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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

#271

Post by gumby »

This would have been good news for me were I planning to apply today. I got very poor grades in high school and if they had ranked the students or calculated a gpa I doubt anyone would have looked at my application at all.

I’m really glad to see this part; I hope it’s true:

> At the same time, standardized tests also help us identify academically prepared, socioeconomically disadvantaged students who could not otherwise demonstrate readiness

When I was at MIT I felt that the institute was working hard on this area and took it seriously (for undergrads at least), though how well I could not tell — I was most definitely not of any cohort that deserved any special treatment.

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

#272

Post by scarecrw »

david38 wrote: post #183
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 live in a very rich town, like super rich. I work in tech so am rich by the standards of general population, but by the standards of Silicon Valley. My child did very well on the ACT. All she did was buy a $35 practice book, which almost anyone can do. Literally this was it. Furthermore, she doesn’t know of a single friend or acquaintance that hired a private tutor. All the nay-sayers belly-ache about this but for…

As one of those private tutors that the ultra-rich hire, I can definitely support most of what you've said here.

The greatest service that private tutoring provides is structure, accountability, and guidance. A dedicated student working independently through quality practice materials (many of which are cheap or free) can absolutely attain most if not all of the beneficial outcomes of preparing with a tutor/service.

I think when people look at inequity in college admissions, standardized testing ends up being an easy, tangible target, but not a particularly important one. If you want to look at how wealth impacts standardized test scores, focusing on paid preparation programs is missing the larger picture.

Wealthy students have had literate parents who can afford books and have the time to read to them when they're toddlers. They've gone to safe schools where the teachers can focus on teaching rather than making sure the students are well fed. They are surrounded by adults who have gone to college and can serve as role models for positive academic behavior. They have friends who are all taking the same tests and applying to the same schools to provide emotional and thoughtful support.

The collegeboard markets the SAT as measuring preparedness for secondary education. These students have been preparing for college their entire lives; is it any wonder that they score higher?

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

#273

Post by paxys »

uwuemu wrote: post #90
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 would argue exactly otherwise... with the advent of the web platform and frameworks like .net, the vast majority (and I mean like 95%) of developers will never touch anything ML related in their careers. I mean, I get that this is MIT and many of their students will end up working with ML, but applying that globally to CS is nonsense. Back when I was studying CS (cze) more than a decade ago, we had to pass linear a…

This is exactly why so many people (myself included) advocate for a pure "software engineering" degree at more universities. Let people who are interested study graph theory, combinatorics, linear algebra, advanced probability and statistics and whatever else. For the rest, provide a path to be ready for an industry job building websites and applications, which is what 90% of graduates will end up doing.

Every other discipline out there has a clear separation of pure from applied science. Why can't we do the same for software? What we end up with is borderline fraudulent coding bootcamps to fill in the gap.

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

#274

Post by hkt »

adfgadfgaery wrote: post #215
hkt wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is reasonable to wonder about the psychology of opponents of standardized testing It is, at its core, a fear that testing largely reproduces the status quo. If one accepts the idea that there is an intellectual elite who constitute the highest strata of society, and that their gifts are innate and heritable rather than trained, it follows that social mobility is pretty much dead. It is a bleak vision. Personally…

>it follows that social mobility is pretty much dead. It is a bleak vision. I have always found the idea of social mobility depressing. It assumes that we will always have a hierarchy, with some people who are powerful and prestigious and others who are poor and always feel inadequate. It assumes that we will always have an underclass but at least people can leave it.

Yes. The old saying among Labour party socialists in the UK was "rise with your class, not above it". They were in favour of a high floor on living standards and a low ceiling on wealth. It isn't a stretch to think that a more even playing field would be a better substitute for mobility.

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

#275

Post by nullc »

caffeine wrote: post #231
opportune wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other groups too. Like Big Rich Daddy who wants his kid to go to Yale as a legacy but he only has a 26 ACT and has only donated like $1m. When test scores are required, top schools basically have a “budget” of 25% of their student body they can admit with any score without it adversely affecting college rankings. Making tests optional makes it easier to admit more students that don’t “meet the bar” otherwis…

When I went to $(fancy school not quite Yale but like Yale), they were even more blatant - the admissions people just flat out stated they have a quota for legacies and they have different standards.

