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The Big Problem with the New SAT

nytimes.com

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Re: The Big Problem with the New SAT

#11

Post by stephencanon »

cowardlydragon wrote: post #2

The SAT doesn't correlate to grades... And grades don't correlate to much either.

To the extent that SAT scores are used to select which students are admitted to which colleges, you remove any predictive relationship between SAT scores and grades.

I.e. even if SAT scores were perfectly predictive of "college performance" in the abstract, if there were N possible scores on the SAT and exactly N colleges, each of which accepted all students with one specific score, then SAT scores would be completely uncorrelated to college grades. This is an arbitrarily contrived example, but the same principle holds true in the real world.

Re: The Big Problem with the New SAT

#12

Post by stephencanon »

majormajor wrote: post #6
com2kid wrote: post #4

There is a fundamental misunderstanding here. The SAT is not designed to rank students. The SAT is designed to solve a supply/demand problem. There are less spaces available at top universities than there are applicants. The SAT creates a bell curve, allowing schools to go a standard deviation or two out to pick their incoming class. If the test was an absolute ranking, you'd end up with a large number of people scor…

The article is making the claim that the test is already pretty worthless to colleges as a filter because the differences that separate, say, a 99.9th-percentile score from a 98th-percentile score (number picked by myself at random, as the article didn't mention any that I saw) don't actually correlate to much of anything of use for selecting who should get into the top schools. Especially if those differences are la…

On the contrary, "had time and money to spend on preparation" is extremely valuable information to colleges, especially those with ostensibly "need blind" admissions policies.

Re: The Big Problem with the New SAT

#13

Post by AnimalMuppet »

stephencanon wrote: post #12
majormajor wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is making the claim that the test is already pretty worthless to colleges as a filter because the differences that separate, say, a 99.9th-percentile score from a 98th-percentile score (number picked by myself at random, as the article didn't mention any that I saw) don't actually correlate to much of anything of use for selecting who should get into the top schools. Especially if those differences are la…

On the contrary, "had time and money to spend on preparation" is extremely valuable information to colleges, especially those with ostensibly "need blind" admissions policies.

That is one of the most cynical things I have read in a while. I'm not saying you're wrong, though...

Re: The Big Problem with the New SAT

#14

Post by [deleted] »

Aloha wrote: post #10

The problem with the SAT is it mostly judges what you've learned, not how well you can learn. If we're going to have a test for college, it should judge your future potential and ability, not just how well your high school taught you.

[deleted]

Re: The Big Problem with the New SAT

#16

Post by CamperBob2 »

exelius wrote: post #3

This highlights a number of problems with our public education system in general. I think the problems with the SAT highlighted in the article are reacting to these problems, not the other way around as the author seems to suggest. * There is no standardized high school curriculum across schools, and even when curriculum is standardized, it is taught unevenly. It's hard to have a college entrance exam that covers a s…

Writing ability as a high school senior is largely correlated to the amount of attention you got from your English teacher.

There's no way I'd ever buy that. Writing ability is largely correlated to the amount of time the student spends reading... reading novels, instruction manuals, technical books, Web pages, and cereal boxes. Teachers have almost nothing to do with it in my experience, and I think you'll find that any successful author will tell you exactly the same thing.

Re: The Big Problem with the New SAT

#17

Post by dragonwriter »

smackfu wrote: post #15
cowardlydragon wrote: post #2

The SAT doesn't correlate to grades... And grades don't correlate to much either.

Grades correlate to either natural ability OR hard work.

More accurately, IMO, grades correlate with:

Current Effort × Current Ability (at the time the grades were earned)

And Current Ability itself is dependent on both natural ability and past effort.

Re: The Big Problem with the New SAT

#18

Post by com2kid »

majormajor wrote: post #6
com2kid wrote: post #4

There is a fundamental misunderstanding here. The SAT is not designed to rank students. The SAT is designed to solve a supply/demand problem. There are less spaces available at top universities than there are applicants. The SAT creates a bell curve, allowing schools to go a standard deviation or two out to pick their incoming class. If the test was an absolute ranking, you'd end up with a large number of people scor…

The article is making the claim that the test is already pretty worthless to colleges as a filter because the differences that separate, say, a 99.9th-percentile score from a 98th-percentile score (number picked by myself at random, as the article didn't mention any that I saw) don't actually correlate to much of anything of use for selecting who should get into the top schools. Especially if those differences are la…

> The article is making the claim that the test is already pretty worthless to colleges as a filter because the differences that separate, say, a 99.9th-percentile score from a 98th-percentile score (number picked by myself at random, as the article didn't mention any that I saw) don't actually correlate to much of anything of use for selecting who should get into the top schools.

Apply multiple filters. The more bell curves you have, the easier this gets. Bonus if those bell curves are not correlated to each other! (I'm not going to comment on how useless this becomes)

Want to be an exclusive college? Use SAT scores to remove 87% of applicants right off the bat. (OK most people below the left half of the curve likely don't bother to apply.)

Now filter out kids who didn't go to enough AP classes. (You've instantly removed children with parents who "didn't care enough" to move to an area with a good AP program! bonus!) Now filter out kids whose parent's didn't have enough discretionary free time to shuttle them to and from multiple extra-curricular activities.

Alright, next up, who can afford to pay for a good essay? Drop anyone who can't.

Congrats, you've just cut down the number of papers you have to read by a lot.

In fairness, once the number of applications become's unmanageable, what else is a college going to do? Spend 1/2 of tuition money on entrance examiners?

Re: The Big Problem with the New SAT

#19

Post by thedufer »

majormajor wrote: post #6
com2kid wrote: post #4

There is a fundamental misunderstanding here. The SAT is not designed to rank students. The SAT is designed to solve a supply/demand problem. There are less spaces available at top universities than there are applicants. The SAT creates a bell curve, allowing schools to go a standard deviation or two out to pick their incoming class. If the test was an absolute ranking, you'd end up with a large number of people scor…

The article is making the claim that the test is already pretty worthless to colleges as a filter because the differences that separate, say, a 99.9th-percentile score from a 98th-percentile score (number picked by myself at random, as the article didn't mention any that I saw) don't actually correlate to much of anything of use for selecting who should get into the top schools. Especially if those differences are la…

> The article is making the claim that the test is already pretty worthless to colleges as a filter

I'm not convinced this is true. A few years after the writing section was introduced, college admissions were refusing to use it on the grounds that it didn't seem to correlate with any future performance (overall grades, English grades, foreign language grades, graduation rate, etc).

Presumably they wouldn't be saying this if the rest of the test also failed to predict anything.

Re: The Big Problem with the New SAT

#20

Post by WillPostForFood »

majormajor wrote: post #6
com2kid wrote: post #4

There is a fundamental misunderstanding here. The SAT is not designed to rank students. The SAT is designed to solve a supply/demand problem. There are less spaces available at top universities than there are applicants. The SAT creates a bell curve, allowing schools to go a standard deviation or two out to pick their incoming class. If the test was an absolute ranking, you'd end up with a large number of people scor…

The article is making the claim that the test is already pretty worthless to colleges as a filter because the differences that separate, say, a 99.9th-percentile score from a 98th-percentile score (number picked by myself at random, as the article didn't mention any that I saw) don't actually correlate to much of anything of use for selecting who should get into the top schools. Especially if those differences are la…

It's only worthless if the colleges assume that the test indicates a meaningful difference between 99.9 and 98. If they assume that the test is good and not perfect, and use it as a broad filter, then there is no problem.
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