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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

#351

Post by coliveira »

csa wrote: post #343
macspoofing wrote: post #327

That's not really a good thing. What they are doing is changing a known transparent standard for entry to something completely arbitrary, ad hoc, and opaque from the point of view of the applicant. Also, the applicant pool will rise because there is no SAT filter. Having said that, I don't think it's a big deal because nobody needs to go to Harvard. In fact, if you aren't affluent enough to afford Harvard tuition, or…

> if you aren't affluent enough to afford Harvard tuition, or if you don't have a full scholarship, Harvard tuition is not worth the degree and student loans you end up with. Ivy League schools are famously generous with financial aid. If the tuition cost is an issue for your family, odds are that you won’t be paying sticker price. It would not be uncommon for a typical “middle class” family (not upper middle class,…

This doesn't match reality. Obamas' student debt reached $40K each. And it most certainly got worse since then.

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

#352

Post by macspoofing »

csa wrote: post #343
macspoofing wrote: post #327

That's not really a good thing. What they are doing is changing a known transparent standard for entry to something completely arbitrary, ad hoc, and opaque from the point of view of the applicant. Also, the applicant pool will rise because there is no SAT filter. Having said that, I don't think it's a big deal because nobody needs to go to Harvard. In fact, if you aren't affluent enough to afford Harvard tuition, or…

> if you aren't affluent enough to afford Harvard tuition, or if you don't have a full scholarship, Harvard tuition is not worth the degree and student loans you end up with. Ivy League schools are famously generous with financial aid. If the tuition cost is an issue for your family, odds are that you won’t be paying sticker price. It would not be uncommon for a typical “middle class” family (not upper middle class,…

>Ivy League schools are famously generous with financial aid.

That requires quite a bit of qualification on your part. Ivy League schools will allocate a certain number of seats to allow those with the grades but without the means to attend the school. I guess that's generous, but let's not overstate this generosity. They need a lot more students paying full price.

>If the tuition cost is an issue for your family, odds are that you won’t be paying sticker price.

Like I said - if you can get a full scholarship to attend Harvard, great! Do it! If you need to take out loans that will leave you in debt for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars with nothing but a 4-year bachelor's degree from Harvard, run away!

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

#353

Post by cambalache »

grumple wrote: post #294
cambalache wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You dont understand until your kids get rejected despite having straight A, high SAT scores and strong background, just because many other people whose ancestors come from a similar region on earth were as highly qualified too. So your kid is out not because of her fault but because of her race. I suppose many people are OK because deep down they think they will be in the accepted portion but still.

And that person will still get into a great school. It just doesn’t have to be Harvard.

You can say exactly the same to the candidates who jumped above her not by academic merit but by other nebulous criteria.

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

#354

Post by csa »

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?

You are greatly mistaken, although it does depend on the quality of the preparation.

I have seen scores improve 100-200 points per skill on average for middle range scores, and 50-100 points per skill for higher range scores with quality preparation.

Reasons:

- familiarity with test format

- improved test taking strategies

- familiarity with test content

- developing the mental stamina to perform at a high level throughout the relatively long test

- lowered anxiety and (often) increased confidence

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

#355

Post by Spivak »

mattmcknight wrote: post #234
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. Aren't colleges looking for people who will study the most? Who have the motivation and the ability for the motivation to translate into results?

Yes! That’s pretty much the point. The ACT and SAT are really good at finding some of those people but there’s a lot a lot a lot of type two errors. Letting people demonstrate their motivation in other ways and not immediately disqualifying them based on test scores goes a long way.

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

#356

Post by L_Rahman »

defen wrote: post #341
macspoofing wrote: post #327

That's not really a good thing. What they are doing is changing a known transparent standard for entry to something completely arbitrary, ad hoc, and opaque from the point of view of the applicant. Also, the applicant pool will rise because there is no SAT filter. Having said that, I don't think it's a big deal because nobody needs to go to Harvard. In fact, if you aren't affluent enough to afford Harvard tuition, or…

Harvard doesn't offer academic scholarships. If you can't afford Harvard tuition it's free - e.g. if your parents make less than 65,000 (20% of Harvard students) you don't pay anything. So yes, it's actually massively worth it if you can get in, because you graduate with no debt and have a name-brand diploma and access to an extremely well-connected group of people. It's the kids who go to second- and third-tier inst…

As someone who was accepted and got to see their financial aid package, I have to mention that it's extremely generous as well. They don't just cover room and board and tuition, there's an understanding that you're poorer than your peers at the university so there's general spending money, money to buy winter clothes, money to fly home 2x-3x a year.

This is a rounding error for Harvard, but I didn't realize how limiting not having that would be at the school I ended up going to (which only covered tuition and most of room and board).

