The Big Problem with the New SAT • Hacker News Board

Re: The Big Problem with the New SAT

#31

Post by benkuykendall » Tue, May 05, 2015, 9:52 PM UTC

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.

Going through the whole standardized testing regiment last year, I did not notice a need to spend large amounts of time or money on preparation. Although I am sure a few people waste a lot of resources on these exams, many of my peers in the running for top colleges can easily achieve in the top percentiles with little to no effort.

Re: The Big Problem with the New SAT

#32

Post by JoeAltmaier » Tue, May 05, 2015, 9:58 PM UTC

epmatsw wrote: post #26

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah. There were two rankings when I took the tests - math and language. Those ranking 99th in both were offered admission. That was a smaller group.

Re: The Big Problem with the New SAT

#33

Post by ska » Tue, May 05, 2015, 10:00 PM UTC

benkuykendall wrote: post #31

stephencanon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Going through the whole standardized testing regiment last year, I did not notice a need to spend large amounts of time or money on preparation. Although I am sure a few people waste a lot of resources on these exams, many of my peers in the running for top colleges can easily achieve in the top percentiles with little to no effort.

I think the parents contention was that likely in your case and your peers, those resources had already been spent, and that this is a useful signal.

Re: The Big Problem with the New SAT

#34

Post by stephencanon » Tue, May 05, 2015, 10:28 PM UTC

benkuykendall wrote: post #31

stephencanon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Going through the whole standardized testing regiment last year, I did not notice a need to spend large amounts of time or money on preparation. Although I am sure a few people waste a lot of resources on these exams, many of my peers in the running for top colleges can easily achieve in the top percentiles with little to no effort.

Of course some people do great without studying. I got a perfect score cold, FWIW (~nothing). However, the population of people with great scores also includes a disproportionate number of fairly smart kids whose parents are able to shell out big money for private school and test prep, and those students are a private college's bread and butter. If the schools happen to also pick up some poorer but equally good at test taking students in that population as well, so much the better.

Re: The Big Problem with the New SAT

#35

Post by epmatsw » Tue, May 05, 2015, 10:35 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #32

epmatsw wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah. There were two rankings when I took the tests - math and language. Those ranking 99th in both were offered admission. That was a smaller group.

Interesting. They must have stopped that before 2009 haha.

Re: The Big Problem with the New SAT

#36

Post by gwern » Wed, May 06, 2015, 3:07 AM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #30

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.

Rich/poor is itself heavily g-loaded. What's the net effect here?

Re: The Big Problem with the New SAT

#37

Post by danieltillett » Wed, May 06, 2015, 5:50 AM UTC

gwern wrote: post #36

danieltillett wrote: post #30

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.

Rich/poor is itself heavily g-loaded. What's the net effect here?

It is not that rich/poor is directly g loaded, just that g is highly correlated with income. Quality of schooling is directly related to the income. The more you make the tests reflect past education quality the more you bias it is favour of the rich and dumb against the poor and smart.

Re: The Big Problem with the New SAT

#38

Post by gwern » Wed, May 06, 2015, 4:01 PM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #37

gwern wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rich/poor is itself heavily g-loaded. What's the net effect here?

It is not that rich/poor is directly g loaded, just that g is highly correlated with income. Quality of schooling is directly related to the income. The more you make the tests reflect past education quality the more you bias it is favour of the rich and dumb against the poor and smart.

> It is not that rich/poor is directly g loaded, just that g is highly correlated with income.

What's the difference? We say an item is g-loaded when it correlates with the latent factor g; this is true whether it's an obscure vocab word on the SAT or whether it's not blowing your income and planning ahead.

Re: The Big Problem with the New SAT

#39

Post by JoeAltmaier » Wed, May 06, 2015, 7:03 PM UTC

epmatsw wrote: post #35

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah. There were two rankings when I took the tests - math and language. Those ranking 99th in both were offered admission. That was a smaller group.

Interesting. They must have stopped that before 2009 haha.

1983

Re: The Big Problem with the New SAT

#40

Post by danieltillett » Wed, May 06, 2015, 9:41 PM UTC

gwern wrote: post #38

danieltillett wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not that rich/poor is directly g loaded, just that g is highly correlated with income. Quality of schooling is directly related to the income. The more you make the tests reflect past education quality the more you bias it is favour of the rich and dumb against the poor and smart.

> It is not that rich/poor is directly g loaded, just that g is highly correlated with income. What's the difference? We say an item is g-loaded when it correlates with the latent factor g; this is true whether it's an obscure vocab word on the SAT or whether it's not blowing your income and planning ahead.

I was trying to make point that one of the major reasons income is so g loaded is that education allows the poor-but-smart to rise out of their poverty (and vice versa) via things like the old SAT. Block this and you end up with something like the Middle Ages where the nobility and peasants had the same mean g.

I should say that changes like this are going to have most effect in the middle rather than the extremes. If you are born with a g in the 99.9 percentile band then you will still be likely to escape poverty. It is people born with a g say in the 80th percentile band that will be affected the most by these changes.