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Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

mitadmissions.org

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Re: Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

#101

Post by sandgiant »

bmc7505 wrote: post #58
Animats wrote: post #20

All MIT students, regardless of intended major, must pass two semesters of calculus, plus two semesters of calculus-based physics, as part of our General Institute Requirements. ... There is no path through MIT that does not rest on a rigorous foundation in mathematics, and we need to be sure our students are ready for that as soon as they arrive. For a period in the 1980s-1990s, you could argue that calculus was not…

Calculus is not just about gradients. Fundamentally, calculus is about calculation and symbolic logic, a much older concept that predates its usage in gradient-based machine learning. In this sense, calculus holds deep connections to logical reasoning, proof theory and the foundations of computer science. [1] [1]: https://compcalc.github.io/

This. The importance of learning calculus and model building (physics) is all about learning to reason, making predictions and quantify domain validity. It's not about calculating derivatives or proving continuity. I think people take these requirements too literally.

Re: Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

#102

Post by hintymad »

paulpauper wrote: post #2

our ability to accurately predict student academic success at MIT 02 Our research shows this predictive validity holds even when you control for socioeconomic factors that correlate with testing. It also shows that good grades in high school do not themselves necessarily translate to academic success at MIT if you cannot account for testing. Of course, we can never be fully certain how any given applicant will do: we…

I wonder why we can't hire more teachers to grade word problems in tests like SAT, like Asian countries do. Those problems are much harder to game or cram.

Re: Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

#103

Post by visarga »

Invictus0 wrote: post #62
LewisVerstappen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's far easier for rich students to game GPA, college essays and extracurriculars than it is for them to game the SAT. For GPA, they can hire a private tutor in the subject they're struggling with. There are services out there that will basically write your english essay for you / do your math/science homework. For college essays, they can hire college counselors to help them draft a compelling essay. For extra curr…

I took one of those expensive SAT prep courses and yes, I agree that those don't increase scores very much, the program I took was awful. However, I totally disagree that rich people can't game the SAT. I used to be a moderator at /r/SAT and /r/ACT on reddit. All of the questions and answers for all of the exams, including subject tests are known and published online. Both SAT and ACT routinely reuse exams from prior…

> And rich people have the luxury of more time to study

Those rich students, they cheat by studying harder!

Btw, I don't actually think being rich correlates with better academic achievements. It's better to be in the middle, not rich, not poor. To keep motivated.

Re: Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

#104

Post by samatman »

balls187 wrote: post #68
LewisVerstappen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's far easier for rich students to game GPA, college essays and extracurriculars than it is for them to game the SAT. For GPA, they can hire a private tutor in the subject they're struggling with. There are services out there that will basically write your english essay for you / do your math/science homework. For college essays, they can hire college counselors to help them draft a compelling essay. For extra curr…

> The NACAC did a study on this and they found that average gains of test-prep students is ~30 points (this was when the SAT was 2400 points). When I took the SAT it was only 1600 (pre 2400), and SAT prep did in fact help scores significantly. Back than, the test was designed not for scholastic aptitude (as it's name suggests) but instead to guarantee a standard distribution of scores. It's been a long time since I c…

> instead to guarantee a standard distribution of scores

Which is precisely what you want in an assessment test. Any assessment test.

You only want a normal distribution if the quality under assessment is normally distributed, but you do want a test where the worst candidate does better than chance, and exactly one candidate gets a perfect score. That's an ideal which is only approximated, but it is the ideal.

Re: Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

#105

Post by whimsicalism »

ar_lan wrote: post #91
LewisVerstappen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's far easier for rich students to game GPA, college essays and extracurriculars than it is for them to game the SAT. For GPA, they can hire a private tutor in the subject they're struggling with. There are services out there that will basically write your english essay for you / do your math/science homework. For college essays, they can hire college counselors to help them draft a compelling essay. For extra curr…

For anecdotal/lived experience, to your point: The rich kids in my (public) school were the ones afforded not only tutors, but also just the insight into extra-curriculars. They were the ones who had parents who knew to sign them up for college courses at ~15-16 years old to ensure they could maximize their GPA (5.0 scale, so getting a 5.0 was literally impossible unless you did this). This created a competitive disa…

This rings true with my Gen Z high school experience as of ~7 years ago.

Re: Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

#106

Post by Psyladine »

dijit wrote: post #30
tharne wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So much for that common, popular notion that standardized tests do not predict anything of value. To be fair, I don't think the debate was ever about the quality or predictive value of the tests. There is a small, but well-organized and vocal subset of the population that hates the idea of excellence and differentiation. They want, and have been quite successful in, the replacement of standards of excellence with v…

Unsure if I buy this. I'm definitely not the person you describe, but the idea of standardised testing being equivalent across all factors just strikes me as being fundamentally untrue. Personally I am very lucky to test well; and I definitely buy the notion that people who test well in SATs may go on to do better in University, but the reasons are probably the same: freedom from worry about financial circumstances w…

>but the idea of standardised testing being equivalent across all factors just strikes me as being fundamentally untrue.

What's your take on MIT's stance?

our ability to accurately predict student academic success at MIT 02 Our research shows this predictive validity holds even when you control for socioeconomic factors that correlate with testing.

Re: Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

#107

Post by hwers »

Animats wrote: post #20

All MIT students, regardless of intended major, must pass two semesters of calculus, plus two semesters of calculus-based physics, as part of our General Institute Requirements. ... There is no path through MIT that does not rest on a rigorous foundation in mathematics, and we need to be sure our students are ready for that as soon as they arrive. For a period in the 1980s-1990s, you could argue that calculus was not…

I'd like to see 1980s-1990s graphics programmers get away with just discrete math for all the innovations they did in that period.

Re: Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

#109

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

Animats wrote: post #20

All MIT students, regardless of intended major, must pass two semesters of calculus, plus two semesters of calculus-based physics, as part of our General Institute Requirements. ... There is no path through MIT that does not rest on a rigorous foundation in mathematics, and we need to be sure our students are ready for that as soon as they arrive. For a period in the 1980s-1990s, you could argue that calculus was not…

If we need calculus for CS, I wish we'd teach it under the CS heading so that exposure to math didn't have to be so biased towards real analysis. Students spend years achieving this arbitrary (unless you're going to be an engineer) goal and end up with the erroneous (and often harmful) intuition that all spaces are continuous metric spaces.

Re: Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

#110

Post by vmception »

Animats wrote: post #20

All MIT students, regardless of intended major, must pass two semesters of calculus, plus two semesters of calculus-based physics, as part of our General Institute Requirements. ... There is no path through MIT that does not rest on a rigorous foundation in mathematics, and we need to be sure our students are ready for that as soon as they arrive. For a period in the 1980s-1990s, you could argue that calculus was not…

and this is why trade schools like coding bootcamps are relevant at all

people aren't going to school to learn computer science, they are going to school to get a job and be effective in that field, but the universities shouldn't feel obligated to adjust to that since they've been for the privileged folks who are actually there to pursue education for the sake of higher learning for nearly 200 years (or much longer). it is mere coincidence that they have to put up with a few decades of people needing the school for subsequent employment and the school will exist after this phase as well

so with that observation it really is useful to push for trade schools again, for the people that actually need it

for the people that are really going for that upper echelon of access to other privileged people whether they get a wage-slave job or not, yeah they should slog through MIT, but everyone else should consider other things that more closely match the lane they were born into

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