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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]

#401

Post by derbOac »

535188B17C93743 wrote: post #12
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.

I agree. Every other comment here seems to be like "well duh" and I'm... skeptical. My experience is that the ACT/SAT seem to be good indicators of getting good grades in well-defined spaces. But things like creativity, curiosity, work ethic are much better predictors of other kinds of success that frankly matter much more in the real world. I know some really, really unintelligent people who got good grades in colle…

Their Figure 1 is why we keep having these discussions in society. It's grossly misleading and not what a scatterplot for a 0.46 correlation looks like. I know what the figure is, it's just done in a way to overstate a case and ignore variability within bin.

If that figure were about anything else, people would be screaming bloody murder about misleading figures and overly generalized interpretation.

I'm in favor of allowing for the use of test scores but they get abused and the language in this report is a good example of how this happens. Scores have these real but modest correlations with real world situations, but then get used as rulers of atomic precision without any context or recognition of their massive limitations.

It makes the authors of this report look either deceiving or ignorant of statistics or both.

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

#402

Post by bhickey »

SamBam wrote: post #393
bhickey wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are affluent kids moving into housing projects in order to get admitted into Dartmouth? This came up in Boston Public Schools. Admission to Boston Latin took into account the portion of a student body eligible for free lunch. It became mathematically impossible to be admitted to Latin if you weren't coming from a low income school.

> It became mathematically impossible to be admitted to Latin if you weren't coming from a low income school. I don't believe this is true, but if you have citations I'd be happy to hear them. For instance, their accountability data [1] shows that, in 2023, out of 409 kids taking their ELA MCAS test, 92 were categorized as "low income." I find this hard to square with your statement (all students came from low-income…

Students at shools where 40% or more of the student body is classified as low income receive 10 points towards exam school entrance. [0] Being a poor kid at a rich school is a penalty, while being a rich kid at a poor school is a bonus.

A student attending a school without bonus points would need to score 97 points. Class rank is a factor which effectively imposes quotas on schools regardless of students grades and or test scores. Back around 2016 there were a handful of schools where students needed to score in excess of 100 points to get into Latin.

Last year 408 high income students received bonus points while 29 low income students did not. The admission rates for these groups were 85% and 55% respectively. [1]

[0] https://archive.is/20220203094548/https://www.bostonglobe.co... [1] https://archive.is/20231107020144/https://www.bostonglobe.co...

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

#403

Post by RecycledEle »

Standardized test scores are objective qualifications not subject to racist prejudice.

Racist prejudice invades every step of admittance to college, subjective grading, scholarships, hiring, promotion, and firing. Therefore qualifications like education, worke experience, references, and salary history are racist and must be disregard in favor if objective qualifications.

A fair employer would only look at SAT, ACT, and industry certifications that are awarded solely based on passing an exam.

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

#404

Post by projektfu »

mp05 wrote: post #380
projektfu wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I see your point and relate, but had you asked me at 18 if I wanted to go so badly that I'd work my way through without loans, that would have been a hard pass.

Right, I worded it funny. It would be good if I couldn't have afforded it because I wouldn't have wasted the time and money.

The options in my area after high school were kind of unattractive, though. I could work retail, or maybe go to trucker school, or try to find odd jobs helping people with computers. My current career path (veterinarian) didn't occur to me at that time.

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

#405

Post by SamBam »

bhickey wrote: post #402
SamBam wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It became mathematically impossible to be admitted to Latin if you weren't coming from a low income school. I don't believe this is true, but if you have citations I'd be happy to hear them. For instance, their accountability data [1] shows that, in 2023, out of 409 kids taking their ELA MCAS test, 92 were categorized as "low income." I find this hard to square with your statement (all students came from low-income…

Students at shools where 40% or more of the student body is classified as low income receive 10 points towards exam school entrance. [0] Being a poor kid at a rich school is a penalty, while being a rich kid at a poor school is a bonus. A student attending a school without bonus points would need to score 97 points. Class rank is a factor which effectively imposes quotas on schools regardless of students grades and o…

Interesting. It sounds like the cutoff for schools getting the bonus points is too low, it ought to be fewer schools.

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

#406

Post by bhickey »

SamBam wrote: post #405
bhickey wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Students at shools where 40% or more of the student body is classified as low income receive 10 points towards exam school entrance. [0] Being a poor kid at a rich school is a penalty, while being a rich kid at a poor school is a bonus. A student attending a school without bonus points would need to score 97 points. Class rank is a factor which effectively imposes quotas on schools regardless of students grades and o…

Interesting. It sounds like the cutoff for schools getting the bonus points is too low, it ought to be fewer schools.

Alternatively give out bonus points on an individual basis. This is already done to a limited extent with homeless students receiving +15.

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

#407

Post by red-iron-pine »

spoonjim wrote: post #386
jobs_throwaway wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

like many things, there are some pretty significant unintended consequences though. In my district in Texas, parents would send their kids to the worst high school in the district because it was dramatically easier to be top 4% and get auto-admit to UT that way

Goodhart’s lawing the Asian nerds into a high school with cholos and gangbangers

there ought to be a sitcom about this

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

#408

Post by red-iron-pine »

trgn wrote: post #250
msravi wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this: >> Third, under test-optional policies, some less-advantaged students withhold test scores even in cases where providing the test score would be a significant positive signal to Admissions. Importantly, Dartmouth Admissions uses SAT scores within context; a score of 1400 for an applicant from a high school in a lower-income community with lower school-wide test scores is a more significant achievement than…

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.

these schools aren't new. lots of data to be collected, and likely is collected.

the schools are in most cases public, in which case there is a mandate for many of these statistics. public money pays, so show us what you're getting for it. this is especially the case given poor and underprivileged students, who have been the focus of many studies (and some targeted funding efforts).

the middle school to HS to college pipeline also isn't new at all, and has been tracked for decades.

whats really more shocking to me is not that it's happening, but that more people aren't abusing it aggressively.

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

#409

Post by red-iron-pine »

rangestransform wrote: post #336
hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or: Having a high IQ isn't enough anymore, you also need to have - and prove - that you have doggedly high Conscientiousness. Preferably in a way which aligns with traditional prestige seeking, like debate or math competitions or football. That's probably a good thing imo. It indicates that our overall expectations for our elites is on the rise, which translates to better outcomes on net down the line when they actua…

That sounds like Japan and Korea, i vastly prefer the status quo over that

Smaller and more stratified countries. The UK is kind of there, and the US is getting there, albeit slower.

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

#410

Post by laidoffamazon »

gnicholas wrote: post #192
laidoffamazon wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a super goofy thing to say about Dartmouth admissions, because as of 2019 they expected admits to have all of that and have a 1550+/35+ test score. I'm beginning to think a lot of the people commenting on these things have this weird concept of these schools admitting poor kids from the sticks and asian kids from Chinatowns with no resume items except good grades and test scores....it's true they have much lo…

> as of 2019 they expected admits to have all of that and have a 1550+/35+ test score FYI the middle 50 is 1480 to 1560 for the class of 2028: https://www.crimsoneducation.org/us/blog/dartmouth-acceptanc...

The people that get a 1480 (a high score, but not considered a high score by students at Dartmouth) are likely athletes or people that are in some other form of affirmative action - from underrepresented states, have legacy status, or have some other hook.

I know a handful of people that got into Dartmouth and equivalent Ivies, none had an SAT score that low and this is from middle class high schools in the surburban south, not even the rich public schools, selective magnet schools, or prep schools.

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