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Reinstating our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles

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

#141

Post by hyperbovine »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #109
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.

I don't get this take at all--learn both real analysis and discrete math. At MIT especially. Knowing calculus (the precursor to RA) is essential for quantitatively understanding the world in which we live, including the 99.9% of it that is not computer science.

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

#142

Post by bena »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #88
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 used to take the ACT for people, they'd pay me in beer (which I wasn't old enough to buy for myself). You'd get ID'd at the entrance, but nobody kept track of whether the name on your test was the name on your ID, so you'd just take each other's tests. It might be harder now, I don't know.

But they also wouldn't be old enough to buy you beer.

Unless you are suggesting adults would buy you beer for you to take the ACT on behalf of a minor they knew. Which seems odd.

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

#143

Post by chernevik »

likpok wrote: post #71
sjg007 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coaching and studying improves SAT scores. People learn the type of questions they do poorly on and can study to improve. The SAT is a test you can study for.

The top link is a study that shows that the improvement is pretty marginal in practice. It does miss something: in specific ethnic enclaves SAT coaching is much more effective, perhaps because of a culture of out-of-school schoolwork and teaching beyond SAT prep. Those enclaves aren't particularly wealthy either (if I recall correctly it was a Korean enclave). Even then we're talking 70 points -- not nothing, but als…

I wouldn't be surprised if those improvements were mostly moving below-average scores toward the average, by giving deprived students basic skills that their "education" didn't.

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

#145

Post by cm2012 »

visarga wrote: post #103
Invictus0 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nah, there is a straight linear correlation between parental income and sat score.

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2009/08/27/business/economy/...

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

#146

Post by danShumway »

Psyladine wrote: post #106
dijit wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not GP, but you should approach this using Bayes' Theorem just like anything else. If one study from MIT causes you to completely flip on any of your beliefs, you need to rethink how you form these kinds of opinions.

MIT's conclusions should cause you to adjust your priors by a certain amount, but they should not cause you to completely flip by themselves -- particularly if you're not in the camp that thinks literally every decision MIT makes is correct by virtue of it being MIT.

If you wouldn't have looked at MIT's original plan of abandoning SAT scores as proof that they didn't matter, you probably also shouldn't look at them picking up SAT scores again as proof that they do matter. MIT's conclusions should lead you to update your priors by some amount dependent on how much you trust you currently have in the accuracy of college admissions processes when they assess student qualifications and outcomes.

----

My personal take on this is that I do absolutely buy that SAT scores could be a leveling factor between kids from different socioeconomic backgrounds and that they could be a better metric than GPA for determining admission. But of course, that's a pretty low barrier of entry to clear, GPA scores are probably close to meaningless when compared across schools. It seems to me that there's a lot of room here for SAT scores to be simultaneously mostly meaningless and at the same time also a reliably better predictor of school success than GPAs.

It's also important to ask what exactly MIT is measuring -- what does it mean by academic success and how much does that definition overlap with "fits in when placed in an environment optimized for people who are good at standardized testing?" And again, even if they are kind of circular or if they're measuring the wrong things, it's still plausible that they're more reliable than GPAs; it's a low bar to clear.

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

#147

Post by mgh2 »

parkingrift wrote: post #139
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…

>It's far easier for rich students to game GPA, college essays and extracurriculars than it is for them to game the SAT. Disagree. I worked for the Princeton Review while in college back in the day. We would outright guarantee 99th percentile for one on one tutoring. If you didn't get 99th percentile the course was refunded or you could take it again. For classroom tutoring we would guarantee some improvement of I be…

Maybe there was another variable at play: language. SATs are in English.

If English is not a student's primary language and fluency improves as they advance academically, up to a plateau with age.

Not sure if this was properly controlled in SAT studies. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11007/

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

#148

Post by JumpCrisscross »

TrinaryWorksToo wrote: post #108

Buried in the details it says that MIT will be accepting anyone over a (presumably secret) threshold, not using it as a ranking tool as some people might indicate.

> MIT will be accepting anyone over a (presumably secret) threshold

I don’t think it’s a hard threshold. Some people are bad standardised test takers. If the rest of their application shows they won’t flunk their math tests, a lower score could be fine. If, on the other hand, it looks like a pattern, a marginal score could be seen to not make the cut.

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

#150

Post by screye »

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…

MIT and Caltech have always held a 'number-oriented universities' perception in my mind. This is in contrast to a 'prestige-oriented or identity-oriented' perception that I hold for Ivies.

It is nice to see MIT do justice to those priors.

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