Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

MIT suspending SAT/ACT requirement for next application cycle

mitadmissions.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 220 posts

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

#161

Post by panda88888 »

hintymad wrote: post #72
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.

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…

I agree. Compared to extracurriculars, SAT/ACT test prep is (was?) probably the most cost effective way of improving the chance of admissions for low-income students. It is possible to significantly improve the score simply by being familiar with the test format and a few test-taking strategies, and this is all doable even with just a SAT prep book and a timer.

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

#162

Post by 908B64B197 »

cma wrote: post #54
pmiller2 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know test prep courses are a thing, and that the wealthy are the primary consumers of them, right? Pretty much everything in the USA is pay to win.

At least in the past, Harvard had a far higher rate of students with learning disabilities than lower tier schools, because having one meant you could get unlimited time on the SAT (giving the time to, on the math part, test every multiple choice solution manually rather than solve once and choose or use other higher level strategies). Richer families were more likely to have connections with a doctor to give the dia…

That's genius. I've seen it elsewhere too.

Again, you should expect every metric to be thoroughly gamed.

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

#163

Post by sudosysgen »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #44
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.

This is completely untrue.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10212-011-0099-9

Personality traits are much more strongly correlated with academic aptitude than IQ is. If you disagree, you should provide a source.

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

#164

Post by thaumasiotes »

sudosysgen wrote: post #160
exolymph wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Grades show a strong influence from conscientiousness, but exam scores do not.

> And consciensciousness is actually negatively correlated with IQ.

In the same way that SAT math scores are negatively correlated with SAT verbal scores, which is to say only in thresholded samples.

https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/j.paid.2014.06.014

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

#165

Post by bigbillheck »

hintymad wrote: post #72
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.

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…

> The union will also delay the teaching of geometry to grade 9

That's when I took it as a youth and nobody in either of the school districts I went to around those years took it any earlier.

(For non-North Americans, 9th grade is 14-15yo).

(And did you mean 'board' instead of 'union'?)

EDIT: Some basic googling isn't coming up with anything about this, the closest I've found is SF high schools delaying algebra 1 until 9th grade, but with an option for kids to take both algebra 1 and geometry at the same time (or algebra 2 and geometry at the same time). Details at https://www.sfusdmath.org/high-school-pathways.html

> I'll simply send them to private schools, all kinds of camps, or tutoring schools. They will learn calculus in grade 7 or early if they are talented. They will have a bucket list of volunteering experience and so-called leadership proof in their resume. They will build their ML-powered robots or conduct their favorite chemistry/physics experiments in their private lab that I can help build, if they are interested. And in the worse case, my wife and I have no problem and plenty of time to home school my kids.

Sounds like a great way to give them one hell of a complex.

I've had co-workers who were parents of kids in the Princeton NJ school district (and adjacent districts) and from what they say it is an incredibly stressful and competitive experience. On the opposite coast, there's a reason kids in Palo Alto are killing themselves so much more than elsewhere.

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

#166

Post by yellowyacht »

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 have never considered this issue before, so what are the good alternatives to this? For MIT admissions to call their teachers and ask questions?

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

#167

Post by bigbillheck »

ericmay wrote: post #36

One 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…

> ike 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 account?

If the kid's that smart then presumably they'll have a top GPA as well. Absolute GPA of course is gameable, but class ranking really isn't. Texas at least has a "top 10%" law (https://news.utexas.edu/key-issues/top-10-percent-law/) which would get them in to a state school, and if that kid was really hankering for MIT then maybe they can transfer.

If they're lucky enough not to be in Texas, well, there's nothing wrong with state schools in any of the other several states, and furthermore there's no shame in going to a community college first if you have to.

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

#168

Post by erosenbe0 »

scarmig wrote: post #142
pdonis wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The biggest part of any "elite" university is being surrounded by similarly high achieving people, to learn from and be motivated by. Attending any random state college gives you theoretical access to all the non-human resources (except labs) that the typical MIT undergraduate will access.

It's not theoretical, you simply need to search a bit more for same resources at a random state school.

There are plenty of top quality professors at such schools.

Not every professor can make things work for their family at Stanford or MIT. Maybe their partner has a modest income so to afford a house so they go work at Penn State or whatever.

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

#169

Post by hintymad »

bigbillheck wrote: post #165
hintymad wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The union will also delay the teaching of geometry to grade 9 That's when I took it as a youth and nobody in either of the school districts I went to around those years took it any earlier. (For non-North Americans, 9th grade is 14-15yo). (And did you mean 'board' instead of 'union'?) EDIT: Some basic googling isn't coming up with anything about this, the closest I've found is SF high schools delaying algebra 1 unt…

Yeah, pushing kids may not always work out for kids. I used those examples to show it's possible for some kids to get advantages. That's also the reason I kept quantifying the examples with "if they are interested/talented" and etc. Maybe a reversed example is better: some kids could've stood out but didn't because they didn't have the edge of being in those camps/tutoring schools. I'm already seeing such trend: kids are in arm race of taking as many APs as possible. Kids rush to STEM contests, and etc. Schools can take out challenges, but the competitions won't stop simply because top-quality education is a scarce resource.

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

#170

Post by ghaff »

jeremyis wrote: post #8
easton wrote: post #4

Did SAT/ACT scores ever make a difference in applications here? I know they probably cut off around 1300-1400 (as do plenty of schools), but my understanding was that MIT wanted you to be doing tons of extracurriculars and other stuff that wasn't represented by standardized tests anyway.

IMO high scores were a necessary but not sufficient condition. It was definitely a data point used

The system when I was familiar with it basically used SAT/GPA as one axis and other stuff on another axis. So you needed to hit some cutoff but if all you had was a perfect SAT, that wasn't enough.
Post reply on HN