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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]

#341

Post by hector126 »

cubefox wrote: post #271
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…

[flagged]

Cubefox is being downvoted but for those unaware, there's still a lot of disagreement amongst experts in the role of genetics vs environment in determining G. There is undoubtably though, a huge amount of political and social stigma surrounding the topic. Hence the green username - I daren't touch this topic with a ten foot pole.

The study "Survey of expert opinion on intelligence: Intelligence research, experts' background, controversial issues, and the media", Table 3 in particular, makes a good illustration.

https://www.hoplofobia.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/2020-...

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

#342

Post by BeetleB »

Geisterde wrote: post #340

There is a lot of really interesting and simultaneously totally useless information in the comments here. If I ran a college, im accepting whoever I decide, because its mine. Imagine accepting random strangers in your house to level out income/racial/gender inequities. Of course the standardized tests are the best indicator of collegiate performance, and of course you will miss inspired candidates by only looking at…

> If I ran a college, im accepting whoever I decide, because its mine. Imagine accepting random strangers in your house to level out income/racial/gender inequities.

You probably can get away with it, as long as you don't want to be credentialed and don't want any federal funds.

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

#343

Post by asdff »

Kwpolska wrote: post #338
asdff wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory this is what the diploma or GED is already for. These are all certified by the state to show you've completed a certain amount of education to a certain level of quality. What is an SAT or ACT supposed to be on top of all that honestly? Really its tackling a symptom of colleges for whatever reason no longer trusting the states own education departments' diploma or GED. Which is damning considering these sch…

Where do the grades on a US high school diploma come from? They are arbitrarily assigned by teachers from the student’s high school, right? One teacher might give everyone good grades, while another will be more strict, and yet another may give good grades to their favourite students only. Grades of two students from the same class are often not comparable, let alone grades of two students from different states. The…

There are sometimes state ran standardized tests done to prevent this very issue of certain schools having uneven standards. And both SAT and ACT tests are conducted multiple times a year with completely unequal testing center conditions if you are into considering anything that might introduce a confounding factor (e.g. some schools they have hundreds of kids sit in a gym like what you'd see out of national exams in Korea, other kids might take it in seclusion at a private testing center). Then there is this idea of the extra tutoring people are paying for outside of the school curriculum basically amounting to something akin to paying for the right to use steroids in sports.

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

#344

Post by smeej »

alphazard wrote: post #202
smeej wrote: post #195

Are we maybe missing the forest for the trees here? Like, do the test scores or the academic achievement at Dartmouth actually matter? By sheer dumb luck, I am exactly the kind of intelligent schools and standardized tests measure for. I went to my first choice schools on a full academic scholarship for both undergrad and grad school. And it's meaningless in the real world. The most important connections I've made ce…

If what you said is true, then you are likely an ideal employee for the vast majority of roles. You can read well, understand what you are supposed to do, follow instructions, etc. It's not meaningless in the real world. You may not be satisfied with your level of success, but that's dependent on how you define success. You won't find many dumb people among self made multi-millionaires. But being high IQ isn't enough…

I'm not, though. I'm terrible at taking anyone's word for anything, partially (not entirely) because I was told I knew more things than my peers.

I'm also garbage at just doing what I'm told. Who's giving me the directions? Why should I trust them? What do they know?

You seem to be thinking of the people who did well in school because they worked hard. Perhaps they are excellent employees.

Those of us who never had to apply ourselves to anything and were told incessantly how much better we were than our peers make terrible employees in most atmospheres.

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

#345

Post by smeej »

gnicholas wrote: post #233
smeej wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most cases, I'd agree with you, but my parents thought it would be a great idea to have me start taking the exams in 7th grade so that by the time it mattered, boy would I be ready. Over four years, I added 350 SAT (1200-1550) points and 5 ACT points (30-35), but it seems pretty likely to me that it wasn't the direct work ("persistence") that made the difference as much as the generic four more years of schooling…

I wouldn't say you "added 350 SAT points" so much as your score went up by 350 points between 7th and 11th grade. I would imagine that for practically every student, SAT scores would go up by hundreds of points during this stage of academic development.

