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Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

robkhenderson.substack.com

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Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#131

Post by bradleyjg »

mrangle wrote: post #118
bradleyjg wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t forget the off the chart rates of testing accommodations for rich kids vs everyone else.

Respectfully, the issue of unprovided testing accommodations is only relevant for kids with a disability. This would not apply to everyone else. Only to kids with an unidentified disability. Which will be more in the underprivileged group, but it is still a minuscule group. Especially taken in the context of elite University admissions, for which we are actually speaking of the even rarer child that is "twice excepti…

This assumes that the rich kid rate is accurate and what’s missing is parallel accommodations for poorer kids.

But what about if instead the elevated rate is a result of fraud? In other areas of life (e.g. service animals and medical pot) it’s pretty clear that there are medical professionals out there are selling their letterhead to the highest bidder.

Why should we believe that’s not happening here?

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#132

Post by nathan_compton »

ryzvonusef wrote: post #45

As an Asian person, I think it's a cultural thing. There is this old joke about how even if you are a one-in-a-million person, there are still 8000 of "you"s to choose from; how does one chose who to pick, if there aren't positions for all of them? So how do you make it "fair"? Since of the number of seats are limited, so imagine if the cut-off for the last seat is for someone who is in the 90.3765335th percentile, l…

"You simply CAN'T provide the same resource to all of them, some of them will have to vie for a lower-ranked resource."

Why not just distribute those resources via lottery? Why not actually just split resources evenly across the population? There are good practical reasons not to do this, but they are, fundamentally, ideological (eg, we might feel it is inefficient to spend resources on someone which may not provide as much productivity as someone else). It serves nothing to pretend these things are inevitable.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#133

Post by _mh56 »

whack wrote: post #120

The following paragraphs were especially powerful: > The chattering class is using poor kids as pawns to eliminate standardized testing. Which helps their own kids. Rich kids who “don’t test well.” But they know how to strategically boost their GPAs, get recommendation letters from important people, stack their resumes with extracurriculars, and use the right slogans in their admissions essays. They have “polish.” >…

Here in India, we have quotas for different kinds of people. There's caste based, Gender based and finally EWS (Economically Weaker Section) Quota. Overall 60% of total seats are reserved for these people.

My friend who's ultra rich was selected in EWS Quota. His father who runs his own company took Zero pay for the last two years so he qualified for the benefits. Meanwhile people who actually deserved this had to compete for the non reserved seats.

The point is you can't just give preference based on income as its incredibly easy to fudge.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#134

Post by [deleted] »

tokey wrote: post #116
kenjackson wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could whites be discriminated against if Asians would rise to 90% of the accepted population? There aren’t enough underrepresented minorities at selective all combined to get Asians to 90%. That is most of the pool that Asians would take is from White students. From a pure counting perspective, more whites get in over “more deserving” Asians than any other group (assuming your numbers are accurate). Based on this…

I was incorrect about the 65% of Berkeley as Asian. It's 30.6%. Note this is double the percentage as the Ivy League schools - and it's based on a framework that was specifically developed as a way to get around the 1996 ban on affirmative action. I still believe the only explanation for eliminating clear, measurable and quantifiable metrics for university admissions is because universities are looking for discrete w…

[deleted]

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#135

Post by Clubber »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #124
whack wrote: post #120

The following paragraphs were especially powerful: > The chattering class is using poor kids as pawns to eliminate standardized testing. Which helps their own kids. Rich kids who “don’t test well.” But they know how to strategically boost their GPAs, get recommendation letters from important people, stack their resumes with extracurriculars, and use the right slogans in their admissions essays. They have “polish.” >…

Standardized tests are much easier to prep for than GPA and extracurriculars. I don’t get where the statement “rich kids don’t test well” actually comes from, and it wasn’t just made up to argue a point. Perhaps if you had state sponsored test prep like in China (you spend the last two years of high school just prepping for the test), but high school isn’t compulsory and many poor kids don’t even attend.

>I don’t get where the statement “rich kids don’t test well” actually comes from, and it wasn’t just made up to argue a point.

When I read what you said and thought the same thing. I then looked up what the author wrote:

Rich kids who “don’t test well.”

He's just saying if you have a kid that doesn't test well (I am one of those) and happen to be wealthy, the rich have options that poor kids don't. He isn't saying rich kids don't tend to test well.

I'm not sure that premise is 100% accurate either. My parents were teachers and we didn't have extravagant lives, but my parents knew the value of an education and forced me to do test prep 6 days a week the summer after my Junior year. I ended up improving my scores and getting into a good state university and subsequently have a good career 25+ years and still going strong.

