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MIT suspending SAT/ACT requirement for next application cycle

mitadmissions.org

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Re: MIT suspending SAT/ACT requirement for next application cycle

#151

Post by helen___keller »

option wrote: post #140
helen___keller wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand your point. GP was looking for how an applicant who is smart but not privileged can show how they are smart, so that's what I was listing. Literally, what I did in high school. I joined the math team and went to competitions. When my school didn't have the funding or interest to go to regional competitions, I managed to get myself signed up as a team of 1 representing my school and hitch a r…

that’s literally what I did too and (not to brag but) I got on my country’s international math team and got free admission to university because of that. But how many were there? 10 at most. Edit: my point is that finding the right math club at the right time is even more luck and effort than getting good on standard tests.

Oh sorry, to be clear "math club" here was supposed to mean like, local math club, not successful competitive math club.

I mostly convinced classmates to go to local competitions because it was a day out of class and we could stop by the mall afterwards. We didn't win jack shit, my crowning "achievement" was beating half the schools at a regional competition, which is typically teams of 4, but as a team of 1 (and there's no award for 50th percentile).

Nonetheless, I had "President - Mu Alpha Theta" on my college application and I did end up making it to an elite university.

Re: MIT suspending SAT/ACT requirement for next application cycle

#152

Post by OldManAndTheCpp »

chrisseaton wrote: post #104
OldManAndTheCpp wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

College admissions are similarly a blend of different criteria: race, high school grades, did one of your parents go to that school (legacy), did your family donate to the school, are you a good athlete, are you a good musician, and of course what is your ACT or SAT score.

The exact weightings are not known to the students applying, but it's safe to say you can't just minmax on the standardized test.

I don't know if you've picked up the tone of some of the other comments in this thread, but people feel very strongly about what factors should be considered in college admissions. Almost no people will defend legacy admissions, few will defend athletic admissions, some will defend musicians, many will defend GPA and standardized testing.

College admissions are zero sum, and different weightings benefit one group over another. For example, "Asians" (the US does not differentiate South Asian [India, etc] from East Asians [China, Korea, Japan]) have very high test scores in the US. If you base your college admissions just on taking the people with the highest test scores, you would get a massive over-representation of Asians. Schools have decided that isn't what they want, so they take people with worse test scores in order to "balance" the student population.

This infuriates the people passed over in the name of "balance", naturally.

Re: MIT suspending SAT/ACT requirement for next application cycle

#153

Post by threatofrain »

pdonis wrote: post #122
threatofrain wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really, it's a dumping ground of university assets.

Um, video lectures, lecture notes, problem sets, solutions, and references to textbooks is more than just "a dumping ground". When I look at what's available on OCW for the classes I took when I was at MIT, everything that I got any learning value from is there.

Here's a tell of critical incompleteness — find Analysis 1, which is a must-have course for math and adjacent technical majors.

Re: MIT suspending SAT/ACT requirement for next application cycle

#154

Post by helen___keller »

rychco wrote: post #150
alistairSH wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Applicants to top universities are already doing (a) through (d), so removing the SAT should help - it's one less thing to worry about. If the AP/IB exams are just as good a proxy for "college aptitude", we should just us those, right?

While I agree in theory that AP/IB exams could be used instead of SAT/ACT, they are unfortunately not available at all schools. Students nowadays are already occasionally forced to travel to different schools in their area in order to take as many AP/IB classes as possible. Additionally, removing any of the objective requirements forces students to add even more activities to their existing laundry list of extracurri…

> I don't have any evidence, but I fear that students will have to work even harder & spend even more hours outside the classroom just to stand out without SAT/ACT scores. Students are massively overworked as it is.

This is basically a tautology ;) it doesn't matter how the targets change, as selectivity increases students (and their parents, for the well-to-do) will work harder and harder to pass whatever filters exist.

Re: MIT suspending SAT/ACT requirement for next application cycle

#155

Post by Spivak »

floren wrote: post #131
Spivak wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preface: I scored extremely well on the SAT/ACT so I would have every incentive to keep the status quo. I think these tests should stick around as an option for students to prove their aptitude but that the requirement for them should be dropped. Being smart does help you on these tests but not as much as you would hope. The things that meaningfully affect your score are studying for them and learning the specific ma…

Well, I scored 760 on the verbal because I read constantly and voraciously. I didn't "study" for it except in the sense that I'd spent the last decade with my face in a book on the bus, during lunch, as I walked from class to class, after I finished work in class, and so on. Of course my aptitude at picking out synonyms didn't really indicate a damn thing about how well I could write an exam essay about the Reconstru…

I mean you can play this game with any subject. I scored a 5 on the CS AP tests without studying because I had been coding nonstop since I was 10.

