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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

#501

Post by hindsightbias »

neilparikh wrote: post #428
wait_a_minute wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think it’s all Asians, not just poor. Now, it won’t matter and Asians will be eligible for only 5% of the pie.

Anyone poor won’t have the means to play the subjective system, and any left/liberal admin officer/provost in the Ivy’s knows that.

Champagne corks are flying tonight.

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

#502

Post by memexy »

hindsightbias wrote: post #501
neilparikh wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think it’s all Asians, not just poor. Now, it won’t matter and Asians will be eligible for only 5% of the pie. Anyone poor won’t have the means to play the subjective system, and any left/liberal admin officer/provost in the Ivy’s knows that. Champagne corks are flying tonight.

What exactly is the benefit of these exclusionary tactics in your opinion? If there is indeed some conspiracy over excluding certain groups what could the administrators possibly gain from conspiring like this?

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

#503

Post by boomboomsubban »

mennis16 wrote: post #349
boomboomsubban wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I get what you're saying but A) I don't see how they can bring them back after this and B) doesn't the same argument about other application dimensions just extend to the effects of coronavirus? I would imagine richer students are also completing more coursework (possibly paying for online college courses), are more able to find alternative extracurriculars, etc. The SAT actually seems easier to keep somewhat level d…

>) I don't see how they can bring them back after this

What difficulty is there? As they've announced it's removed due to events this year, I honestly can't guess.

On B, I said it skews more towards the rich this year. Most years everyone at least has their school day.

If it is not required, it just becomes extracurricular. If it's not considered it's useless.

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

#504

Post by quadrifoliate »

aiisahik wrote: post #497
quadrifoliate wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which kind of Asians are being under-promoted? Satya, Sundar, Arvind? This rather specious argument comes up so often I am going to start calling it the "Satya-Sundar fallacy" (sorry Arvind!). Do you also dismiss the concerns of women not being promoted into management roles by citing the examples of Mary Barra and Marissa Meyer? The US as a whole is very different from Silicon Valley. If the number of people makin…

You accuse my argument ala the "Satya-Sundar fallacy" as specious because I use a few cherry picked examples to demonstrate demonstrate a general fact that isn't true? Also you suggest that language fluency might be a factor? Read the study [1]. Here's an abstract: > Across nine studies (n = 11,030) using mixed methods (archival analyses of chief executive officers, field surveys in large US companies, student leader…

> You accuse my argument ala the "Satya-Sundar fallacy" as specious because I use a few cherry picked examples to demonstrate demonstrate a general fact that isn't true?

Accuse is a strong word, but basically yes. Maybe it's a visceral reaction to something I have hear one too many times, that Asians don't face discrimination in tech because "Look at Satya and Sundar" (not exactly what you said).

But the point is that Satya and Sundar have little in common with the Midwest of America. Here, we can be shot by random guys in bars because they think we're Iranian [1]. You can guess that this kind of atmosphere might not correlate with a particularly equitable promotion process. If it helps, my intention is not to propagate a "woe is me" narrative, but to examine the possibility that Asians are treated differently (to their disadvantage) during promotion, just like other people of color.

Ironically, our discussion here and your linked study already led to a better insight than I had previously! As an admirer of Confucian values, it also makes me a little sad :|

Also, thanks for the study link! I see now that it was controlled for language, and consequently, my guess about language being a factor was simply wrong.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/world/asia/kansas-attack-...

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

#505

Post by yorwba »

watwut wrote: post #444
yorwba wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The social status is of course different due to the lack of recognition for the "high school drop out", but the years of education received are similar.

The type of education is however completely different. Years of education is meaningless metric in this context. In one case you are learned woodworker (say) and in another ... nothing.

The ten years of schooling are in both cases general education, so they should be pretty comparable. Woodworking is something the German would learn during their apprenticeship and the American on the job (presumably).

How do companies who need skilled woodworkers in the US decide whom to hire? I'd guess they look for previous work experience. It's not clear to me whether an American who spent three years as an unskilled woodworker is any worse off in terms of job prospects than a German who spent three years as a woodworking apprentice.

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

#506

Post by ryandrake »

tharne wrote: post #319
wait_a_minute wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new American left does treat it as a zero sum game. That is why they focus on disparities instead of universal programs that would eliminate the largest absolute amounts of poverty and suffering.

Zero sum thinking is probably the most central tenet of the broader philosophy of the American left. That's why there's so much talk of "disparity" or "inequality" vs. actual improvements to standards of living and quality of life. Almost all economic growth creates inequality for the simple reason that the more wealth there is, the more potential you have for skew. In China, for instance, there was much less income…

> Similarly, I don't really care how much a CEO makes, I care about my own quality of life.

