Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief • Hacker News Board

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#151

Post by DSingularity » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 4:07 PM UTC

jakeinspace wrote: post #145

_mh56 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

This is off topic, but do you find it difficult seeing this friend the same way while knowing that they and their father gamed the system like that? If I learned this about somebody I knew it would seriously hurt their image in my eyes.

Well he is still his “friend”. Perhaps he has repented and paid for the education of a number of people who would otherwise not be able to afford it.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#152

Post by yellow_lead » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 4:08 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #117

bradleyjg wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, exactly. “Holistic” evaluation is entirely game-able. The claim is that they are trying to give the kid from East New York a shot but the reality is that this is all about the Dalton parents not wanting their little precious to have to go head to head on a fair playing field against a Stuyvesant kid. Their goal is to make all desirable institutions look like Dalton—-very wealthy students with an appropriate spri…

The issue is that the standardized tests correlate with IQ, and IQ has been determined to be have racial and other biases. I went to a shitty rural high school - high scores on my ACT made a huge difference as anyone who could read got out of that school with a 3.7.

IQ and race have a confounding variable - poverty. Malnourishment, abuse, lack of healthcare, etc can all be detrimental to a child's development.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#153

Post by hedora » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 4:08 PM UTC

nathan_compton wrote: post #132

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…

Different people have different skill sets.

It makes sense to evenly distribute resources in elementary schools, but that’s not what is being’s discussed here.

You could give me the same violin lessons as a virtuouso, and stick a functionally-illiterate Michelin-starred chef in my favorite calculus series, but doing so would be a complete waste of everyone’s time.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#154

Post by lapcat » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 4:08 PM UTC

mrangle wrote: post #125

lapcat wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should the social kids go to the academically rigorous college and the academic talents go to a lesser University? I was speaking from the perspective of college admissions, not from the perspective of applicants. Note also that I said "for better or worse". I wasn't making an overall judgment of the university system, merely noting that colleges themselves find extra-curricular activities important. I personal…

>I'm confused. You seem to be suggesting that extra-curricular activites are in fact an accurate indicator, contrary to the SAT proponents? I'm unsure how you arrived at that conclusion. I'll chalk it up to me being unintentionally unclear. What I am saying is that its largely a fallacy that Universities are commonly put to the decision of a more social candidate versus a more academically talented candidate. The mor…

> What I am saying is that its largely a fallacy that Universities are commonly put to the decision of a more social candidate versus a more academically talented candidate.

> The more common reality being that the leading academically talented candidates are as or more qualified in their extra-curricular participation.

I have no particular objection to this, but doesn't it imply that the SAT requirement is superfluous, with the combination of grades and extra-curriculars adequately measuring what the colleges want to measure?

> You may as well ask what the purpose of special education or gifted programs are... the answer is educational justice.

I don't feel that's an answer. It's just a couple of words that sound nice.

(I was in a gifted program in junior high school, by the way. In retrospect, it's not clear to me what purpose it served, other than to separate us socially from other students. Maybe it wasn't a very good gifted program, but I did live in a fairly well-off school district, so I don't think that was from lack of funding. In high school we had Advanced Placements courses, which are obviously more practically useful, though I wouldn't place them under the category of "educational justice".)

> in a manner that raises the living standards for have nots.

That's the issue. It sounds nice, reminiscent of the Rawlsian difference principle, but empirically I'm not seeing it in the world. What I see is largely self-enrichment of the minority, without much regard for everyone else.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#155

Post by pclmulqdq » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 4:08 PM UTC

LewisVerstappen wrote: post #146

_mh56 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

> The point is you can't just give preference based on income as its incredibly easy to fudge. Okay, well this is the US. Your tax returns are a very good indication of how much money you make. If you lie on your tax returns then you have much bigger issues than college admissions counselors.

Taking a $0 salary for a few years is feasible for most rich people. That's why the FAFSA (financial aid form) also asks about assets.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#156

Post by djbusby » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 4:08 PM UTC

LewisVerstappen wrote: post #146

_mh56 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

> The point is you can't just give preference based on income as its incredibly easy to fudge. Okay, well this is the US. Your tax returns are a very good indication of how much money you make. If you lie on your tax returns then you have much bigger issues than college admissions counselors.

If your family has $10MM in the bank, you too can take (and report) to IRS zero income.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#157

Post by mchusma » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 4:08 PM UTC

I'd be curious to see a good school most the opposite direction. Admit ONLY based on SAT or SAT+ACT or something. Effectively allow students an "instant acceptance" option. I highly suspect that this "SAT-Only" group would be competitive across most or all metrics.

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#158

Post by civilized » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 4:09 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #117

bradleyjg wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, exactly. “Holistic” evaluation is entirely game-able. The claim is that they are trying to give the kid from East New York a shot but the reality is that this is all about the Dalton parents not wanting their little precious to have to go head to head on a fair playing field against a Stuyvesant kid. Their goal is to make all desirable institutions look like Dalton—-very wealthy students with an appropriate spri…

The issue is that the standardized tests correlate with IQ, and IQ has been determined to be have racial and other biases. I went to a shitty rural high school - high scores on my ACT made a huge difference as anyone who could read got out of that school with a 3.7.

What do you mean by bias?

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#159

Post by adrr » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 4:09 PM UTC

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.

You just need money to game extracurriculars activities and GPA(pay a tutor to do your kids work every day or go to a private a school).

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

Re: Dropping the SAT requirement is a luxury belief

#160

Post by gchallen » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 4:09 PM UTC

Related reading which I didn't see posted yet: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/mit-admiss...

Lot of great stuff in there, but here's one quote:

> Richer students don’t just get better SAT scores. They also tend to outperform on everything else that an admissions committee would use to select students. Personal essays? Their style and content are more strongly correlated with family income than SAT scores are. Recommendation letters? They are subject to teachers’ classist and racist biases, and even knowing how to request the letters requires significant social capital.