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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]

#261

Post by camdenlock »

ren_engineer wrote: post #193
drewcoo wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to talk about the origins of the SAT, don't forget that it was designed by a eugenicist to try to exclude black candidates. Ironically, the problem with them now is that they're now used to exclude white people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_SAT

Eugenics was hot among progressive academics in those days, the founder of Planned Parenthood was one and so was the guy whose statistical methods are still the basis for all modern research back then being against eugenics meant you were a crazy religious nutcase who couldn't accept scientific fact about evolution and genetics

Progressive academics, all the way up to the president of the United States (Woodrow Wilson). It should be embarrassing to call oneself a “Progressive” these days, yet here we are. A small but meaningful indicator of the extreme bias in our education system…

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

#262

Post by trgn »

tverbeure wrote: post #253
trgn wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so weird to me that all this data exists, and that's it available and munged enough to be actionable. Do colleges really keep track of this for the tens of thousands of high schools, not only that, but all the income info, the mechanics of student placement for each school district, etc... it just seems so intensely convoluted.

All it takes one data brokerage company...

But how do they keep track of all that even so? e.g. school district lines get redrawn all the time. And each school of sufficient size has AP or IB tracks anyway, which basically kills any comparison. And within those, there may even be a further tiering between magnets that select on aptitude etc etc... and what reporting requirements do schools even have? is this mandated by law? the more data you introduce the more it needs to be corrected for; you know like those "10 best cities to ..." listicles.

I don't know. Look at parent's address, correlate with census and income, look at SAT, and be done with it. Solved lol.

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

#263

Post by jedberg »

webdood90 wrote: post #238
jedberg wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the paper specifically mentions that they correct for that by counting the scores higher for people who come from unprivileged backgrounds.

I think you can argue that this still isn't fair.

Of course you can argue that. There is nothing that is perfectly fair. More fair would be to individually interview every college candidate with questions custom tailored their life experience via video chat where their face and voice is obscured as well as any accent and speech affectation they might have.

But that certainly isn't scalable. I'd argue the SAT is one of the most fair things we have at scale.

It's true that the SAT used to be biased (for example the word problems would use the word regatta which a wealthy east coast teen would know but a poor west coast teen would not) but from what I've seen they've done a good job removing that bias (as shown by this paper).

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

#264

Post by cm2012 »

fireflash38 wrote: post #224
codexb wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Considering Asians were discriminated enough against to have a law just against them + internment camps and still excel in the USA should tell you something. It's that we get very high "quality" Asian immigrants to the USA who are better than average citizens of their home country.

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

#265

Post by [deleted] »

LeonardoTolstoy wrote: post #232
gnicholas wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will processes like this result in families avoiding (or at least not seeking out as much) rigorous high schools? It seems like some families might choose to send their kid to a not-super-rigorous high school — where they can coast in class and learn via outside enrichment — instead of a school with more rigorous academics where they'll be held to a higher bar by colleges. This would allow students to have a lower-st…

I'm skeptical someone would risk giving their child a significantly worse education in the off chance it might give them a marginally better chance to get into a top university. Regardless high income families moving to low income areas to go to those schools I would assume would be a net benefit for all from a tax perspective. Some of those taxes would presumably go right back to improving the local schools for ever…

[deleted]

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

#266

Post by chiefofstuffs »

LeonardoTolstoy wrote: post #232
gnicholas wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will processes like this result in families avoiding (or at least not seeking out as much) rigorous high schools? It seems like some families might choose to send their kid to a not-super-rigorous high school — where they can coast in class and learn via outside enrichment — instead of a school with more rigorous academics where they'll be held to a higher bar by colleges. This would allow students to have a lower-st…

I'm skeptical someone would risk giving their child a significantly worse education in the off chance it might give them a marginally better chance to get into a top university. Regardless high income families moving to low income areas to go to those schools I would assume would be a net benefit for all from a tax perspective. Some of those taxes would presumably go right back to improving the local schools for ever…

It's relatively common for similar behavior on the margin; people avoid sending their kids to the super competitive high schools for a combination of competitiveness/mental health/standing-out-to-colleges reasons

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

#268

Post by cm2012 »

runarberg wrote: post #255
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…

That is a pretty old link which has been severed a long time ago. They’ve even changed the name from Scholastic aptitude test to just SAT, in an effort to convey that SAT doesn’t actually measure anything but it self. (This is in a stark contrast to IQ which makes ridiculous and pseudo-scientific claims that it measures something approaching what they call general intelligence ) I have many beefs with SAT and standar…

IQ is one of the most reliable and proven metrics in social science.

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

#269

Post by jcranmer »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #160
anticorporate wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Your popularity goes down if too many of your classes are taught by PhD students and post docs. Overhead is brutal, and research grants are limited, so hiring more faculty is tough. If they just hire enough professors to satisfy demand, they would be on the hook for paying most of their salaries since they are unlikely to get funding. Hiring a bunch of pure teaching faculty is a no go since that turns the flag ship i…

In the humanities at least, tenure-track hiring numbers are down about 50% from pre-2008 era, while the supply of humanity PhDs is broadly stable.

The problem is that the university departments are less willing to hire the faculty that they once did, and that largely comes down to university administrations having decided that paying for anything non-STEM (and non-sports, I guess) isn't worth it anymore.

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

#270

Post by jltsiren »

ren_engineer wrote: post #193
drewcoo wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to talk about the origins of the SAT, don't forget that it was designed by a eugenicist to try to exclude black candidates. Ironically, the problem with them now is that they're now used to exclude white people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_SAT

Eugenics was hot among progressive academics in those days, the founder of Planned Parenthood was one and so was the guy whose statistical methods are still the basis for all modern research back then being against eugenics meant you were a crazy religious nutcase who couldn't accept scientific fact about evolution and genetics

Eugenics was always a politically motivated and highly contested topic. Many prominent scientists in relevant fields were opposed to it. It became popular, because nationalism used to be popular among the elite. Then it declined quickly, because WW2 made everything associated with nationalism undesirable in the West.
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