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Report on the role of standardized test scores in undergraduate admissions [pdf]

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Re: Report on the role of standardized test scores in undergraduate admissions [pdf]

#111

Post by nostrademons »

nyrikki wrote: post #76
ccleve wrote: post #28

Here's the money quote: >> Importantly, these test scores better position Admissions to identify high-achieving less-advantaged applicants and high-achieving applicants who attend high schools for which Dartmouth has less information to interpret the transcripts. Precisely. SATs aren't about hurting the poor or disadvantaged. It's about giving them a chance.

Except that metrics like how many TVs a household has are indicators of performance on SAT scores. Obviously this is a proxy for socioeconomic status, and people higher on that ladder will have better support structures to do better in school. This is begging the question as socioeconomic status is the primary indicator of educational attainment in our country today. They aren't measuring potential, but the persons a…

The point of the report is that SAT scores are less correlated with socioeconomic status than other metrics used by admissions like GPA, high school reputation, extracurriculars, essay content, etc. They're still correlated. One of the interesting findings of social science research is that a lot of different metrics like IQ (itself a correlation between different subtest performances), GPA, parental income, child's income, parental wealth, child's wealth, college acceptance chance, eventual education level, ability to delay gratification, general health, etc are all correlated - that's the idea behind the g-factor, a measure of general intelligence that highly correlates with wealth & income. But this research shows that among those correlates, SAT scores are actually less correlated with socioeconomic status than the other metrics that admissions committees can use.

This is also why the SAT was adopted by Harvard in 1934. Prior to that, most students attending Harvard came from private New England boarding schools that could only be afforded by the upper class. They saw an opportunity to diversify the student body by testing the general public and admitting those that scored highest. As an added benefit, the SAT was much easier to grade than previous essay-based admissions standards, and so it reduced cost for the University.

Re: Report on the role of standardized test scores in undergraduate admissions [pdf]

#112

Post by anticorporate »

stonemetal12 wrote: post #95
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Space isn’t the limiter, teaching hours via faculty are. The most popular universities, research ones, have faculty that teach only a few undergrad classes a year. Changing those popular universities into ones more focused on undergrad education would make them less popular. Germany might be a better model where barebones education is easily accessible. They leave much more up to students: your homework might not be…

>Space isn’t the limiter, teaching hours via faculty are. The glut of un/under employed PHds suggest that the limited faculty is an artificial limit. Schools could easily hire more faculty and expand their undergrad programs if they wanted to. They see their half percent acceptance rate as something that makes them special.

Exactly.

There's no shortage of people who can teach, there is only a shortage of a willingness to pay them to do so.

Re: Report on the role of standardized test scores in undergraduate admissions [pdf]

#113

Post by sauwan »

candiodari wrote: post #109
piombisallow wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, you mean kids from a disadvantaged background can't build a 10 page CV filled with outreach, volunteering, expensive sports and musical practice by the time they're 18? They don't have an instinctive feel for the current pieties, bred into them since they're 3, to put in their admission essays?

[flagged]

Pretty sure that was sarcasm...

Re: Report on the role of standardized test scores in undergraduate admissions [pdf]

#114

Post by jonhohle »

troupe wrote: post #52
ccleve wrote: post #28

Here's the money quote: >> Importantly, these test scores better position Admissions to identify high-achieving less-advantaged applicants and high-achieving applicants who attend high schools for which Dartmouth has less information to interpret the transcripts. Precisely. SATs aren't about hurting the poor or disadvantaged. It's about giving them a chance.

If a school asks for SAT or ACT scores but, hypothetically, wants to discriminate based on race or some other characteristic, doesn't requiring the ACT/SAT make them more likely to be liable for discrimination because there is an objective standard to show that they are treating some groups differently than others? I thought that some of the recent rulings against selecting students based on their race hinged on the…

That’s why they choose something not directly associated with race like socioeconomic environment. If the result is correlated with race, that’s not necessarily an issue with admission processes.

There are other non-academic tests like CogAT, Wechsler, etc. that may be even better since they evaluate abstract reasoning and scale from young to old without significant modification. Those are used by gifted programs and organizations like Mensa. It’s possible that these would be adequate replacements for college admissions as well, but you may get a bunch of mildly on-spectrum kids who have never had to work hard for academic success (from my personal experience).

