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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]

#221

Post by SoftTalker »

nostrademons wrote: post #130
SnooSux wrote: post #5

To measure academic achievement they use First Year GPA. It makes sense they're correlated, both require studying known material for a test. But is GPA the best measure, especially first year? I would be interested in other metrics like 3rd-4th year GPA or placements into jobs and such.

SAT is well-correlated with 1st year GPA, but not well-correlated with eventual job placement (although it does correlate pretty well with eventual income). However, 1st year GPA is well-correlated with 2nd year GPA, which is well-correlated with 3rd-year GPA, which is well-correlated with 4th year GPA, which is well-correlated with eventual job placement, which is well-correlated with entry-level salary, which is we…

In my own experience, first-year GPA in college was a cakewalk. I had straight As until Junior year, then things got a bit more demanding and I was caught off-guard because college had been pretty easy up to that point. (Large state university).

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

#222

Post by tomjakubowski »

causi wrote: post #77
omgJustTest wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the thing that tests do not sample is persistance. Missing that degree of freedom misses important mind-sets to achieving goals. One of the most interesting studies, not specifically focused on "success" / GPA, but on "life-satisfaction" comes from a longitudinal study "Project Talent"[1]. The key correlation to "life-satisfaction"/happiness is how many questions a person _attempts_ to answer on an otherwise un-f…

Disagree. You can retake the tests, hence they do test for persistence.

it would only measure persistence in test-takers who score low enough that they want to retake it.

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

#223

Post by tejtm »

laidoffamazon wrote: post #142
crazygringo wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hi…

There was probably a time in which SAT scores are weighted highly in admissions for elite schools. Now it's a starting level filter. You're not getting in because of top scores, but you will get rejected because of bad scores absent a massive alternative hook. People that get in have top scores and other superhuman traits.

In that it comes from their parents, that is fair.

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

#224

Post by fireflash38 »

codexb wrote: post #199
ren_engineer wrote: post #157

The SAT was based on IQ tests used during WWI to try and find draftees with the most potential who shouldn't be wasted in the trenches. Standardized tests have always been about making things as fair as possible, and the fact that paying huge money for tutoring only results in minor score improvements should be a sign they are effective the war against them was because people didn't like the implications that poor As…

The war against standardized tests has far more to do with black students performing disproportionately poorer on them. Many people are unwilling to acknowledge the multitude of cultural and socioeconomic factors responsible for that and instead want to simply chalk it up to racism. And so there's a war against any admissions policy that results in disproportionate racial outcomes, until we're left with admissions po…

> Many people are unwilling to acknowledge the multitude of cultural and socioeconomic factors responsible for that and instead want to simply chalk it up to racism.

How many of those cultural and socioeconomic factors were almost directly related to racism though?

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

#225

Post by sangnoir »

codexb wrote: post #199
ren_engineer wrote: post #157

The SAT was based on IQ tests used during WWI to try and find draftees with the most potential who shouldn't be wasted in the trenches. Standardized tests have always been about making things as fair as possible, and the fact that paying huge money for tutoring only results in minor score improvements should be a sign they are effective the war against them was because people didn't like the implications that poor As…

The war against standardized tests has far more to do with black students performing disproportionately poorer on them. Many people are unwilling to acknowledge the multitude of cultural and socioeconomic factors responsible for that and instead want to simply chalk it up to racism. And so there's a war against any admissions policy that results in disproportionate racial outcomes, until we're left with admissions po…

> And so there's a war against any admissions policy that results in disproportionate racial outcomes

Except legacy admissions and pay-to-play donations. After all, pedigree and wealth are merit (or proof thereof) - no need for pesky test scores in the face of such overwhelming evidence.

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

#226

Post by spamizbad »

brigadier132 wrote: post #176
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the vast majority are not highly motivated learners The honest truth is they shouldn't be going to college. Because they went to school and didn't come out cultured or creative. (I went to a state school. It was easy to structure your schedule with zero liberal arts. I almost did. To the extent I have regrets about my time in college, it's in not taking more liberal arts classes.)

> To the extent I have regrets about my time in college, it's in not taking more liberal arts classes. I also went to a state school, I took the liberal arts classes, they have added nothing of value to my life. If you want to get cultured, read.

> I also went to a state school, I took the liberal arts classes, they have added nothing of value to my life. If you want to get cultured, read.

I think that means you were very fortunate. For me, 2 years at a community college was essential for getting my career in tech off the ground. Learning to write at the college level, being able to read/search/cite journals, and the practice of being able to synthesize a bunch of information into a cohesive document and/or presentation opened a ton of doors for me.

I get the impression some people figure this stuff out either through more demanding work in high school or from having smart parents who inculcate this knowledge into their kids. For me, I didn't have that.

