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SAT score distributions in Michigan

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Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#391

Post by lukas099 »

mywittyname wrote: post #363
rayiner wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If SAT prep was effective, then it would be an educational miracle, because a good SAT prep course is under $1,000. American schools spend 10 times that much money per student every year and barely move the needle.

Test prep is effective at getting you an accurate score. One bit of knowledge improved my ACT score from 27 to a 33: internalizing how long I have for the tests. I was so used to being able to finish school tests with a comfortable amount of time remaining, so I took the test at a casual pace which means I didn't finish. The second time, I sprinted through the test as fast as possible and my score improved dramatical…

Similarly, a single 30-minute lesson taught me what I was doing wrong on the ACT Science section (trying to understand the science instead of treating it as 'find the answer in the text'). Brought my overall score from 32 to 35 (I was already a good test taker, but those 3 points made a big difference),

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#392

Post by lukas099 »

lapcat wrote: post #209
BeetleB wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also doesn’t this also beg the question as to why non-Asian parents apparently won’t teach their kids to be good academics? Because they don't value their kids being good at academics. I've lived in multiple countries. In the non-US ones, people don't brag about being bad at math (even when they are bad at it). As an adult, if you couldn't add/subtract/multiply two large numbers on paper without a calculator, that…

> Because they don't value their kids being good at academics. Yes, my memory of high school is that everyone including the adults celebrated sports, and hardly anyone gave a crap about the high academic achievers, who were often social outcasts. I spent a lot of my childhood trying (though largely failing) to pretend that I was not so smart. I can't speak for other countries, but anti-intellectualism is widespread i…

Not my experience at all (Midwestern small city, ~90% white). Parents with Honor Student bumper stickers, subtle humble-brags, and general celebration of academic ability were all around me.

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#393

Post by lukas099 »

yucky wrote: post #364
hackerlight wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't separate those things. Immigrants create conditions (prosperity) that make people want to immigrate.

Is that a logical conclusion? Seems like other countries would do the same if it were that simple.

Simple does not mean easy. It is hard to become a country that attracts the brightest immigrants in the world.

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#394

Post by lukas099 »

qsort wrote: post #84
davidn20 wrote: post #29

I think as a society we need to admit different race, in general, have different culture, values, and strengths. I don't even think that's a radical idea, but somehow it is. I have been watching this football competition youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrbljwLslYI The fun and athleticism you see is awe-inspiring, but I haven't seen a single Asian person competing or even at the event. My guess is a m…

We should not, because race is a useless concept. There are traits individuals can have, some of which are immutable, and some of which correlate with what we call "race". But race itself is, even taking the most benign meaning possible, at best a surrogate. The sooner we get rid of that awful meme the better.

> race is a useless concept.

Tell that to the medical community, who routinely give different interventions based on race.

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#395

Post by lukas099 »

dqpb wrote: post #333
warner25 wrote: post #111

I think I'm mostly surprised to see how many of the "White" scores are so low, and so far behind "Asians," after years of hearing that the test is biased towards white / Anglo / native-English speakers raised in Western culture. I'm also reminded that I (like probably most people commenting on Hacker News) exist in a really small bubble in which everyone I closely associate with was in the top two bands (after going…

There was an episode on New York Times - The Daily, I believe it was "(6/24/22) One Elite High School's Struggle Over Admissions", in which one side of the debate argued that the over-representation of Asian's was actually an instance of white supremacy.

And what arguments did they use to support this point?

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#396

Post by learn-forever »

snarf21 wrote: post #229
Aunche wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I volunteer tutor teens in the SAT and the problem is a bit deeper than just parents. A few of my students have a similar amount of base intelligence as me, and if they studied as much as I did, they would have no problem with finding a path of least resistance to the upper-middle/lower-upper class. The problem is that even if I'm 100% sure this path exists, they are skeptical because it seems like I'm in a entirely…

This is why (imo), test prep should be a class you take at school. Why should it be a separate thing and a multi billion dollar industry? A lot of the SAT/ACT prep for HS students is about understanding how the tests work and how to approach questions. We already have a bunch of federally mandated AYP testing (no) thanks to No (ALL?) Child Left Behind, why can't this just be old copies of the ACT or SAT. By the time…

these are standardized tests, taking normal classes _is_ prep for them

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#397

Post by gnicholas »

a2tech wrote: post #184
prottog wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it not be fair to look at the median score for different racial groups, since we know that many universities do in fact discriminate on the basis of race in admissions?

In Michigan publicly funded institutions are no longer allowed to use race as a factor.

Same in California, but I nonetheless heard a dean from UC Berkeley talking about how they "push the envelope" in terms of legality. It's easy to accomplish via a "holistic assessments".

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#398

Post by gnicholas »

uglycoyote wrote: post #166

has the SAT gotten way easier on recent decades or have students just gotten that much smarter or better at taking it, and universities gotten a lot stricter about accepting students with lower scores? one of the commenters in the linked article mentions that their son, with an SAT score of over 1500, was rejected by a number of normal state universities such as the University of Texas at Austin (a great school but n…

IIRC scores actually went down for a while, as some schools/states were mandating or heavily encouraging students to take the SAT. That made the test-taking pool less self-selective, so it now includes more students who are less prepared for the test.

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#399

Post by seer-zig »

warner25 wrote: post #111

I think I'm mostly surprised to see how many of the "White" scores are so low, and so far behind "Asians," after years of hearing that the test is biased towards white / Anglo / native-English speakers raised in Western culture. I'm also reminded that I (like probably most people commenting on Hacker News) exist in a really small bubble in which everyone I closely associate with was in the top two bands (after going…

> after years of hearing that the test is biased towards white / Anglo / native-English speakers raised in Western culture.

Media bias/lies. It's similar for the GRE, many people coming in from China score extremely high on the English portion even though they do not speak English properly. I learned to stop listening to these divisive media outlets that have a clear agenda to tear down the fabric of society.

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#400

Post by [deleted] »

treis wrote: post #387
danans wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is an article that explicitly breaks down the phenomenon with LA public schools: https://laist.com/news/education/los-angeles-unified-parent-... California is unique in that it intentionally gives less funding to higher-family-income public schools, expecting them to make up the gap with private fundraising. The result is that after adjusting for private donations, per pupil spending in CA is roughly equivalent…

>Parents in these 34 most-affluent LAUSD elementaries donate an average of $876 per student, our analysis shows. That's like 1/5 of the gap between APS and the next highest school district. It looks like the wealthiest in LA are able to make up for the difference. But I am suspect of this article. The parental contribution is only 0.4% of the LAUSD budget but somehow it's making up a 20% funding gap between low and h…

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