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

#357

Post by mennis16 »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #323
0d9eooo wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Empirically, they're as predictive as or more predictive of future educational performance (usually first-year college GPA) than test scores, despite grade inflation (which isn't as extreme as some would have you think). The advantage of GPA is it's an average over a long time period, unlike a test, which is a slice at a very brief moment. The disadvantage of GPA is variability in course difficulty and grading st…

They can be gamed too easily. My high school gave a 1 point bonus for AP courses. It it fair to compare someone with a 4.2 against students without that opportunity?

Yeah, also private schools make a business out of their college admissions profile, I am sure as this becomes the norm they will inflate grades even more.

I do think along with the application the school is supposed to submit a profile of the classes they offer and the average grades at the school and whatnot, but I do wonder how much admissions committees actually look closely at this. It's also hard to penalize a student for having all As, because maybe they did deserve them!

I think we are going to end up having even more emphasis on legit extracurriculars, at least for the average middle class student.

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

#358

Post by iso1631 »

itsmeamario wrote: post #281
learc83 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

I'd like to see your sources on that.

"A semester or so" reasonably covers until September 2021. I can't see the world standing for social distancing that long, and as such covid will spread throughout the population just like Polio, TB and uncurable/vaccinable diseases of the past. IFR of covid for undergrads is about 0.002-0.005%, so 1 in 20k-50k.

Chance of death for a 20 year old in the UK is about 1 in 4k, so you're 5-10 times more likely to die for some other reason than covid.

Indeed by moving away from home you're less likely to infect older parents, so it's a rational call.

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

#359

Post by macspoofing »

defen wrote: post #341
macspoofing wrote: post #327

That's not really a good thing. What they are doing is changing a known transparent standard for entry to something completely arbitrary, ad hoc, and opaque from the point of view of the applicant. Also, the applicant pool will rise because there is no SAT filter. Having said that, I don't think it's a big deal because nobody needs to go to Harvard. In fact, if you aren't affluent enough to afford Harvard tuition, or…

Harvard doesn't offer academic scholarships. If you can't afford Harvard tuition it's free - e.g. if your parents make less than 65,000 (20% of Harvard students) you don't pay anything. So yes, it's actually massively worth it if you can get in, because you graduate with no debt and have a name-brand diploma and access to an extremely well-connected group of people. It's the kids who go to second- and third-tier inst…

>Harvard doesn't offer academic scholarships.

OK, but there are other places that provide scholarships.

>if your parents make less than 65,000 (20% of Harvard students) you don't pay anything.

That's awesome for students from low-income families. I support it 100%! But let's be clear here, a family with a household income of $66k/year (up to, I don't know, $200k/year) cannot afford $85k/year tuition without the student going into massive debt. Those students shouldn't even look at Harvard. It's not worth it.

>It's the kids who go to second- and third-tier institutions and take on massive debt who should reconsider college, not the ones going to Harvard.

What are we arguing here? If a student ends up with massive debt from Harvard, that's not worth it either - right?

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

#360

Post by RNCTX »

defen wrote: post #341
macspoofing wrote: post #327

That's not really a good thing. What they are doing is changing a known transparent standard for entry to something completely arbitrary, ad hoc, and opaque from the point of view of the applicant. Also, the applicant pool will rise because there is no SAT filter. Having said that, I don't think it's a big deal because nobody needs to go to Harvard. In fact, if you aren't affluent enough to afford Harvard tuition, or…

Harvard doesn't offer academic scholarships. If you can't afford Harvard tuition it's free - e.g. if your parents make less than 65,000 (20% of Harvard students) you don't pay anything. So yes, it's actually massively worth it if you can get in, because you graduate with no debt and have a name-brand diploma and access to an extremely well-connected group of people. It's the kids who go to second- and third-tier inst…

At last check, Harvard has produced far more world class scumbags than my second/third tier state university alma mater. There's Larry Summers, who presided over their lame attempt to monopolize Russian ACH clearing after the Soviet party fell apart, which landed some professors in federal fraud charges. Then there's Tom Cotton who recently cheered on the idea of soldiers shooting at peaceful protestors at the behest of the NY Times, which fits with their hiring of noted NY Times managing plagiarist Jill Abramson, who had the nerve to say she wasn't paid enough to copy and paste other people's words. And considering Cotton Mather, Tom Cotton is only arguably the second worst Cotton to come from Harvard.

And we haven't even gotten to the MK Ultra participants, both willing in terms of the faculty and unwilling in the case of the Unabomber, have we?

The bad are so bad that they overshadow the everyday grifters, such as the William Empsons of the world who preached rugged individualism attained conveniently after suing their dead wife's family for a comfortable amount of money to live on while not needing anything from anyone else in a purely literary sense, I suppose.

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