SAT score distributions in Michigan • Hacker News Board

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#321

Post by Retric » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 4:33 PM UTC

someguydave wrote: post #283

f154hfds wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the SAT is an IQ test. I'm sure IQ helps but parents clearly have a pivotal role - the single biggest external factor to explain variation in score perhaps. Surely the biggest factor in SAT scores is how much you the student _care_ about the SAT score. Why do you care? Maybe because your parents care, maybe because your parents don't care? At the end of the day parents are crucial to the success of thei…

This paper found a 0.82 correlation between general mental ability g and SAT scores https://archive.org/details/ScholasticAssessmentOrG/page/n1/...

That’s relatively low considering what kind of test it is. Elementary school sees a 0.7 correlation between IQ and academic performance.

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#322

Post by prottog » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 4:34 PM UTC

tester756 wrote: post #206

prottog wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I've made this point before in this forum, but there's no reason at all to believe that the distribution of interests, values, and strengths between different ethnic and cultural groups should be identical. The classical liberal idea that "all men are created equal" is a beautiful one, and should not be perverted to mean that everyone is literally equal to each other in every respect.

I think the point is that are those differences just because of race or they are made because of external factors due to race? For example: You're successful because of X race or You're successful because you were treated differently than if you had Y race

Neither statement is falsifiable, so it should be meaningless from a policymaking standpoint.

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#323

Post by commandlinefan » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 4:34 PM UTC

yangikan wrote: post #239

thwayunion wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For CS, getting into Michigan is incredibly competitive. They are tied (at #11) with places like CIT in CS and way above a lot of ivies and elite technical schools. Michigan CS is like Carnegie Mellon CS -- getting into the school for non-CS is waaay easier than getting into the school with the intention to major in CS, and the filter starts at admissions. Michigan is closer to an ivy than a "state school" for CS.

Do you have to declare a major when you apply? Can't you be ambivalent about it? Or apply for a different major and then switch to CS after you get in?

You have to apply to the program (just went through this with my own son this year). If you don't get accepted into your preferred major, you can apply to a different major and then switch, but applicants are warned that that's harder than just getting accepted into the program in the first place.

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#324

Post by glerk » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 4:36 PM UTC

hotpotamus wrote: post #57

hker999 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Harvard university president has stated many times that admissions are weighted and if you are Asian, will have a much harder time getting accepted. It seems racism is accepted in academia, when it affects a demographic you deem 'problematic'

I see this brought up a lot and it always makes me wonder - what is the "correct" number of black people who should be admitted to Harvard? Like if you removed any racial consideration, what would be the results?

The correct number of X group who should be admitted is the number of individuals in X group who meet the academic standard to be admitted. How about we stop giving those arbitrary buckets so much importance and treat everyone like individuals?

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#325

Post by commandlinefan » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 4:37 PM UTC

johndfsgdgdfg wrote: post #121

It's disheartening and infuriating to see even after the last president is gone the racism against LatinX people still exists. Not just at the border. This is probably a good time to abolish racist standardized system.

How did you get THAT from the linked post?

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#326

Post by commandlinefan » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

rizzaxc wrote: post #98

greatpostman wrote: post #4

puts head in the sand

if anybody doubts that the future isn't in the US (or rather, the west), this is the evidence. China has both the brains and brawn to bully every other nation (provided it doesn't collapse under its own weight)

If so... what do you do about it, then? If Chinese people are just smarter than everybody else and smarter wins (both just theories, but if they're true)... we can't just will ourselves into getting smarter.

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#327

Post by nfw2 » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 4:40 PM UTC

aabajian wrote: post #11

The SATs, particularly the mathematics score, is very much a reflection of your parents' willingness to push you academically. The stratification is more granular than Asian versus Black or White versus Native America. For example, Jewish students excel beyond the Caucasian average while Cambodian and other Southeast Asian Immigrants perform significantly below the national average for Asian Americans. The challenge…

That's reductive. My parents were white liberal hippies who didn't push me at all. I got C's in school and a perfect math SAT and SAT 2.

To be fair, I did spend a lot of time thinking about math because I liked it.

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#328

Post by arolihas » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 4:46 PM UTC

throwaway6734 wrote: post #315

vxNsr wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve got a friend applying to med schools, he’s a little older (late 20s vs early 20s) so he took the spray and pray approach and applied to 60 MD and DO schools. He said by and large he’s the only or one of ~3 non-minorities in any of the MD group interviews, additionally Asians aren’t well represented there either. DO group interviews on the other hand are mostly white/asain.

Do?

Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine. It's known as the alternative for med school rejects basically (not saying this is a fair or completely accurate characterization but that is the perception).

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#329

Post by thwayunion » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 4:47 PM UTC

nfw2 wrote: post #327

aabajian wrote: post #11

The SATs, particularly the mathematics score, is very much a reflection of your parents' willingness to push you academically. The stratification is more granular than Asian versus Black or White versus Native America. For example, Jewish students excel beyond the Caucasian average while Cambodian and other Southeast Asian Immigrants perform significantly below the national average for Asian Americans. The challenge…

That's reductive. My parents were white liberal hippies who didn't push me at all. I got C's in school and a perfect math SAT and SAT 2. To be fair, I did spend a lot of time thinking about math because I liked it.

> To be fair, I did spend a lot of time thinking about math because I liked it.

Spending childhood doing things you enjoy and which also have economic utility is a secret power.

Most people in the top 5th percentile of academic things also happened to spend a truly absurd amount of their youth obsessing over that academic thing. They may also be gifted, but spending all that free time in youth thinking about things is probably way more important than IQ.

(For me it was programming and law... I was reading legal briefs and slinging code most evenings of middle school through high school, which set me up with a rather absurd advantage over my peers once I got to college.)

BTW: elite unis/programs are looking for those types of people. It's not the extra curricular box checking that interests them, it's evidence of thousands of hours of practice at high value add skills. The practice can be forced with absurd amounts of grit, which is why it's a secret power when it comes out of intellectual curiosity.

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#330

Post by wjnc » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 4:47 PM UTC

sampo wrote: post #231

wjnc wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a quick note on the word 'push'. We all now the 'tiger parenting' trope. Those parents exists and it makes a difference (with clear 'pushing', which I see as a negative). But with maths I think it's a bit more subtle. Just the tiny things (even just 'talk' math) you do in early education can make a massive return later. There is no 'mean' in maths education even in ages 4-10 (my kids). We live in the Netherlands…

> We all now As a non-native English reader, it took me a while to understand that this means: We all know. I think native speakers hash the words in their brain based on how they sound. And people who learned English at school primarily by reading and writing, hash the words by how they are written. The latter data structure makes it difficult to find that "know" and "now" are almost the same word.

Sorry. Non-native so you figured me out. This was a pure error though. My mental pronunciation is quite different.