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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

#421

Post by MisterBastahrd »

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…

The good thing is that, at least in my experience watching the online course presentations, Harvard profs are exceptionally good at explaining course material. I had one prof in my entire college experience who could explain the class material he was teaching as well as the average Harvard prof.

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

#422

Post by cycrutchfield »

xyzzyz wrote: post #372
sct202 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interest in the topic is what drove the popularity around books like Hillbilly Elegy and tons to articles in NYT and WaPo after the 2016 election about poor white people and what were the challenges that they were facing and motivations.

You mean the ones which explained that the poor whites are actually privileged racists, who are too lazy to learn to code?

Ah yes, this is the level of insight in comments that I come to Hacker News for. Excellent work.

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

#423

Post by neilparikh »

iagovar wrote: post #243
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…

That sounds bad if you're a white non-rich kid.

I think the data shows that the effect of affirmative action (or "holistic admission") is actually relatively neutral for white kids. For example, Asians need a much higher SAT score than Whites to get into most Ivy League schools. Not sure I understand the logic behind it, but that's how it is.

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

#424

Post by juletide »

macspoofing wrote: post #371
defen wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Click the link - "Families with incomes between $65,000 and $150,000 will contribute from 0-10% of their income, and those with incomes above $150,000 will be asked to pay proportionately more than 10%, based on their individual circums…

>Essentially nobody graduates from Harvard with a significant amount of debt. That's great! No argument from me. If Harvard structures their tuition in such a way that students aren't graduating with a massive student loan debt, awesome!

Why exactly were you arguing so vociferously when all this information was available just one click away, at the link the other user provided?

This kind of comment (being unwilling to do even the most basic research before pontificating on something one doesn't know about) makes HN discussion poorer overall, imho.

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

#425

Post by CamelCaseName »

bfieidhbrjr wrote: post #400
L_Rahman wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 limit…

So where was better than Harvard for you?

Johns Hopkins as per his profile. (He studied Biomedical Engineering)

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

#426

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#427

Post by rococode »

treis wrote: post #419
rococode wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big takeaway I have from reading this thread is how many people think of the top Ivies as rich kid schools where most students are paying exorbitant amounts of money to attend. Probably a stereotype perpetuated by movies and TV shows... There are certainly a lot of upper middle class students at Harvard (55% are getting aid and it's vaguely implied the cutoff for aid is around 200k, so around half of families mak…

> top Ivies as rich kid schools They're definitely that as well. Everyone that gets into Harvard is very talented, but the general groups of differentiation on top of that I see is: (1) Rich kids who's parents can buy them opportunity, bribe the school with donations, and legacies. (2) White/Asians from modest backgrounds that are "holy shit" levels of exceptional. (3) Other minorities that are exceptional but more o…

Fair enough, that breakdown sounds about right to me. Though it's important to note that "rich kids" here means really super rich. I recall once hearing some admissions person half-jokingly say that they don't even notice donations under $10m. Which kind of raises the question, if the kid's family is contributing that much to the school, and part of the value for regular folks going to these schools is the opportunity to network with people with exceptional backgrounds, perhaps the occasional "my mom paid for this building" or "my dad is a world leader" student is OK?

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

#428

Post by neilparikh »

wait_a_minute wrote: post #269
iagovar wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds bad if you're a white non-rich kid.

Who cares about those? Definitely not the new American left.

Is your claim that the "American Left" has decided to sacrifice the poor whites to help other races? If it is, it's not really an accurate claim. It's poor Asians who've taken the largest brunt of affirmative action, while Whites have remained relatively neutral in their standing.

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

#429

Post by wildermuthn »

Predicting a human being’s ability to “succeed”, regardless of domain, is very difficult.

The insights from YC’s process might be useful. While intelligence is important, it isn’t the most important variable. What matters most is a determined-to-succeed-at-all-costs team.

In the case of education, it makes sense to have some kind of threshold for general competence (GPA for instance) which is required, but subsequently to focus more on the “team” aspect of education. What kind of culture are you attempting to build on your campus? What kind of people are you trying to form? That’s the purpose of education, not technical mastery (that comes later).

Having said that, even a group like YC could use a standardized test to accurately measure that intangible force behind grit/determination, the force that drives a person to be a creatively unstoppable force of success. Of even more value would be a measurement contextual to environmental factors: i.e., higher or lower scores depending on what kind of people you are surrounded by, what kind of tasks you are confronted by.

To do that you’d probably have to model (predict) society itself, and then you’d have implemented Foundation. In other words, this is a problem much harder than whether or not to use standardized tests for college applicants. We don’t know how to predict the future of individuals and societies. It may be impossible. But if you’re looking for an embarrassingly ambitious startup idea, this sure seems like a good candidate.

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

#430

Post by afiori »

defen wrote: post #364
macspoofing wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 stude…

> 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. Click the link - "Families with incomes between $65,000 and $150,000 will contribute from 0-10% of their income, and those with incomes above $150,000 will be asked to pay proportionately more than 10%, based on their individual circums…

> Essentially nobody graduates from Harvard with a significant amount of debt.

Now I wonder:

1) how common it is to have such a tuition scaling?

2) can Harvard do this just because they have a shitload of money?

3) how easy/hard/expensive would it be for other colleges/universities to do something similar?

4) Is this possible only because a significant percentage of students are in the higher tiers and in practice their full tuition is what makes these discounts possible?

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