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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]

#351

Post by projektfu »

mp05 wrote: post #196
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.

If I were judged by my first year GPA I'd be homeless. Instead I'm really quite successful in spite of my first try (and miserable failure) at university. When I went back and was paying for tuition out of my own pocket as opposed to magic sky money falling into my lap from the US Dept of Education, things were a LOT different.

I think some of us (like me) were too immature at 18-22 to make good use of college. I'm not sure the amount of skin in the game would have made much difference, but I wouldn't have been able to pay for it myself, so that's a benefit. When I went back and got high grades, I also had manna-money from Direct loans. I just had a lot more life experience and maturity.

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

#352

Post by LudwigNagasena »

zahma wrote: post #194
Kwpolska wrote: post #183

You know what’s an even better policy? Making standardised tests the sole admission criterion. No high school grades (which are often inflated, unless your teachers hate you), no extracurricular activities, no essays. Just one set of objective numbers from the national maturity exam; which tests and with what weights depending on the field of study. This is what universities do in Poland (for most fields of study; so…

What a silly idea. Universities are not just in charge with academic education but rather with the formation of a person’s character. To succeed with the latter, academic capability must be held alongside the estimation of one’s character, for it is not only about one’s intellectual capacity but rather how one uses it.

If academic education is not their top priority, it would be beneficial to separate research facilities from universities and let universities be glorified fraternities. It's a waste to spend resources of top professors on "formation of a person's character" when they can help build the next generation of elite scientists and engineers.

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

#353

Post by TMWNN »

smeej wrote: post #346
genman wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

#354

Post by alephnerd »

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]

That possibility can be debunked using a simple fact - Nigerian Americans perform comparable to Asian Americans.

On top of that, most Nigerian Americans tend to be Yoruba and Igbo, just like the ancestors of most African Americans.

Unless you mean the genetic factor is caused by English and Scotch Irish Americans, as most African Americans have around 20% white ancestry, which was caused by sexual relations (mostly non-consensual).

Yet English and Scotch Irish Americans perform within the White average.

Alternatively, genetic based arguments don't make sense when humans are almost virtually identical, and the fact that race is inherently arbitrary - are the Kardashians white? If yes, then is Recip Tayyip Erdogan white? If yes, then is Ayatollah Khamenei white? If yes, then is Hamid Karzai white? etc.

Clearly, racial and genetic factors don't make sense.

Instead, economic and social factors make more sense (poor people do worse at exams due to less resources, sadly most African Americans are poorer than other similar groups due to historical traumas).

Why is it that these kinds of accounts on HN always seem to have been made in 2021?

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

#355

Post by fngjdflmdflg »

csa wrote: post #209
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 fact that paying huge money for tutoring only results in minor score improvements This might be true in aggregate, but I’ve seen data that says otherwise (buddy owns a test prep school). The keys are that the student wants the test prep and that the student has room to grow (i.e., not already near the top, where increases are capped). Middle of the pack students can gain 50-150 points per skill (this is a lot).…

>Is this implying that Asian immigrants do better because of genetics (nature)?

Yes, that is very likely true. I would go as far as to say that the "nurture" side of this coin is to a large extent an indirect result of nature as well.

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

#356

Post by zeroCalories »

asdff wrote: post #332
zeroCalories wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes exams are heavily weighted, but labs/assignments are not usually easy in stem courses. You're delusional if you think that you're gonna get a 4.0 by half-assing course work, and even more delusional if you think someone like that will average over 90% on their exams. The SAT covers fairly basic topics that nearly every student should know, that's why it's like an IQ test. When I was in school freshmen would take…

The labs at least are not designed to be challenging. They are designed to safely demonstrate some topic. I have been graded on yield and purity in chemistry before but it was only on a sliver of a percentage of the write up grade. Things can go sideways on you in lab all the time the last thing they want is for you to be worrying about that and dropping glassware full of chemistry. Lecture component was always the u…

Well we definitely didn't have the same experience. Labs and course work often made up between 25%-50% of the grade. This has been the case in both undergrad and grad school at a top school. If you did sloppy work and got Bs all semester you weren't magically going to turn that into an A with some good exams, even if it was theoretically possible. The points definitely weren't free either.

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

#357

Post by gnicholas »

counters wrote: post #339
gnicholas wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has to be asked out loud - do you think that the admissions departments at top universities haven't explicitly thought about this? Yes, I think they would use this as a facially-neutral way to achieve a race-motivated goal. > We all know - and the universities are very explicit about this - that socio-economic indicators are the new affirmative action. It's clearly the only practical way to effect the sort of di…

> Are you saying they want to have racial diversity or SES diversity? Because of structural racism and similar phenomena, they're not fully separable. It's not obvious to me they're even separable in a meaningful way (meaning that if you optimize for one, you simply won't get the same result as if you were to optimize for the other). > Can I ask what you found so objectionable? I understand that many people disagree…

> So what’s the point here? Why did SCOTUS accept to hear this? It seems like it was just taken up so that Robertas could fire up culture wars

They accepted the case because they wanted to end race-based affirmative action.

In terms of the dissents, they were completely out of step with the Court’s affirmative action jurisprudence. Going all the way back to Bakke (1978), the Court has never approved of any rationale for race-based affirmative action other than the ‘diversity rationale’. This states that colleges may use affirmative action in order to improve the educational experience by admitting more students of different racial backgrounds. The dissents employed fiery rhetoric but were not shooting for the diversity rationale. As a result, their arguments were destined to fail.

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

#358

Post by wnc3141 »

We may nitpick at which process gives more equitable chances of admission to Dartmouth. But ultimately we are still saddled with the absurd notion (and very real prospect) that a ticket to the middle class depends on winning very costly degrees. - particularly degrees whose brand recognition enables employment with greater proximity to the deployment of capital rather than operation of capital.

Meanwhile there is little discussion of why issues of equity in admissions are zero sum rather than leveraging multi-billion dollar endowments to expand access overall.

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

#359

Post by zeroCalories »

sudosysgen wrote: post #317
zeroCalories wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the real reason China banned many forms of test prep is because it's a zero sum game. Rich students are already advantaged by going to better schools, but too much test prep ends up forcing every student to study 14 hours a day to compete, with no actual advantage beyond that, so everyone poor and rich alike suffers from excessive test prep.

Fair enough. However I think the consequences of that is a China like situation. Education is increasingly competitive, and early achievements sort you into a caste for the rest of your life. Of course, race based discrimination will become even more problematic as lower class Asian Americans are fast tracked into the China style rat race to get into a good school.

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

#360

Post by latency-guy2 »

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?

Why is it narrow? N is a few hundred at a well ranked and good amount of rigor university, and is aimed at the graduating class and then their earnings as they rose through to probably mid career positions past entry level.

I haven't read the entire study mostly because I don't care, but I think you're wrong in your statements.

GPA is well correlated to earning potential, as well as earnings in reality.

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