Re: Report on the role of standardized test scores in undergraduate admissions [pdf]

#115

Post by crazygringo »

ccleve wrote: post #28

Here's the money quote: >> Importantly, these test scores better position Admissions to identify high-achieving less-advantaged applicants and high-achieving applicants who attend high schools for which Dartmouth has less information to interpret the transcripts. Precisely. SATs aren't about hurting the poor or disadvantaged. It's about giving them a chance.

Which was, of course, a major justification for creating the SAT in the first place:

> First offered in 1926 by the College Board... Early proponents of the SAT argued that the admissions exam made higher education more meritocratic. Admissions officers at elite institutions like Harvard believed the test would identify talented applicants at less academically strong high schools and accelerate their journeys into higher education. [1]

[1] https://www.bestcolleges.com/blog/history-of-sat/

Re: Report on the role of standardized test scores in undergraduate admissions [pdf]

#116

Post by mrchucklepants »

candiodari wrote: post #109
piombisallow wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, you mean kids from a disadvantaged background can't build a 10 page CV filled with outreach, volunteering, expensive sports and musical practice by the time they're 18? They don't have an instinctive feel for the current pieties, bred into them since they're 3, to put in their admission essays?

[flagged]

You may have missed the sarcasm here.

Re: Report on the role of standardized test scores in undergraduate admissions [pdf]

#117

Post by fakedang »

troupe wrote: post #52
ccleve wrote: post #28

Here's the money quote: >> Importantly, these test scores better position Admissions to identify high-achieving less-advantaged applicants and high-achieving applicants who attend high schools for which Dartmouth has less information to interpret the transcripts. Precisely. SATs aren't about hurting the poor or disadvantaged. It's about giving them a chance.

If a school asks for SAT or ACT scores but, hypothetically, wants to discriminate based on race or some other characteristic, doesn't requiring the ACT/SAT make them more likely to be liable for discrimination because there is an objective standard to show that they are treating some groups differently than others? I thought that some of the recent rulings against selecting students based on their race hinged on the…

Not just a higher score. Kids with 1600s (or close) were straight up not even considered.

Re: Report on the role of standardized test scores in undergraduate admissions [pdf]

#118

Post by wegfawefgawefg »

strikelaserclaw wrote: post #27
wegfawefgawefg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its an IQ test. G proxy.

an IQ test where studying for it can increase scores significantly... (probably like real world IQ tests)

its a bad IQ test. a poor G proxy

Re: Report on the role of standardized test scores in undergraduate admissions [pdf]

#119

Post by mrkstu »

bwanab wrote: post #100
troupe wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a school asks for SAT or ACT scores but, hypothetically, wants to discriminate based on race or some other characteristic, doesn't requiring the ACT/SAT make them more likely to be liable for discrimination because there is an objective standard to show that they are treating some groups differently than others? I thought that some of the recent rulings against selecting students based on their race hinged on the…

The way you phrased it, yes. But, that isn't what the report was saying. It was using a generalized criteria of disadvantaged meaning low income or non-english speaking. Race based criteria can't be considered, but income can which means poor white kids from Appalachia as well as poor black and latino kids from urban areas.

Depends- if they end up doing race based red-lining, where they’re only boosting minority dominated zip codes instead of generally poor ones, they could still get dinged.

Re: Report on the role of standardized test scores in undergraduate admissions [pdf]

#120

Post by laidoffamazon »

piombisallow wrote: post #58
ccleve wrote: post #28

Here's the money quote: >> Importantly, these test scores better position Admissions to identify high-achieving less-advantaged applicants and high-achieving applicants who attend high schools for which Dartmouth has less information to interpret the transcripts. Precisely. SATs aren't about hurting the poor or disadvantaged. It's about giving them a chance.

What, you mean kids from a disadvantaged background can't build a 10 page CV filled with outreach, volunteering, expensive sports and musical practice by the time they're 18? They don't have an instinctive feel for the current pieties, bred into them since they're 3, to put in their admission essays?

This is a super goofy thing to say about Dartmouth admissions, because as of 2019 they expected admits to have all of that and have a 1550+/35+ test score.

I'm beginning to think a lot of the people commenting on these things have this weird concept of these schools admitting poor kids from the sticks and asian kids from Chinatowns with no resume items except good grades and test scores....it's true they have much lower standards for them, but they still need to have a decently "pointy" resume to get in.

The only way Dartmouth can fix it's "equity" problems is by shutting down for good.

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