> but it seems pretty likely to me that it wasn't the direct work ("persistence") that made the difference as much as the generic four more years of schooling and general maturity.

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

#346

Post by smeej »

genman wrote: post #291
smeej wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last word of your post is considered a slur by people other people historically used it to describe. Please don't use slurs here. There's no need for that.

I guess that by your standards "stupid" would be equally invalid. We don't use "retarded" as medical term. If you have a medical condition then you are "intellectually disabled". Retarded is now mainly used to mean "very stupid" or "incredibly stupid" in informal context e.g. like in HN comments.

We've changed to "blocklist" and "allowlist" to avoid giving offense.

Is it really too much to ask people to come up with another word to use that hasn't been hurled at innocent people as an insult?

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

#347

Post by rozap »

fudhdjdbauu wrote: post #294
rozap wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't see how this is a bad thing. At the end of the day, admissions depts are selecting for potential. A middling test score from a kid with access to all the support they need shows that they've reached their potential. A middling test score from a kid that has received little to no support shows that there is a whole lot more there.

> admissions depts are selecting for potential No they aren’t. They’re selling a product to the highest bidder but happen to work in an industry where social and cultural expectations don’t allow them to sell exclusively to highest bidders. Adjusting to those expectations is ever changing as we’re seeing here. It’s an unfortunate fact that high bidder’s children roughly correlate with high potential (somewhat impolit…

It sounds like we are reasoning from very different foundations.

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

#348

Post by Kwpolska »

asdff wrote: post #343
Kwpolska wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do the grades on a US high school diploma come from? They are arbitrarily assigned by teachers from the student’s high school, right? One teacher might give everyone good grades, while another will be more strict, and yet another may give good grades to their favourite students only. Grades of two students from the same class are often not comparable, let alone grades of two students from different states. The…

There are sometimes state ran standardized tests done to prevent this very issue of certain schools having uneven standards. And both SAT and ACT tests are conducted multiple times a year with completely unequal testing center conditions if you are into considering anything that might introduce a confounding factor (e.g. some schools they have hundreds of kids sit in a gym like what you'd see out of national exams in…

There is no way for all 3.7 million high school graduates in the US to write a test in the same conditions. But the SAT and ACT are much better w/r/t similar conditions than grades.

> state ran standardized tests

The US is the land of capitalism, so it delegates standardised testing to private for-profit corporations. Many European countries have a nation-wide or state-wide standardised testing system.

> Then there is this idea of the extra tutoring people are paying for outside of the school curriculum basically amounting to something akin to paying for the right to use steroids in sports.

I wouldn’t compare tutoring to steroids. In sports, some athletes can afford to spend more time in the gym and to get a better coach, while some can’t, and that might affect their test results.

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

#349

Post by Geisterde »

BeetleB wrote: post #342
Geisterde wrote: post #340

There is a lot of really interesting and simultaneously totally useless information in the comments here. If I ran a college, im accepting whoever I decide, because its mine. Imagine accepting random strangers in your house to level out income/racial/gender inequities. Of course the standardized tests are the best indicator of collegiate performance, and of course you will miss inspired candidates by only looking at…

> If I ran a college, im accepting whoever I decide, because its mine. Imagine accepting random strangers in your house to level out income/racial/gender inequities. You probably can get away with it, as long as you don't want to be credentialed and don't want any federal funds.

Of course, if were we in a time when those policies I would be arguing that they are immoral and regressive, but of course you are correct.

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

#350

Post by closeparen »

asdff wrote: post #324
sokoloff wrote: post #2

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

Except that the test is pretty clearly perverted. You take two kids, same education, give one an after school testing program their parents pay money for, and they score better. Is the wealthier kid more worthy of receiving a college education? What does that say about how we educate our society then, and what we are actually valuing and giving privilege?

They score very slightly better, not really meaningfully.

https://slate.com/technology/2019/04/sat-prep-courses-do-the...

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