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

#227

Post by brigadier132 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #182
brigadier132 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To the extent I have regrets about my time in college, it's in not taking more liberal arts classes. I also went to a state school, I took the liberal arts classes, they have added nothing of value to my life. If you want to get cultured, read.

> I took the liberal arts classes, they have added nothing of value to my life Sure, many were useless. But the few that were good were golden. Sorry you missed that. > If you want to get cultured, read This is necessary but insufficient. The discussion is essential. To be clear, I'm not saying you can't become cultured outside college. (Of course you can.) But that coming out of college uncultured is close to a wast…

> If a student isn't a highly-motivated learner, and their goal is maximising lifetime net earnings, they shouldn't be going to college

I disagree. I think further education in valuable topics is valuable to people even if they are not motivated. I don't think getting into massive debt for this education is valuable to them. There is nothing inherent about college that requires it to be so expensive and simultaneously useless.

All the defenders of the current system always respond with the tired "college is not about teaching how to do a job, it's about teaching culture, creativity, and critical thinking" bullshit that is not backed by any data. If we go by actual results, college is about getting people into massive debt to fund college administrators.

What college and education should be about is teaching people things that can give them the ability to contribute to themselves and others.

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

#228

Post by kccqzy »

SoftTalker wrote: post #216
kccqzy wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friends and I all prepped on our own. It really helped to have that kind of friendly competitive mindset among high school friends to provide each other motivation to one-up everyone else. Of course all of us were middle class, and we were all raised in the kinds of families value education above many things.

If I had suggested to my high school friends that we "prep for the SAT" I think I would have been roundly laughed out of the room.

Right. So if a high school is full of that kind of kids, someone performing well on the SAT shows more grit and perseverance than my kind of peers. Colleges should rightfully award that.

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

#229

Post by light_hue_1 »

anon291 wrote: post #89
light_hue_1 wrote: post #33

If this was a paper submitted by one of my students, they would fail. Why would these faculty members sign their names to this drivel? If you read carefully, you see how useless SAT and ACT scores really are. Here are just a few insane things. > Figure 1 shows a linear relationship between SAT scores and cumulative first-year GPA for Dartmouth students. SAT scores are grouped into 16 equal-sized bins, and we plot mea…

I'm confused. The authors cite several instances of research done at other institutions as the main evidence that SAT/ACT scores are predictive of overall success. At that point, the a priori assumption is that Dartmouth would behave the same way, which they then go on to show. I agree that they could have fully analyzed graduation rates and full-term GPA, but other studies have already done that. I do believe their…

When I talk about statistics on HN it feels like I'm taking crazy pills. The HN community pretends to be intellectual, but the level of mathematical education here is terrible.

> Moreover, you're hyperbolizing yourself. Namely, you criticize the title, which is not the author's title at all. Their letter is titled "Report From Working Group on the Role of Standardized Test Scores in Undergraduate Admissions"

The authors clearly say "SAT and ACT scores are highly predictive of academic performance at Dartmouth". That is what they want to show.

And this is totally false. They cannot accurately predict high vs low academic performance based on SAT or ACT scores. Their data clearly shows this is impossible.

> Except if you read the text, that's not at all what the authors claim. The authors do not claim the title (again... that's HN's title, not the paper's). The authors say:

Huh?! That's literally their claim.

They even say in the conclusion "They are significantly predictive of academic success at Dartmouth"

This is just totally wrong. They are a statistically significant but practically insignificant predictor of academic success when you define it in the most absurd and irrelevant way (first year GPA).

> It does... in fact... mean that there is a linear relationship in the observed data with the given levels of significance.

Summarizing data with some line, without any statistics, and saying "look the line slopes up", does not mean there is a linear relationship. At all. You cannot conclude one from the other.

The fact that this isn't obvious is truly frightening.

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

#230

Post by alberth »

elteto wrote: post #128
alberth wrote: post #71

Anecdote: a friend of mine is an admission officer for one of the US largest public university. They told me that if your kid has a 4.0 GPA (a perfect GPA), do not take the SAT/ACT ... because, without those standardized test scores - your kid is "perfect". But unless your kid has a perfect 4.0 GPA, taking the SAT/ACT typically helps your child get into a better school than their GPA might indicate. YMMV

That sounds very localized to the institution your friend works at. And public universities have very different admission procedures than private ones. You won’t get into a high tier private university (Ivy or not) without SAT/ACT scores.

We’re saying the same thing.

99% of kids don’t have a perfect 4.0 GPA.

But the point is, if you do happen to have a kid who does - there’s more harm than good that will result from taking SAT/ACT.

For all others, it’s highly recommend to take.

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