I think edge case success (students that don't test well) boils down more to parents giving a shit than anything else. It's not easy, that's for sure, even if you are moderately wealthy.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#136

Post by AbrahamParangi »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #124
whack wrote: post #120

The following paragraphs were especially powerful: > The chattering class is using poor kids as pawns to eliminate standardized testing. Which helps their own kids. Rich kids who “don’t test well.” But they know how to strategically boost their GPAs, get recommendation letters from important people, stack their resumes with extracurriculars, and use the right slogans in their admissions essays. They have “polish.” >…

Standardized tests are much easier to prep for than GPA and extracurriculars. I don’t get where the statement “rich kids don’t test well” actually comes from, and it wasn’t just made up to argue a point. Perhaps if you had state sponsored test prep like in China (you spend the last two years of high school just prepping for the test), but high school isn’t compulsory and many poor kids don’t even attend.

GPA and extracurriculars are so much easier to game than standardized tests, it's not even close. Moreover, this is what all the research on the topic suggests.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#137

Post by kenjackson »

alphanullmeric wrote: post #109
kenjackson wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We were talking about inequality of opportunity. There are lots of sources of this inequality. One example of government inequality is in sentencing of crimes. Also in arrests related to drug possession. Another example is tax breaks for the wealthy. And farm subsidies. Access to federal money for small businesses.

Sure, in the case I believe any inequality in sentencing and arrests should be eliminated. As should subsidies and non-consumption taxes, making tax breaks irrelevant/impossible. Seems like you have no such consistency.

Why do you say I have no consistency? I’m not making judgments. I’m simply pointing out that there is ample inequality of opportunity.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#138

Post by Supermancho »

mrangle wrote: post #66
PaulHoule wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s the other way around. It helps to have some familiarity with the test, so test prep has some value, but some rich kids can’t test their way out of a paper bag. The one thing they could do is hire a ringer to take the test for them, otherwise it is a valuable form of downward mobility which presents a “barrier” to them hoarding opportunity from someone more able.

There's virtually no such thing as ringers taking tests. The majority of rich kids, whose parents are serious about college, are tracked through prep schools beginning with kindergarten. Its more rare than not that such a kid underperforms enough to be excluded from elite University admission. Especially once one includes the many elite liberal arts colleges that are generally off of the radar of poors. I do agree ab…

> There's virtually no such thing as ringers taking tests.

It happens more than you might think, but only because you don't have the money or desire to use such a service.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/artic...

There have been many scandals, relatively recently. This was just one of many many links that are very easy to find.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#139

Post by hedora »

kenjackson wrote: post #126
tokey wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was incorrect about the 65% of Berkeley as Asian. It's 30.6%. Note this is double the percentage as the Ivy League schools - and it's based on a framework that was specifically developed as a way to get around the 1996 ban on affirmative action. I still believe the only explanation for eliminating clear, measurable and quantifiable metrics for university admissions is because universities are looking for discrete w…

I still don’t see how it’s discrimination against White students. This actually looks more like discrimination against Asians, with Whites being the biggest beneficiary of the discrimination based on the numbers. Blacks get the biggest bump, but it is Whites who “steal” the most spots. It does make me wonder about the marketing of anti-affirmative action. For example you see on social media the kids who posts about t…

In the UC system, Asians are the only over-represented group, specifically because they are higher achieving on average.

Any effective equity based admissions system will have a similar effect as UC’s old (edit: offensively racist) Asian quotas.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#140

Post by Jensson »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #124
whack wrote: post #120

The following paragraphs were especially powerful: > The chattering class is using poor kids as pawns to eliminate standardized testing. Which helps their own kids. Rich kids who “don’t test well.” But they know how to strategically boost their GPAs, get recommendation letters from important people, stack their resumes with extracurriculars, and use the right slogans in their admissions essays. They have “polish.” >…

Standardized tests are much easier to prep for than GPA and extracurriculars. I don’t get where the statement “rich kids don’t test well” actually comes from, and it wasn’t just made up to argue a point. Perhaps if you had state sponsored test prep like in China (you spend the last two years of high school just prepping for the test), but high school isn’t compulsory and many poor kids don’t even attend.

> Standardized tests are much easier to prep for than GPA and extracurriculars

And that makes them perfect for poor kids who don't have much time or money, they can easily get similar levels of test prep as rich kid with little effort. GPA or extracurriculars however, no chance, those are much more dependent on home environment and wealth.

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