You are proving my point pretty much exactly. You didn't score well because you were smart in some vague objective sense -- you scored well because you had essentially spent 10 years inadvertently studying.

Re: MIT suspending SAT/ACT requirement for next application cycle

#157

Post by philipkglass »

rudderz wrote: post #58
porb121 wrote: post #13

> 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.

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?

Lab based courses are crucial to the natural sciences. Even an institution as well off as MIT can't afford to buy enough NMR spectrometers for everyone to take their chemistry classes. Simulations and videos are not adequate substitutes for real lab work.

Re: MIT suspending SAT/ACT requirement for next application cycle

#158

Post by Spivak »

dragonwriter wrote: post #132
Spivak wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preface: I scored extremely well on the SAT/ACT so I would have every incentive to keep the status quo. I think these tests should stick around as an option for students to prove their aptitude but that the requirement for them should be dropped. Being smart does help you on these tests but not as much as you would hope. The things that meaningfully affect your score are studying for them and learning the specific ma…

> I scored extremely well on the SAT/ACT so I would have every incentive to keep the status quo. I did too (well, the SAT; given that and that evrywhere I wanted to apply took the SAT, the ACT would have been superfluous), but... > Being smart does help you on these tests but not as much as you would hope. Its pretty much all being smart. Focussed study has some effect (and because small score differences at the high…

> Focussed study has some effect

This statement requires some elaboration. Cramming for the SAT/ACT in the short time before the test has a small effect on your overall score. But if you go to a preparatory middle and high school where you will essentially spend 6-12th grade studying for the tests because the school designed the curriculum specifically to prepare you for them you will see a big difference.

Over the four years I spent in high school I was assigned as homework every. single. AP Calc I & II problem that had ever been published. Is it really that surprising that our class did well?

Another way of saying this.

* If you read voraciously as a child you will score extremely well on the reading section without really trying. You aren't smarter. You just spent a decade inadvertently studying.

* I was a math nerd as a child. I read math textbooks for fun. I was doing college-level math in 9th grade. And surprise to no one I scored almost perfect on the math section. But crucially, this didn't make me smarter than my peers. Literally anyone who had decided to spend their time at recess reading number theory textbooks would have done just as well.

Re: MIT suspending SAT/ACT requirement for next application cycle

#159

Post by erosenbe0 »

noch wrote: post #41
whack wrote: post #21

On the one hand, it is ridiculous that one of the main metrics used in admissions is a glorified IQ test. On the other hand, it is ridiculous that we don't have a single commonly used standardized-exam that evaluates proficiency and expertise in the core curriculum. I know America has a serious NIH syndrome, but the situation could be improved overnight if every single public school adopted the GCSE/A levels or IB cu…

> […]it is ridiculous that one of the main metrics used in admissions is a glorified IQ test. SATs are a good measure of General Intelligence (and IQ). “ This research established the relationship between SAT and g, as well as the appropriateness of the SAT as a measure of g, and examined the SAT as a premorbid measure of intelligence. In Study 1, we used the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979. Measures of g…

Maybe not in the top decile we are discussing here.

Things like age and prep time matter a lot.

I skipped two grades so I took the SAT at age 15 without studying, did well enough, and went to one of the top state schools for CS at the age of 16.

I took the intro to CS weed out class first year and got the highest score by a mile.

Re: MIT suspending SAT/ACT requirement for next application cycle

#160

Post by sudosysgen »

exolymph wrote: post #125
sudosysgen wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standardized national exams on proficiency in math, languages, science, etc... are very different from IQ tests and only somewhat correlated with IQ, being instead much more strongly correlated with consciensciousness, and generally how good of a student you are and will be.

Conscientiousness itself correlates with IQ.

Yes? And? General grades still correlate more strongly with consciensciousness than IQ.

And consciensciousness is actually negatively correlated with IQ.

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