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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

#251

Post by watwut »

yorwba wrote: post #167
not_a_moth wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most of those who go for vocational training don't have a "high-school degree" in the sense of 12 or more years of schooling. They may leave one of several types of secondary school with a degree after 10 years or even less. I believe the American term for someone like that is "high-school dropout". So a better analogy might be "The majority of German high-school dropouts spend 2-3 years as small-salary interns befor…

It is distinctively not the same as "high school drop out". These are people who do go to school, finish it and get a degree. These are people "within the education system" who were taught to do specific thing.

High school drop out did not finished the school he intended to and does not have degree. This is person who is "out of the education system" who are not assumed to know anything.

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

#252

Post by sct202 »

crimsonalucard5 wrote: post #172
zebraflask wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might have that backward. Test scores are somewhat influenced by the income level of the student's parents: wealthier families can afford to give their kids resources like study time, books, tutors, a home environment that values academic success, etc., that result in higher scores. A holistic process mitigates that disparity. I highly doubt the intent of this change is to "favor rich kids" or any of the…

High test scores are correlated with income but income is not a causative factor. Most asian immigrants came here with nothing and much less resources than the caucasians who've already been here for years. They worked hard and performed well on the SATs and got into great schools and as a result are now generating a higher than average income than caucasians. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_…

Immigration from a lot of Asian countries is also very targeted, like I'm Taiwanese and the weekend Chinese language school literally only had kids who had parents with advanced degrees in STEM. I don't think it should be a surprise that the children of a bunch of phds are doing well academically.

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

#253

Post by zeroonetwothree »

yasp wrote: post #213
Spivak wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That’s right, the average effect of test prep is around 0 increase.

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

#254

Post by zeroonetwothree »

Spivak wrote: post #221
yasp wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Cramming for the test right at the end with SAT prep will add a few points but won’t do anything dramatic. But if you get put in the “honors” track of a lot of high schools where the name of the game is to teach material informed by the SAT, ACT, AP, and IB teats then you almost can’t help but do well since you’ve been cramming for 4 years.

Any evidence to support this?

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

#255

Post by secabeen »

mattmcknight wrote: post #228
gruez wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

I think athletic success increases the awareness of the college among potential applicants, more people apply, the selectivity percentage goes down, the college looks more selective from a naive perspective used by college ranking formulas, its ranking increases, and thus its prestige increases.

It's a high-variance form of marketing.

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

#256

Post by downerending »

WalterBright wrote: post #77
gautamcgoel wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a PhD student at Caltech. There's also a push to eliminate the GRE as a requirement for graduate admissions, in much the same way as some people want to eliminate the SAT as a requirement for undergraduate admissions. In my opinion both proposals are well-intentioned but ultimately bad ideas.

I went to Caltech in the 70's. Caltech did a pretty good job of only admitting people who could hack the program. But they did make mistakes here and there, and those would suffer the humiliation of flunking out. This did nobody any good. BTW, I found out years later that they took a chance on admitting me, and I very nearly flunked out my freshman year before I found my "sea legs". I was rejected by MIT, Harvard, an…

My run-of-the-mill state school had quite lax admission standards. It was understood that most of the freshman class each year would just party and flunk out after one or two semesters. As long as grading standards are maintained, I suppose that's another way to go.

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

#257

Post by fortran77 »

I suspect this will help "privileged" kids more than disadvantaged ones. They have parents that can pull strings to get high school grades inflated or attend special schools for "bright" kids that inflate grades and have the support to get good extracurricular activities to appear well-rounded. And they have help writing college application essays, etc.

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

#258

Post by boomboomsubban »

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…

Harvard's reason for doing this is the coronavirus pandemic, standardized testing may skew more heavily towards the rich than usual. They would have better access to extended home schooling during the lockdown, are less at risk for getting ill, and the ongoing financial issues wouldn't hamper their preparation.

I don't know why everyone else seems to be talking long term reasons, but both options seem pretty bad.

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

#259

Post by TrackerFF »

ylem wrote: post #249
TrackerFF wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ok, so you think that say some state schools it might work ok, but not at say Stanford or Harvard. What about say folding in AP exam scores?

If they're not gonna use tests as a measure, then it's probably gonna fall more on interviews / motivational letters / extracurricular activities.

Again, when you have so and so many perfect students, you need to use other features - otherwise you might as well draw random names out of a hat.

These schools (Ivy Leagues, Stanford, etc.) first and foremost want the students that are most likely to succeed at their schools. They know fully well that there are far more good students (on paper) than spots, but they also know that two 4.0 students are not alike. Some will fail, no mater how good they are in HS.

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

#260

Post by malandrew »

Spivak wrote: post #215
ylem wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

This condescension isn't even based on fact. I was in some honors classes but not in others and for the classes I was in an honors class, I had more aptitude than my peers. For those in the classes I was not in, those peers had more aptitude than me (probably more motivation too since it was for subjects I didn't care for like English Literature)

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