Am I the only one surprised it was still required? I'd gathered that many high- and top-tiered US uni's had swapped to "accepted, not required" over a decade ago. Perhaps the momentum here swung back in light of conversations around the way this applies towards different races/ethnicities?
MIT suspending SAT/ACT requirement for next application cycle
101–110 of 220 posts
Re: MIT suspending SAT/ACT requirement for next application cycle
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Test prep has a more or less negligible effect size. Extra curriculars and paying someone to write your essay for you on the other hand are all about privilege.
I know the test prep industry is bigger today than it used to be- but I assume you can still just buy a test prep book(s) and study like I did.
Or even check out a test prep book from the library.
Re: MIT suspending SAT/ACT requirement for next application cycle
#103> we do expect to return to requiring the SAT/ACT once it is possible for everyone to take them safely Fine with this being temporary. Much less fine with the schools who have completely abandoned the SAT/ACT in the name of equality while still considering things like personal essays and extracurriculars, which are way more liable to be gamed by the wealthy than the SAT.
It can be permanent. In addition to the effort of removing standard tests, education reforms are happening left and right. San Francisco school union recently decided to remove fast tracks. The union will also delay the teaching of geometry to grade 9, which IMHO will make teaching physics and algebra really hard. I can understand that the motivation of such reform is to improve equity, as numerous studies have shown…
> positive correlation between family income and testing scores
Correlation != causation.
One of the best SAT prep available today is https://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/sat and that is free for everyone.
Standardized tests are important, otherwise students are not evaluated using a uniform criteria. GPAs can be compared only within the same school district.
Even the curriculum is not standardized across states. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Core_implementation_by_...
Re: MIT suspending SAT/ACT requirement for next application cycle
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Most high schools in the US don't have graduation exams. So how do people fail to graduate high-school?
The class grades are made up of some mix of: * Graded homework * Papers/Project/Labs * Midterm/Final Exam The teacher chooses the exact mix per class, so it's possible you fail even if you ace the exams, or pass even if you fail the exams. This variability is why the standardized tests exist.
I guess it makes sense to do as little as possible to scrape a C or whatever the passing grade is while at high-school and spend all your time optimising for the SAT then instead? Or not that simple?
Re: MIT suspending SAT/ACT requirement for next application cycle
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can't buy your way to a 2400 Well, no, since that would be 150% of the maximum score. You can buy your way to the maximum score, and people have been doing it, but test prep won't get you there. (As you note, prep is worth nearly nothing in terms of score gains.) You need advance access to the answers, or a substitute to take the test for you, or something along those lines.
Ha are they back to 1600? When did they get rid of writing? Sure, yes, maybe bribery or fraud could get you there. Have there been reported cases?
1600 is the high score again as of 2016.
Yes, there have been various reported cases of fraud on the SAT. The most prominent two that come to mind are the recent college admissions scandal, in which strategies included both (1) having a substitute take the SAT in place of the student and (2) bribing the test proctor, and the year in which every test result from South Korea was canceled due to widespread cheating.
https://world.time.com/2013/05/10/for-the-first-time-sat-tes...
Re: MIT suspending SAT/ACT requirement for next application cycle
#106Seems like at the moment high-school students in the US have to do two sets of exams - their normal high-school graduation exams, and also the SAT or ACT. Is that right? Why don't they use the results from one for the other? Use SAT for high-school graduation, or use high-school graduation results for university admission.
High schools vary wildly in how rigorous they are, one high school you could get a 4.0 by taking four years of underwater basket weaving, another school you could get a 3.4 because you took AP Calculus/Bio/Physics your senior year and they were tough. Not to mention that sometimes your school weighs your GPA differently and that makes those numbers not make sense. The SAT is administered by a private "not-for-profit"…
Even worse, grade inflation is going in the other direction. Not only do most schools have broad requirements for A and B level grades, but some give a 5 for an A if an honors course and a 6 for an AP or college level class.
Re: MIT suspending SAT/ACT requirement for next application cycle
#107> we do expect to return to requiring the SAT/ACT once it is possible for everyone to take them safely Fine with this being temporary. Much less fine with the schools who have completely abandoned the SAT/ACT in the name of equality while still considering things like personal essays and extracurriculars, which are way more liable to be gamed by the wealthy than the SAT.
Furthermore... This was years ago but there's no particular reason I'd expect things to have changed. But basically if you looked at outcomes--I think this included post-uni outcomes like salary--the quantitative measures like SAT score had a lot more predictive value than interview/letters of recommendation/essays/etc. (The way the one school I'm familiar with used to do things was that basically everyone went on an…
> the quantitative measures like SAT score had a lot more predictive value than interview/letters of recommendation/essays/etc.
I've also read SAT scores are highly correlated to family income. Family income probably has a huge impact on post university outcomes.
Re: MIT suspending SAT/ACT requirement for next application cycle
#108> we do expect to return to requiring the SAT/ACT once it is possible for everyone to take them safely Fine with this being temporary. Much less fine with the schools who have completely abandoned the SAT/ACT in the name of equality while still considering things like personal essays and extracurriculars, which are way more liable to be gamed by the wealthy than the SAT.
One of the more obnoxious things is how biases are buried into things like personal essays and extracurriculars. They're so subjective that it lets evaluators sneak bias into their decisions. The Harvard undergraduate admissions lawsuit a year ago or two provides an example. Asian applicants were consistently ranked to have inferior personalities to white people, even with otherwise identical applications. There's no…
The so called "holistic reviews" were introduced to limit the number of Jewish people admitted to top colleges. See story here:
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/03/histor...
Re: MIT suspending SAT/ACT requirement for next application cycle
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't get why students need to be apply to be accepted. Why can't everyone go to MIT? Is there a scarcity on chalk boards, shitty chairs and cinder blocks?
> Why can't everyone go to MIT? Everyone can, online. All of MIT's course content is available for free online: https://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm
It's not really, it's a dumping ground of university assets.
Re: MIT suspending SAT/ACT requirement for next application cycle
#110One question on my mind (as someone who has a master's degree and engineering degree and has never taken the ACT/SAT) is how kids will go about showing pure intellectual merit? Like let's say you grow up ok but you can't really afford to join the ski club or for a tutor and maybe you work in the evenings but you crush the SAT/ACT because you're incredibly intelligent. How will universities like MIT take that into acc…
Standardized testing is widely vilified, but it's probably been the greatest single force for meritocracy in American history. Prior to widespread adoption, elite universities awarded slots on a "holistic" basis. Which mostly meant the well-connected scions of high society families. When the SAT went mainstream in the 1960s it opened up a world of opportunity to the previously overlooked gifted kids from middle-class…
Preach it brother/sister. I couldn’t agree more. You’ve written this much more succinct than I could have.
> But at the end of the day the result will be the same. Keeping out kids from the wrong side of town.