Report on the role of standardized test scores in undergraduate admissions [pdf] • Hacker News Board

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…

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

#428

Post by costco » Tue, Feb 06, 2024, 6:53 PM UTC

laidoffamazon wrote: post #411

costco wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extracurriculars are by and large a scam. I became vice president of a few clubs, started a UNICEF chapter at my school, etc. But I made almost 0 impact on the world because we only raised like $200, most of which was from me and my family. The proof that most people don't actually care about these things is that they quit them the day they start college. Maybe participation in something like ISEF is a better signal.…

Yeah, that kind of extracurricular isn't enough for top schools unless you have some other kind of hook. Winning ISEF/placing high (not 100% how it works) already is a pretty good hook, I'm sure most of the MIT entering class won some equivalent national prize like this. > In some cases I have heard of teachers asking students to write them This is very common in college, most professors don't have the time to write…

I got into University of Michigan which I think is T25. I would not have gotten into an Ivy. But I'm just saying that based on my experience for a large number of people, their high school extracurriculars are "fake" in that they have little actual interest in them and that they are an overweighted admissions signal.

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

#429

Post by foobiekr » Tue, Feb 06, 2024, 6:54 PM UTC

kebsup wrote: post #252

I've taken ACT as an exchange student when I was in the US. I didn't need it, but everyone in my grade was doing it and it was for free, so why not. Sometimes people say, that for ACTs, one needs a specific knowledge of how to take the test, which does not teach you anything, but I did not get the feeling. All of the questions seemed quite reasonable, no tricks and not even a need for smart ideas (unlike let's say ma…

I feel this way about most of the standardized tests. I took the LSAT on a whim which no prep and scored 95th percentile. The whole thing was completely reasonable and mostly tested basic logical reasoning and vocabulary/reading comprehension. At the time, there was a short essay component which was entirely about the ability to express whatever thoughts you were supposed to express clearly.

The thing about these tests is that they are all perfectly reasonable. The main reason people have a test with them is they also tend to identify people who _probably_ should not be in college at all and that is not a message anyone wants to accept needs to be sent.

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

#430

Post by foobiekr » Tue, Feb 06, 2024, 6:56 PM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #225

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…

> 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.

Can we agree that legacy admission should be completely done away with? The only people I think would be opposed would be the managers of the endowments and fundraising (and legacy beneficiaries, who are smaller in number).

None of that changes what the poster you were replying to was getting at. The opposition to standardized testing was entirely due to the performance of _some_ minorities and entirely political.