrote: post #100
cyberdrunk wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a system based on merit, they would get more placements.

Merit is not a perfectly objective concept. Someone has to come up with criteria based on whatever goals and values they think are important.

> Someone has to come up with criteria based on whatever goals and values they think are important.

The most obvious criteria is: most likely to graduate.

Some others that aren't bad:

* Highest expected value of future donations

* Highest expected value of impact (publication)

* Highest expected value of future salary

* Highest expected value of holding public office (the weighting here might be contentious)

As long as all of the criterion are achievement based, I expect them to screen for roughly the same people, demographically.

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#112

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

FisForFlight wrote: post #106
filereaper wrote: post #31

I highly recommend watching the video by Scott Galloway on The College Implosion. [1] "Colleges have become luxury brands and are adopting a strategy of artificial scarcity to create irrational margins" There's a large movement right now where many are saying the large tuition fees for Zoom lectures aren't worth it. Colleges sell themselves for the experience and are a luxury lifestyle brand almost, but with covid th…

A friend of mine goes to Harvard. He says once you get into Harvard... it's smooth sailing from there.

I have heard the same thing about universities in Japan. High school in Japan is so much pressure that some students crack under it, but then once you get to university it is supposedly easily to just slack off for your entire degree program.

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#113

Post by csharptwdec19 »

beaner wrote: post #65
kaonwarb wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Nonprofit" is a tax designation in the U.S. There is nothing in that designation which prevents those running the nonprofit from personally profiting greatly from their positions. There are limitations in the methods to gain such personal profit, but they far from forestall it. Wikipedia has a good overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-profit_organization_laws_i... .

I haven't read the link but I assume it means something like: The institutions do not have ownable shares that can be traded, and so ownership of the institution itself is not a profit-seeking endeavor (is it even "owned" at all?), but salaries are uncapped and so being employed by it can be?

There's more nuance to it but those are the basics.

Mind you, there are extra book-keeping rules. For instance, the highest salaries at an institution (and I believe salaries over a certain amount) and who is making them must be publicly disclosed.

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#114

Post by jmalicki »

phonon wrote: post #107
MagnumOpus wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not wealthy donors Harvard's admission rate is 30% for "legacies" which make up one in six of their students, and even higher for donors. These are the kids who get in while being thick as a brick. The injustice is not primarily the black kid with 1400 SAT getting in over the east Asian kid with 1580 -- the injustice is the hundreds of CEOs/senators' kids being assured admission even being dumber than a sack of ham…

25th percentile for Harvard SAT scores is 1460...so there is a limit for how many dumb as a brick legacies matriculate :-)

1 in 6 is only the 17th percentile, so many of them may be well under that score.

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#115

Post by akyu »

I have a hard time understanding the logic here. GPAs are essentially useless, so what else do we have to go off of? "Hollistic admissions" processes seem to be even more skewed towards rich kids, as they have far greater opportunities outside of the class room to pad their resumes in exactly the way that colleges look for. This seems entirely backwards to me.

If there is a systemic bias in test scores, it is still better to have the test score there so you can quantify it, and adjust your admissions policy to account for it. By throwing out the test entirely you are flying blind.

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#116

Post by Upvoter33 »

xvedejas wrote: post #37
memexy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are they bad ideas? I took the SAT and GRE for undergraduate and graduate schools respectively and neither was worthwhile preparation for anything I studied. If we want to put up barriers to entry then I think we can find better and more predictive ways than measuring general pattern matching skills with the SAT and GRE.

To quote Scott Aaronson: Admissions to the top US universities—and hence, most chances for social advancement in the US—will henceforth be based entirely on shifting and nebulous criteria that rich, well-connected kids and their parents spend most of their lives figuring out, rather than merely mostly based on such criteria. The last side door for smart noncomformist kids is now being slammed shut.

Eh, this kind of "the sky is falling" argument doesn't hold much water to me. So, some "smart nonconformist kid" doesn't get into Harvard. Is that the end of the world? Larry Page went to Michigan, Brin to Maryland - they did fine. There are a lot of great public schools out there. Talented people like that aren't getting locked out of anything.

A much bigger problem in education starts much earlier. If your parents don't provide a stable and education-leaning home life, or you live in a school district where safety is a bigger concern than educational quality, well, social mobility becomes a lot harder then. These are some hard problems, but reach way beyond education, into the social safety net and beyond. Guaranteeing that a bright kid who is not born into the best circumstances gets a fair shot at life is still a work in progress, but has little to do with whether they get into Harvard or MIT.

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#117

Post by csharptwdec19 »

mtgp1000 wrote: post #45
wespiser_2018 wrote: post #38

This makes sense: Harvard has a huge issue with discrimination against Asian Americans, who are not represented according to their ACT/SAT score distribution. If Harvard could waive away these scores, they can continue their admissions policy that favor students from wealthy families who pay full price, and are likely to be institutional givers after graduation by focusing on admission factors that are much less acco…

>This makes sense: Harvard has a huge issue with discrimination against Asian Americans, who are not represented according to their ACT/SAT score distribution. If Harvard could waive away these scores, they can continue their admissions policy that favor students from wealthy families who pay full price, and are likely to be institutional givers after graduation by focusing on admission factors that are much less acc…

No, it's about pretending they are making changes while still only allowing the same wealthy families they did before.

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#118

Post by bash-j »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #112
FisForFlight wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend of mine goes to Harvard. He says once you get into Harvard... it's smooth sailing from there.

I have heard the same thing about universities in Japan. High school in Japan is so much pressure that some students crack under it, but then once you get to university it is supposedly easily to just slack off for your entire degree program.

Do employers care about what grades you got in university?

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#119

Post by snarf21 »

filereaper wrote: post #31

I highly recommend watching the video by Scott Galloway on The College Implosion. [1] "Colleges have become luxury brands and are adopting a strategy of artificial scarcity to create irrational margins" There's a large movement right now where many are saying the large tuition fees for Zoom lectures aren't worth it. Colleges sell themselves for the experience and are a luxury lifestyle brand almost, but with covid th…

I think we should just roll some kind of standardized test into your Junior year. Instead of it being this external expensive thing, everyone who wants to go to college can just take a half year preparation course in your Junior year and take the test at the end. We don't need this to be external. We already do a lot of standardized tests to measure student performance. This fixes the GPA problem between schools and the uncomparability of those numbers.

Re: Harvard University Won’t Require SAT, ACT for Admissions Next Year

#120

Post by not_a_moth »

filereaper wrote: post #31

I highly recommend watching the video by Scott Galloway on The College Implosion. [1] "Colleges have become luxury brands and are adopting a strategy of artificial scarcity to create irrational margins" There's a large movement right now where many are saying the large tuition fees for Zoom lectures aren't worth it. Colleges sell themselves for the experience and are a luxury lifestyle brand almost, but with covid th…

Anyone intimate with Germany's vocational training system, that's used as an alternative to college by approximately half of all graduating high school students?

2-3 years small salary vocational training straight out of HS at 1 of 400k participating companies in 1 of 400 role types.

I want to know why implementing this isn't a national debate in US, it seems like such an obviously good idea.

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