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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]

#161

Post by logicchains »

Jensson wrote: post #126
yieldcrv wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> SATs are the chemotherapy of inclusion This is very apt. And then all the anti science people come and argue we need to take every patient off chemotherapy because it hurts them, and thus making things worse for these poor patients. I think it is ok to think that those kind of people are insane and need to be stopped, and that chemotherapy is overall a good things for patients even if it hurts a bit.

Being pro-every single medical treatment is epitome of anti-science. Science is following evidence-based medicine and the evidence shows that there are cases where chemotherapy is ineffective, like https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S15330... and https://www.healio.com/news/hematology-oncology/20191213/adj... . Putting everybody with cancer on chemotherapy is anti-science.

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

#162

Post by JCharante »

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.

It's an artificial limit that keeps up the quality. It's the reason nightclubs have bouncers.

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

#163

Post by breadwinner »

carabiner wrote: post #133

Yep. And STEM students have higher SAT scores than lib arts. And Asians have higher SAT scores than everyone else.

> And Asians have higher SAT scores than everyone else.

And that might be the biggest reason to prefer "holistic review" over SAT scores. Originally invented to limit the number of Jews [1], "holistic reviews" is now being used to limit the number of Asians in top universities.

[1] https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/06/23/a-lawsuit...

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

#164

Post by ElephantFarm »

abeppu wrote: post #11
resters wrote: post #3

this says more (good stuff) about Dartmouth than it does about the standardized tests. If scoring higher on something that is close to an IQ test doesn't predict higher academic performance, what does that say about the coursework?

... is it close to an IQ test? Like, people study very specifically for these standardized tests, and success is also related to how much prep work you put in. I think that may also align with how people study for exams once they're enrolled students, how much work they put into projects/papers/etc.

[dead]

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

#165

Post by JCharante »

nordsieck wrote: post #57
Avicebron wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to think there is an unspoken fear that if it became more accessible it loses its prestige

> I tend to think there is an unspoken fear that if it became more accessible it loses its prestige That might be a concern for Dartmouth and the Ivys. But for US state schools, not so much. And those generally provide a very high value:cost product.

but state schools are already massive? They are certainly already going with that approach.

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

#166

Post by nyrikki »

nostrademons wrote: post #111
nyrikki wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A Harvard, Princeton, and Yale alumni survey found three-quarters live in zip codes that rank in the top 20 percent by income and education. Half live in the top 5 percent of zip codes.

So their efforts didn't work.

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

#167

Post by abeppu »

zeroCalories wrote: post #85
abeppu wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... is it close to an IQ test? Like, people study very specifically for these standardized tests, and success is also related to how much prep work you put in. I think that may also align with how people study for exams once they're enrolled students, how much work they put into projects/papers/etc.

Then you just normalize the scores based on socioeconomic indicators like is done in the article. Of course, this highly advantages well groomed students from bad demographics, and horribly disadvantages neglected students from good demographics. That's why China worked hard to ban test prep. But either way, it's a pretty good proxy for IQ.

I think we're missing each other. Propensity to study may be a different attribute than IQ, which is a predictor for both standardized test scores and academic success. Normalizing for socioeconomic factors does not in itself disambiguate these possibilities. Someone with low motivation to study is not necessarily 'neglected'.

I've seen years ago a highly cited paper showing relatively high correlations between SAT scores and IQs, but critically its data was from the late 1970s, when norms around test prep, and access to prep resources, were meaningfully different.

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

#168

Post by seanmcdirmid »

ghaff wrote: post #140
jltsiren wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real cost is the opportunity cost. Prepping for a competitive test (I don't know if SAT or ACT is one) is a full-time job. If you work for living, you don't have the time and energy to prepare adequately.

A lot of it measures high-schooly type stuff. I imagine if you put a SAT down in front of me today, I'd do terribly (especially in math in spite of having advanced degrees). I just don't have instant recall of a lot of the geometry and other stuff at this point. Heck, I'm not sure I could even do long division.

At least that SAT/ACT isn’t heavy into classic geometry proofs like the gaokao is. It’s literally something you’ll forget after you take the test because trigonometry is so much more effective (Chinese learn both).

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

#169

Post by magicalist »

sokoloff wrote: post #2

Shocking that a “Scholastic Aptitude Test” or “American College Test” would predict future scholastic achievement at the collegiate level.

Yes, as a USA patriot, this is why I've always supported the USA PATRIOT Act. I don't get why anyone would bother looking into it.

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

#170

Post by jvanderbot »

magicalist wrote: post #159
jvanderbot wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Undergraduate GPA predicts lifetime earnings[1], incoming test scores and GPA are highly predictive of both advanced degrees (which increase earnings), and increased earnings within degrees [2], [3]. I suggest these effects are because being a good student aka "eating books" is correlated with conscientiousness. They show up to lectures, prepare, and test well. And conscientiousness is very highly correlated with lif…

> Undergraduate GPA predicts lifetime earnings[1] That is...an extremely narrow study to use to make that broad an assertion. GPA of two classes from 2010 at a single business school in China, their starting salary, and then their salary in 2018?

You're right. But there are many other sources.

The larger point is that, since you can study for tests (and GPA), that I think conscientiousness dominates.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/05/20/heres...

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