For everyone who finds the removal of admission tests ridiculous, how do y'all feel about leetcode?
I spend my time working on open source or other products instead of leetcode prep. This means I don't apply to FAANG roles.
Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
301–310 of 602 posts
Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
#302What surprises me is how many Asians support these measures. Make no mistake: our ability to progress as we have in America has depended on the fact that objective metrics cannot easily be gamed. The cost of test prep is a minor barrier to entry compared to the cultural knowledge required to write an essay that moves a WASP admissions officer, or the social capital and connections required to get involved in charitab…
>” compared to the cultural knowledge required to write an essay that moves a WASP admissions officer, or the social capital and connections required to get involved in charitable or social activities that stand out in an application.” When I was in high school we were advised, in no uncertain terms, that the mixed race students should not hesitate to identify with their Non-White ancestry on their application and th…
> When I was in high school we were advised, in no uncertain terms, that the mixed race students should not hesitate to identify with their non-white ancestry on their application and that doing so gives them an advantage.
One important caveat to this - I am not quite sure this would accomplish the desired effect if the other parent of such a kid was asian. Listing themselves as an asian instead of white for pretty much all top schools would almost definitely decrease their chances.
Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
#303Even very high scorers sometimes find it impossible to get into top schools. Part of the problem is supply of slots has not kept up with population growth. It's not like Harvard's enrollment has kept up with population growth. Another problem is that the ceiling of standardized tests has been lowered, so top scores more more common.
I know a guy who got a perfect on his SAT at my lower middle class suburban high school back in 2004 or so. He got rejected from Harvard. Even the most prestigious school around the Kansas City Metropolitan area only gets 1 or 2 people going to Ivy League schools every year out of maybe 200. Which I think is funny because they definitely bill themselves as an “Ivy League Prep” type of school.
You mean Pembroke? Probably more like 5-10 kids a year. Even my public suburban kc high school had 7ish kids going to ivies my year.
Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
The school clubs met after school, one was there anyway. The Boy Scouts also met within walking distance. The Scouts used to meet at public schools, but the people who hate the Scouts got them kicked out because they had a religious requirement for one of the ranks.
Can you please explain how the child would get home from the after school activity, if it existed? I’m being clear when I am saying there really aren’t any EC options . In poor areas , there’s no money because school funding comes from property tax . Where I went, the funding was so tight they had to fire the foreign language , art teachers and music teachers . If they can’t afford regular instructors , where is the…
Poor or rural. One of my school systems had less than 100 kids in the middle school over an area of several square miles. There just wasn't the population density for many/any non-sport ECs (and even those were difficult).
Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The big part of education is being able to directly ask a knowledgeable person once you're stuck. Stuck on what? For an undergrad, those problems can easily be solved by going online or to a tutor for a fraction of the cost. And that's for STEM based problems, humanities is all about flattering whatever opinions the professor personally holds. The best piece of advice I got was from one of my english highschool tea…
"humanities is all about flattering whatever opinions the professor personally holds" - maybe at some universities, but not at a good liberal arts school.
Good liberal arts schools don't really exist in the US anymore, unless we're talking about something like St. John's College or maybe some Catholic universities. I believe the capture of university humanities departments by critical theory is pretty complete at this point, and the sciences are rapidly being colonized.
Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
#306What surprises me is how many Asians support these measures. Make no mistake: our ability to progress as we have in America has depended on the fact that objective metrics cannot easily be gamed. The cost of test prep is a minor barrier to entry compared to the cultural knowledge required to write an essay that moves a WASP admissions officer, or the social capital and connections required to get involved in charitab…
I don't think WASPs are given an edge here. I feel like it is actually racist to make this assumption also. White people as a broad category are the only racial group that is underrepresented relative to their population percentage in Ivy League schools. Maybe you could make the argument that WASPs are a subset of white people who are overrepresented specifically because of that faculty benefit for admissions but the…
I didn’t say WASPs are given an edge. But the institutions are controlled by them. And minorities must appeal to their fancy to get in.
Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
#307The greatest source of admissions inequity is childhood socioeconomic status. Dropping the SAT is so obviously not a fix for that I question the competency of the administrators who thought doing so was a good idea. The SAT is probably the most attainable piece of the application process for a poor kid to succeed at. You literally just need a guide book or two and enough time to study. One good smart friend helps if…
> You literally just need a guide book or two and enough time to study.
I think it's important to realize just how extremely non-obvious this is, though, for many high school sophomores/juniors.
I went to a decent high school and was in honors classes, and even I would have had zero idea test prep was even a thing, if a single science teacher hadn't randomly mentioned it in class once. I went to the school library and found the "Princeton Review" and practice exams and everything. I absolutely credit it with raising my score by probably a couple hundred points.
But I never would have discovered it except for that single teacher's offhand comment. I just assumed it would be a test that was an accurate reflection of your knowledge/intelligence, so as long as you were going to school, you'd just take the test and get your grade. If someone had pressed me, I probably would have said that test prep would be something kids in rich schools wasted their money on that wouldn't make a difference anyways. I just had no idea.
Yes, I absolutely agree that the SAT is the most attainable way for a poor kid to succeed at. I personally don't support the movements to remove standardized testing, not at all. But I also want to highlight how there's still an utterly gigantic step needed to reliably educate kids both about the importance of the SAT and how to prepare for it.
Very often barriers aren't even primarily a question of money/time/effort -- they're simply a question of awareness that an option even exists or that it matters.
Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can answer this because I was in this position. Parents couldnt afford the gas. They worked long hours to make ends meet and couldn’t take time to drive me to this stuff even if they had the gas money. Finally, there’s just not a lot of ECs available in a lot of poor areas , like the one I came from. I filled that space in the app talking about my hobbies instead because there was no money. Yeah.
Not sure where you went to school but I went to a public school in DC. Both my immigrant parents worked crazy hours so I spent my evenings playing with friends and in various clubs. Computer Club, Orchestra (early morning practice), various sports like tennis and soccer. None of it cost my parents a penny, it was all free. Even school uniforms were free. I know generally in public schools, things are almost always fr…
No, not remotely. Your experience is hilariously atypical of public school experiences.
Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
#309For everyone who finds the removal of admission tests ridiculous, how do y'all feel about leetcode?
Leetcode easies are fine, and that's all most companies outside of FANG ask in my experience. I've done interviews myself, and atleast 30% of candidates fail a problem that simply required a for loop to solve (no trees, no algorithms, just simple loop through list and do x).
And if companies dropped the degree requirement and only asked leetcode mediums, I'd consider that fine honestly. Most of what I learned through college was useless to my career, 6 years out of college and I think I'd struggle to name even 25% of the classes I took.
Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
#310It is honestly fascinating to look at the US (and many other countries) college system as a Belgian. Except in few cases (becoming a medical doctor is the only one I can think of but there might be others) you can just study what you want, where you want.
Obviously the US can not do that as some colleges would be overrun by students but it is so foreign to me.