You sound like they should be ashamed of it? I'd rather go to a school where the under-performing students at least had well connected and wealthy families: much of the point of these institutions are networking-- if you just want to learn there are many other alternatives.

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

#276

Post by hooande »

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…

The problem with testing isn't that it's inaccurate, but that it's a poor tool for the problem that it's being used to solve. You can't express "likelihood of success in college" in one number. Looking back on my time in college, the idea that my success could be predicted by my knowledge of geometry and vocabulary words is laughable.

If there was a test that could accurately predict someone's chances of "success", be it SAT or IQ test, it would be used by everyone for everything. Billion dollar companies would be giving CEOs a version of that test before hiring them. A near perfect SAT score is noteworthy personal trivia, but other than that it loses all meaning as soon as someone steps on campus.

Schools with strong brands use tests because they have way more applicants than they can properly review. Standardized testing is made necessary by scale, not predictive accuracy. I'm sure that anyone who has worked in college admissions for years has a very clear picture of what a successful student looks like. But there doesn't seem to be a way to quantify and codify that knowledge. And there likely wouldn't be time to apply it to tens of thousands of people in a few months anyway. So, standardized testing is what we have until someone comes up with something better.

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

#277

Post by londons_explore »

uwuemu wrote: post #90
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 would argue exactly otherwise... with the advent of the web platform and frameworks like .net, the vast majority (and I mean like 95%) of developers will never touch anything ML related in their careers. I mean, I get that this is MIT and many of their students will end up working with ML, but applying that globally to CS is nonsense. Back when I was studying CS (cze) more than a decade ago, we had to pass linear a…

If you just want to be a great web developer, MIT may not be the best place for you.

MIT best prepares people for those less well defined roles, such as designing the next era of web browsers. For that, you can never know exactly which skills will be needed, so it's probably best to have as many neighbouring skills as possible so you don't hit problems you can't solve merely because the knowledge required to see the best solution was in that topic your course didn't cover.

Who knows, maybe the next era of web browsers will browse the web for you, and then condense everything they learned from thousands of resources into a single paragraph for the user to see. And for that, they might need ML.

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

#278

Post by bena »

8note wrote: post #239
bena wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Non-adults are capable of getting alcohol, without buying directly from a store. Typically they know somebody who knows an adult that will to the transaction with the store and provide the id. Otherwise, some stores accept good fake ids, or squint to believe that the person buying actually matches the picture on the card

In which case, he would be able to get beer in the same manner.

The issue is that the people he claims are getting him alcohol would be in the same situation as him.

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

#279

Post by Spooky23 »

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…

> Not to mention that, but there were sports our school didn't participate in, but the richer kids had levels of access to that looked great on college applications - rowing and lacrosse specifically come to mind.

Exactly. I went to smallish rural school. We had soccer, basketball, baseball. Youth soccer in my area was a rigged game where only people who were enrolled in the coaches summer camp would make the varsity team. Basketball had 75 kids try out for 12 spots. Baseball is ruthlessly competitive, and while I was a really good little league player, I had no chance against kids who were in multiple travel leagues, etc. I probably played 50 baseball games from age 9-12. The best players played at least 500.

My cousins went to a fancy private school. Everyone played on a varsity team; it was how they did gym. My older cousin did fencing, the middle one did basketball, the younger twins played squash. The squash guys sold themselves as a package and ended up getting a couple of ivy league places fighting for them.

I think we have a similar outlook on this. For me, getting good SAT/ACT scores let me "punch higher", and got me into some really good schools that I would not have be admitted to. Ultimately, I went to a state school, but was able to parlay the competitive nature of things to get a better grant package.

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

#280

Post by throwawayboise »

MaximumYComb wrote: post #265
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…

I grew up poor and I achieved some of the highest scores state wide in my country's standardised tests as a child (we get tested at ~8,10,12,14). A lot of my peers at my school were from social housing. My assessment is that their biggest issue wasn't money but their homelife. Parents who didn't value education, or even a basic respect for rules/authority. The kids were wild because their parents were kind of wild th…

I agree, and it's not the job of MIT to fix these kids.
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