The Big Problem with the New SAT • Hacker News Board

Re: The Big Problem with the New SAT

#21

Post by falsestprophet » Tue, May 05, 2015, 8:53 PM UTC

qmalxp wrote: post #9

The purpose of the SAT is to be a unbiased barometer; say what you will about it, but everyone takes the same test. Unfortunately, a 4.0 GPA from an obscure high school may tell you very little about a candidate. I don't know how much admissions officers care about 96th versus 99th percentile, but if someone has an otherwise amazing resume yet ranks in the 40th percentile on their SAT, that's a bit of a red flag.

You can see from class profiles of leading schools that they admit at least 75% of their class from the 99th percentile.

Re: The Big Problem with the New SAT

#22

Post by VLM » Tue, May 05, 2015, 8:58 PM UTC

com2kid wrote: post #18

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…

> 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 bel…

"what else is a college going to do?"

Competitive bidding instead of fixed cost tuition. This is what they already select for anyway, this would just be more honest and fair about it.

Nobody seems offended that tuition cost seems to have no relationship with prof/TA salaries, facilities, future income... so removing the charade and opening for bidding seems the most fair.

I suspect the end result is freshie year at MIT will be like $5M to buy a spot, but sophomore year transfer students will probably only have to bid $5K once the less talented flunk out. I pity the instructors trying to teach the wash-out classes. The tests will still exist but for classroom placement, someone belonging in remedial algebra will not be allowed into calculus without passing algebra, geometry, trig, first.

Re: The Big Problem with the New SAT

#23

Post by exelius » Tue, May 05, 2015, 9:01 PM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #16

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 tha…

If you're talking about the ability to write a novel, I agree with you. But you have to learn how to get your thoughts down on paper in a way that is intelligible by other humans, and that's a technical skill that must be learned through repetition and critique. There's a basic technical skill to writing long form content, and many kids don't get it because their teacher doesn't have time to grade 140 papers.

Re: The Big Problem with the New SAT

#24

Post by saint_fiasco » Tue, May 05, 2015, 9:02 PM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #16

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 tha…

Colleges aren't looking for successful authors. They look for people who communicate well in writing.

I think the top writers didn't need attention from their English teachers, but the fairly good ones probably did.

Re: The Big Problem with the New SAT

#25

Post by JoeAltmaier » Tue, May 05, 2015, 9:02 PM UTC

falsestprophet wrote: post #21

qmalxp wrote: post #9

The purpose of the SAT is to be a unbiased barometer; say what you will about it, but everyone takes the same test. Unfortunately, a 4.0 GPA from an obscure high school may tell you very little about a candidate. I don't know how much admissions officers care about 96th versus 99th percentile, but if someone has an otherwise amazing resume yet ranks in the 40th percentile on their SAT, that's a bit of a red flag.

You can see from class profiles of leading schools that they admit at least 75% of their class from the 99th percentile.

Only reason I got into Stanford is, they make (made?) a point of offering admission to all the 99th percentile each year. I was one of them.

However there're only a few hundred of these nationwide, right? Not enough to fill several leading schools.

Re: The Big Problem with the New SAT

#26

Post by epmatsw » Tue, May 05, 2015, 9:18 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #25

falsestprophet wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can see from class profiles of leading schools that they admit at least 75% of their class from the 99th percentile.

Only reason I got into Stanford is, they make (made?) a point of offering admission to all the 99th percentile each year. I was one of them. However there're only a few hundred of these nationwide, right? Not enough to fill several leading schools.

3.3 million high school graduates this year, so wouldn't the 99th percentile be the top 33k of them? Seems like that would be more than enough to fill Stanford and the Ivys' classes.

Re: The Big Problem with the New SAT

#27

Post by walshemj » Tue, May 05, 2015, 9:34 PM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #16

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 tha…

Actually no for some people its not as a dyslexic I can read very very well but my writing is much worse took me 4 years to get my basic English language O level.

Re: The Big Problem with the New SAT

#28

Post by scott_s » Tue, May 05, 2015, 9:37 PM UTC

cowardlydragon wrote: post #2

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

High school grades correlate with college grades. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/02/...

Re: The Big Problem with the New SAT

#29

Post by caseysoftware » Tue, May 05, 2015, 9:39 PM UTC

com2kid wrote: post #18

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…

> 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 bel…

I hate the latest "we only accepted 5% of applicants" measure.

It forces people to freak out an apply to more schools. Which means top schools get more applicants. Which means to accept the same number of people as last year, they have to reject a higher percentage. Which makes people freak out, etc.

When I applied to college, I did 3-4 and thought that was excessive at the time. Now I hear of students applying to 10.

Re: The Big Problem with the New SAT

#30

Post by danieltillett » Tue, May 05, 2015, 9:40 PM UTC

I am surprised how nobody here seems to have drawn the obvious conclusion here which is these changes (making the test less g loaded) is a massive bias in favour of the rich over the poor. Kids who are naturally smart, but who attend bad schools will struggle with any test that is not heavily g loaded.