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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

#211

Post by whotheffknows »

It's amazing to me ivy league universities have done this in the face of uncertainty and extreme anxiety now that we have evidence that elongated sustained anxiety and chaos in one's life can reduce someone's IQ, I just didn't think they would be so blatantly obvious to do if when something globally devastating enough happened to be distracting to even rich white people as well, when students coming from poverty are dealing with distractions that are often worse regardless.

Sometimes it truly takes a rich white person to experience something before they believe it can happen to anybody else, and then they make a decision everyone else benefits from. Here's to new beginnings.

I'm curious how well rich white students who have never been exposed to chaos and uncertainty of this magnitude will fair in comparison to incoming students who have been dealing with it their whole life, a much better IMHO indicator for success in this "uncertain" times.

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

#212

Post by seibelj »

travisoneill1 wrote: post #122
akyu wrote: post #115

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 b…

How else are you going to keep the Asians out?

You are probably being facetious, but my wife is Vietnamese and her parents were boat people who fled the communists, didn't speak any English and had no money, then her dad got a job washing dishes, learned English at night, got into college, then got into medical school, started a chain of clinics, and retired a millionaire. You would not believe how much they despise current "progressive" politics and speaking with them about politics is basically impossible. They and their community / family follow what is happening with things like Harvard and partially as a result they are die-hard Trump supporters (among other things like their belief in religion, police, etc.).

I do not agree with all of these opinions, I am just telling you how this community, which is mostly still poor and not "model minority", views a lot of what is coming out of elite institutions in the name of progress and equality.

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

#213

Post by yasp »

Spivak wrote: post #209
mrfredward wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very cynical answer to what's the logic here: objective measures get in the way of many non-academic college admission goals, so colleges want to do away with them. One of those goals is racial diversity, and that's the only one colleges openly talk about because it's the only one that can positively impact society. Other goals include raising more money by admitting the children of major donors, improving the pres…

I think there’s a silver lining to all of this behavior in that it demonstrates that nothing really matters when it comes to determining if you’ll be successful in college. Test scores don’t prove much except who had the resources, time, and motivation to study the most. You could replace the SAT and ACT with obscure movie trivia and you’d see roughly the same distribution of scores and it would have the same predict…

>Test scores don’t prove much except who had the resources, time, and motivation to study the most.

I was under the impression that SAT prep doesn't move the needle much. Am I mistaken?

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

#214

Post by TrackerFF »

ylem wrote: post #194
akyu wrote: post #115

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 b…

Dumb question, but are GPAs useless? I mean a plot of say high school GPA vs say college graduation rate or college GPA would be rather informative.

They're not useless, but it's rather that when everyone's scoring high, it's not the best measure to differentiate candidates.

What happens in other countries, where they only use grades/GPA, is that you start using more decimals - but then again, that's only useful when the size/population of "perfect" scores is low enough.

If you have 10000 students with a perfect 4.0, and 2000 spots, then it's obviously impossible to just use grades - so it kinda loses its function for selection.

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

#215

Post by Spivak »

ylem wrote: post #194
akyu wrote: post #115

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 b…

Dumb question, but are GPAs useless? I mean a plot of say high school GPA vs say college graduation rate or college GPA would be rather informative.

High Schools are on the student’s side when it comes to college admissions. So when you’re on the honors track of your HS you almost literally can’t fail because your HS is trying to get you into better schools. Your HS is playing the game with you.

The secret of being an honors kid isn’t aptitude but being told that you’re smart and your parents/peers expecting it of you.

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

#216

Post by crimsonalucard5 »

usaar333 wrote: post #162
vgtheone wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They make up 25.3% of the admitted class but would probably make up 75-80% of the admitted class in a system truly based on merit. 4 out of 5 strong applicants are rejected simply because they're Asian American.

Let's not exaggerate things. Comparing UC or Caltech is probably best (granted they use less controversial socioeconomic factors). Caltech is 43% Asian American vs 27% at MIT. Note that the race-neutral number is somewhere in between (Asians disproportionately yield to schools that don't use racial preferences because they are discriminated against elsewhere)

>Asians disproportionately yield to schools

No Asians go big or go home. They yield to all schools that are prestigious regardless of race-neutrality because all of these school (on the surface) appear to be race neutral.

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

#217

Post by js2 »

pcurve wrote: post #204
tinyhouse wrote: post #197

Harvard can be corrupt. There's a very average girl in my town who wouldn't get admitted to grad school at Harvard if her dad wasn't a law professor at Harvard. Regarding asians. It's not about race. Diversity in academia is important for many reasons. It's not about being asian, it's about living in a rich family at a top school district, regardless of your race. A poor kid from a bad neighborhood cannot compete wit…

"I have a very average girl in my town who got admitted to grad school at Harvard only because her dad is a law professor at Harvard." I'm not saying Harvard isn't corrupt, but admitting professor's kid isn't really the best indicator of corruption. It's nothing unusual in many schools and they don't hide it.

I can understand the employment perk of making tuition free for employees' kids, but I'm less sure about reserving a slot. If I can make an analogy: as an employee of Verizon, I get a 50% discount on service, but when a new iPhone comes out, I'm not allowed to purchase it until after it's widely available.

I would think the child of a college professor likely already has an academic leg up on your average kid. Those kids maybe even more than others really should have to have the grades to get in.

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

#218

Post by gruez »

mrfredward wrote: post #187
akyu wrote: post #115

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 b…

A very cynical answer to what's the logic here: objective measures get in the way of many non-academic college admission goals, so colleges want to do away with them. One of those goals is racial diversity, and that's the only one colleges openly talk about because it's the only one that can positively impact society. Other goals include raising more money by admitting the children of major donors, improving the pres…

>improving the prestige of the college by admitting top athletes

What's the logic here? I'll admit I'm not a big fan of college sports myself, but who assesses the credibility of a college by their athletics program?

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

#219

Post by retortio »

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…

Exactly.

First of all a distinction must be made between legacies and big donors. Legacies are often dismissed as getting in only because of their legacy status, but I'd wager that their grades, test scores and other accomplishments put them on the admissions bubble already. Dropping the SAT isn't going to help Harvard let more of them in because they're probably doing quite well to begin with.

Donors' children may have more wiggle room with their grades and scores, but they're a much smaller population than legacies and the idea that Harvard is going to drop standardized testing just to marginally increase the numbers of donors' children they can let in, like some nefarious plot to marginally increase donations, is laughable and culturally tone deaf.

Harvard administrators have no interest in drastically increasing the number of legacy or donor students. The admissions rates for those groups have likely been static for decades.

Harvard administrators do, however, have a huge interest in increasing black (and to a lesser extent Hispanic) admissions rates. This is made much more difficult by standardized testing scores.

In fact much of the stated justification by the schools and other intellectuals for dropping the tests is that it discriminates against the poor and minorities, which is ironic because it is one of the factors of admission least correlated with wealth and also because many minority groups do better on the test than the overall test taking population.

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

#220

Post by iso1631 »

learc83 wrote: post #151
iso1631 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Still, these HN threads always come to the same conclusion that there remain elements of the college experience that can only be found on campus. In my view the college experience (societies, living away from home, mixing with people from outside your local area) is far more useful than the actual teaching. "There's a time and a place for everything - and it's called college". However with covid, all that is remove…

>However with covid, all that is removed, It's very unlikely that this lasts more than another semester or so though. If you're looking to enroll in the fall or the next year, it shouldn't be a big concern.

If I were supposed to be starting in October 2020, I'd certainly skip next year and have a gap year

2021 onwards sure, things will be back to normal

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