Your quality of life depends very much on how much other people make. It's all relative. If the average income in an area goes up by 50% but your own income only goes up 5%, then you are worse off than you started, because prices for everything will rise with the market. If you don't believe me, look at Bay Area housing. Inject a couple thousand new millionaires into an area and tell me things don't become worse for the existing modest-income people.

On a percentage basis, the world is zero sum. If someone else captures (or creates) an additional 1% of something, that comes at the expense of 1% collectively from everyone else.

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

#507

Post by SamReidHughes »

eitally wrote: post #149
mjfl wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a bad idea. There are people who grew up in poverty that still do well on the SAT, in fact that's exactly what the SAT is for - to identify those people, who might not be informed about math competitions or intel science fairs, or have connections at local universities, but have good potential.

SATs don't test potential. They, and GREs, explicitly test general baseline knowledge in a couple of subject areas. A person who grew up in poverty is still going to do poorly on a standardized test unless they have committed at least some effort to learning those things (whether through school, self-study, or a form of tutoring).

SAT’s don’t test baseline knowledge, they “require” it. That’s early high school math and English language. The SAT tests ability to perform cognitive tasks, like solving math problems and answering questions about passages you’ve read. If it were about knowledge, the questions would ask about facts.

I only know about the math subject GRE but it certainly was testing problem solving ability moreso than knowledge, many of the questions designed so that the clever can solve them quickly to save time.

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

#508

Post by mennis16 »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #503
mennis16 wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get what you're saying but A) I don't see how they can bring them back after this and B) doesn't the same argument about other application dimensions just extend to the effects of coronavirus? I would imagine richer students are also completing more coursework (possibly paying for online college courses), are more able to find alternative extracurriculars, etc. The SAT actually seems easier to keep somewhat level d…

>) I don't see how they can bring them back after this What difficulty is there? As they've announced it's removed due to events this year, I honestly can't guess. On B, I said it skews more towards the rich this year. Most years everyone at least has their school day. If it is not required, it just becomes extracurricular. If it's not considered it's useless.

I think it isn't really comparable to an extracurricular, especially not if similar schools continue to require it. It would basically be an extracurricular that you know everyone has but only some people are choosing to report it. That just seems like something that could subconsciously affect judgement even if admissions tries to be agnostic.

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

#509

Post by defen »

afiori wrote: post #430
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. 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 th…

I don't have exact answers to your questions, but it basically comes down to the endowment. For example Princeton has an endowment of 29 billion dollars. There are 8,623 undergrads, and if you assume the full sticker price for tuition, room, board, and expenses ($75,210) reflects the actual cost, then it costs $648,535,830 per year to educate those students. That's 2.5% of the endowment if you assume nobody is paying anything and that it reflects the true cost; but the endowment grows by more than that annually just from investment returns!

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

#510

Post by PeterisP »

treis wrote: post #450
rococode wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 opportunit…

Maybe we should just go back to divine right kings and cut out Harvard as the middleman. Seriously, though, it is a complicated problem. Elites are going to get a leg up in any system. It's just a bad look when you're giving one group advantages because they are supposedly disadvantaged while also giving a leg up to the super privileged.

It's worth noting that this is not a case of "elites" taking out an unfairly large share out of a communal resource, it's the case of the elites choosing how much of their private resource they want to share with the rest of the society. It (e.g. Harvard) does not belong to all citizens/taxpayers, it belongs to the elites, and they can get as much 'leg up' as they choose.

It would be perfectly cromulent for Harvard to choose to admit only legacy students, and it could be a reasonable choice for them to set the tuition fee to a million dollars per year, with no scholarships whatsoever, and admit only rich students. They're not part of a government-funded education system with a goal of educating the whole society, they are a private school who can educate whomever they want - they can go back to teaching only Puritan clergy as they once did, if they so wish.

In essence, all the (quite welcoming!) financial aid and scholarships they're offering for talented students is freely given charity, funded by the fees of the rich students and gifts of alumni - and here we are complaining that they're not doing enough charity and not doing it in the right direction, forgetting that they might as well stop doing it at all if they wish.

They are essentially controlled by their alumni, who elect the overseers, so if the alumni collectively decide that it's good to invite talented-but-not-rich students with scholarships, because they believe it's best for their school and the children of alumni who also will be joining the school as legacy admissions, then that's their right to choose so. It's "their club" and they get to choose which non-super-privileged (if any!) they want to invite to their club.

This is in deep contrast with most other countries, where the elite universities tend to be funded and run by the government, who then gets to set policy to achieve relevant social goals, but in USA the top universities are private and their policy is controlled by the super privileged, not anyone whom the general public can elect.

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