Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

hechingerreport.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 602 posts

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#151

Post by overrun11 »

hotpotamus wrote: post #119
FredPret wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm in a bubble, but every anecdote I read online in the past year or two is someone royally fed up with liberal politics. On Twitter, Reddit, and real life, the majority of people keep complaining about crime, drugs, homelessness. Sounds like a perfect environment for a generation of conservatives to get elected. Hopefully they stay close to the center for a long time.

What solutions are the conservatives offering to crime, drugs, and homelessness?

Promoting strong family structures and communities. Supporting social norms that dissuade destructive behavior.

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#152

Post by bombcar »

whoooooo123 wrote: post #44
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #33

It should be easy to make the student body reflect the diversity of applicants: select them at random.

I actually think this would be a good way to run admissions at ultra-selective elite universities - places like Harvard or Oxford where getting in or not can make a huge impact on the entire rest of your life. Everyone knows the evaluation process is bullshit and highly dependent on luck, so why pretend otherwise? Just discard those applicants who don't meet some minimum objective standard (SAT scores or whatever) th…

It’s often not the quality as it is the network. It’s well known that many state schools have excellent business programs (think MBA) but that you should only ever go to your local one, because the network you get will be limited to that locality.

Whereas NYU Stern or whatever is a world-wide network.

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#153

Post by [deleted] »

FredPret wrote: post #92
nerdponx wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately I feel convinced that it's a passing fad. I just hope that the pendulum does not swing too far the other way.

Maybe I'm in a bubble, but every anecdote I read online in the past year or two is someone royally fed up with liberal politics. On Twitter, Reddit, and real life, the majority of people keep complaining about crime, drugs, homelessness. Sounds like a perfect environment for a generation of conservatives to get elected. Hopefully they stay close to the center for a long time.

[deleted]

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#154

Post by [deleted] »

mschuster91 wrote: post #62
MichaelCollins wrote: post #22

Who could have seen that coming? The whole point of ditching quantitative tests is to empower the bureaucrats who want to make qualitative judgements based on their personal whims and biases. "Holistic" my ass.

The problem with "quantitative" tests is that they are not without their own bias - they select for students that had the luck (or the right parentage) to go to either a private school or to a public school in a well-funded school district. The result is that the student base will be overwhelmingly white rich kids, which is pretty problematic (see e.g. [1], fresh out of the press). Additionally, at least when one goe…

[deleted]

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#155

Post by bombcar »

thefaux wrote: post #98

For everyone who finds the removal of admission tests ridiculous, how do y'all feel about leetcode?

From what I’ve seen interviewees hate it (this is dumb busy work) but interviewers love it because of the absolute deluge of incredibly inappropriate candidates they receive.

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#156

Post by thegrimmest »

bombcar wrote: post #122
0x445442 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet somehow they never decry the race inequity of lucrative ventures like the NBA player pool.

Arguably there you have an exterior reliable measurement of ability (and if there was inappropriate discrimination against Asian basketball players, you should expect a team to realize it and get a winning team for cheaper).

But somehow we can't have an exterior reliable measurement of intellectual ability? And have no controversy testing for it across ethnic groups? Oh wait..

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#157

Post by MichaelCollins »

D13Fd wrote: post #135
JadeNB wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sounds like a perfect environment for a generation of conservatives to get elected. Hopefully they stay close to the center for a long time. The conservative groundswell is because generations of conservatives have already been getting elected, especially in less flashy positions that wield influence. Conservatives have really played the long game, at least since the New Deal.

I think people’s need to frame seemingly every issue and even their entire worldview as liberal vs conservative is the biggest problem in politics.

I agree, I think it blinds people to the sort of problem that user macrolocal mentions in a nearby comment, rising illiberalism among both 'liberals' (more accurately called progressives, but this terminology is all twisted in America..) and conservatives. I'm concerned that both use the other to justify or rationalize their own declining liberalism.

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#159

Post by thegrimmest »

ethbr0 wrote: post #115
rajin444 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s infinite ways you can define diversity. Choosing to define it in the way you’re referring to (skin color, sex, sexual orientation) is just discrimination. Colleges should be about furthering academic knowledge and preparing our best and brightest to make the world a better place. Diversity for diversities sake harms that.

Believe parent's point was that "spend[ing] that time surrounded by diverse and interesting people" is an effective way of "preparing our best and brightest to make the world a better place".

But since when is superficial appearance the primary measure of "diversity"?

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#160

Post by bombcar »

leeroyjenkins11 wrote: post #32
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #13

I’m looking at this and thinking: Did the colleges have no forsight, at all? Why did they think admission tests existed? Did they honestly think, “wow, the tests are flawed, so get rid of them, problem solved?”

Because people like taking down fences without knowing why they are there, because they are of course smarter than everyone who came before them.

No post body was provided.
Post reply on HN