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MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

mitadmissions.org

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Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

#181

Post by fairenough42 »

opportune wrote: post #160
dawg- wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you call a "smooth-talker" is what someone else would call an articulate, socially well-adjusted person who can communicate their values and opinions in an intelligent way and who is comfortable making connections with others. Perhaps if this was the standard college admissions used, public schools would have more incentive to educate students as functional humans rather than test-taking drones.

All this would do is benefit the already-privileged and create affinity bias. Basically just affirmative action for white people from middle class and above homes.

Why do you feel the need to name white people specifically?

Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

#182

Post by pulisse »

trentnix wrote: post #173
knzhou wrote: post #57

Anybody cheering the exclusion of some test or other, because it was a pain to study for in high school, is simply not noticing the frog-boiling secondary effects going on. Every bit of emphasis taken out of objective results mean more advantage for smooth talking, photogenic, well-connected people. Yes, some misguided parents waste thousands of dollars on SAT courses. But students can also prep using the $20 officia…

Bingo. The less objective their evaluations are, the easier it will be to hide the cronyism, bribery, and racial bias. Going to be a lot easier to discriminate against Asian kids when you don’t have to notice their test scores are better than the kids you admitted.

MIT isn't eliminating the SAT. They're not considering SAT subject tests, which are analogous to AP tests (which latter MIT will continue to consider).

Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

#183

Post by manfredo »

yardie wrote: post #8

I used to think the SATs were fair. Until I found out how much money was being spent on SAT prep. And those expensive prep courses had the potential to increase scores over 100 points. I took the recommended SAT prep course through my high school. It was 2 weekends of going over material that might be on the exam and a workbook recommended by The College Board. Imagine my surprise going to university and meeting stud…

Coming from someone who took said expensive prep courses, I can tell you that just taking practice exam after practice exam is easily 90% of the benefit. The test taking strategy they teach is something anyone with serious prospects of getting into MIT would have learned years ago.

Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

#184

Post by WalterBright »

austincheney wrote: post #169
knzhou wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure the writers of the SAT are well aware of this, but full IQ tests just don't scale. How are you going to provide the same test ten million times a year, when the test has to be administered one-on-one by a trained professional over the course of hours? You're going to have to hire tens of thousands of administrators, so how are you going to keep bias from creeping in? How are you going to prevent the question…

> I'm sure the writers of the SAT are well aware of this, but full IQ tests just don't scale. First of all its generally faulty to presume what others are thinking. Secondly, standardized admissions testing in its current form should be eliminated and there is a fair amount of data to support this[1][2]. If schools really want to discriminate on performance they should test for originality, composition, and decision…

SAT scores are used because they turn out to be good predictors of success at college. They aren't the only measure used, probably about a third.

For example, my SAT scores were average for an MIT admission, but I was rejected.

Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

#185

Post by knzhou »

austincheney wrote: post #169
knzhou wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure the writers of the SAT are well aware of this, but full IQ tests just don't scale. How are you going to provide the same test ten million times a year, when the test has to be administered one-on-one by a trained professional over the course of hours? You're going to have to hire tens of thousands of administrators, so how are you going to keep bias from creeping in? How are you going to prevent the question…

> I'm sure the writers of the SAT are well aware of this, but full IQ tests just don't scale. First of all its generally faulty to presume what others are thinking. Secondly, standardized admissions testing in its current form should be eliminated and there is a fair amount of data to support this[1][2]. If schools really want to discriminate on performance they should test for originality, composition, and decision…

Sorry, but I write tests and I have absolutely no idea how you propose to measure these things objectively and automatically, without producing exactly the kind of "convergent" test you said you didn't like. For example, take "decision capacity". I don't even know what you mean by that, and I don't know how this will be assessed automatically without fixing a pre-designed correct answer.

Incidentally, the GRE has a system for grading essay composition automatically. It also absolutely sucks. It has no idea what your arguments are actually saying, so points are allocated based on irrelevant features like average sentence length or the total number of paragraphs. Researchers have succeeded in getting perfect scores by just copy-pasting the same sentence 25 times. In my book, this is worse than multiple choice.

Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

#186

Post by perennate »

saithound wrote: post #55
yardie wrote: post #8

I used to think the SATs were fair. Until I found out how much money was being spent on SAT prep. And those expensive prep courses had the potential to increase scores over 100 points. I took the recommended SAT prep course through my high school. It was 2 weekends of going over material that might be on the exam and a workbook recommended by The College Board. Imagine my surprise going to university and meeting stud…

The SAT is not fair. By taking an expensive prep course, you can potentially increase your SAT score by 100 (although that's quite extreme, the average improvement attributed to SAT prep is closer to 20 points). That's a significant, but not earth-shattering improvement: it moves you from the 75th percentile to the 84th, or from the 97th percentile to the 99th. Now let's compare that to other criteria used in the col…

Re: the last point; MIT says they do not consider alumni relations in the admissions process (https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/just-to-be-clear-we-do...).

Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

#187

Post by hintymad »

knzhou wrote: post #57

Anybody cheering the exclusion of some test or other, because it was a pain to study for in high school, is simply not noticing the frog-boiling secondary effects going on. Every bit of emphasis taken out of objective results mean more advantage for smooth talking, photogenic, well-connected people. Yes, some misguided parents waste thousands of dollars on SAT courses. But students can also prep using the $20 officia…

Exactly. And it's worth reviewing how the so-called holistic admission process came to be: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in. TL;DR: it's not pretty.

A process that lacks objectivity will enlarge inequality gap instead of reducing it. And in general, the more complex a process is, the less transparent it becomes, and the harder it is to be fair to everyone.

Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

#188

Post by legionof7 »

Slightly unrelated but could be useful to any HS seniors here: My n=1 study method got me a 1520. I would study for the SAT in a dark room, with horror movie music or war sound effects playing in earbuds, while planking. For every incorrect answer, I'd do 10 pushups or 3 pull-ups (can adapt to your own level). Rationale was that if I could do well in the worst conditions possible, then I'd do better sitting in a quiet room.

I'm a pretty bad student also, I had like a 3 GPA.

Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

#189

Post by SkyBelow »

askafriend wrote: post #100
SkyBelow wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But this is exactly what SAT is intended to measure, scholastic potential. But if you define the variable like this, you end up opening a can of worms. Do rich kids have more scholastic potential because they have better access to resources? Or should scholastic potential be the measurement of how a child performs assuming they had the same access to resources? Should children who belong to a racial/ethnic group tha…

> Do rich kids have more scholastic potential because they have better access to resources? Yes. They do. It's maybe not the answer you were looking for, but if you are better prepared, you'll do better at the task at hand. Seems fairly straightforward. The next question would be how easy are those resources to access (in the case of the SAT)? And the answer is you can do pretty well with a $20 test prep book that yo…

>Yes. They do. It's maybe not the answer you were looking for, but if you are better prepared, you'll do better at the task at hand. Seems fairly straightforward.

I think you missed the point of the two questions, which is a question of what scholastic potential issue. What you are measuring is something that I might call scholastic actuality. It is how good they are with the tools they have. Potential is how good they are if we normalize the tools.

Granted, we don't have to go with that definition. If you want to call what I'm calling actuality potential, then that is fine. Just redefining a variable. But then we need a name for what I'm calling potential. Potential potential sounds a bit weird, but naming variables is hard so I'll use it as a placeholder for now.

So now that we have academic potential and academic potential potential, which should a person be ranked based off of when going to college? Given that academic potential is more dependent upon environmental factors that will change and be normalized between all freshmen (to some degree, there is still some differences), then should academic potential potential be a better predictor for success at college?

That isn't the complete answer, and real life is much more complicated than these simple equations. Just like emotional support can lead to a more mature individual that even once the emotional support is gone they have a life long benefit from.

Re: MIT to no longer consider SAT subject tests in admissions decisions

#190

Post by forkexec »

I'm glad I didn't study at all or have any coaching for the 1600 pt SAT I in the mid 90's because it would've been entirely unnecessary. I missed one question on the math section and it was a dumb mistake on my part. Our school's graduating class alone had over a dozen perfect SATs, multiple full rides to Harvard/MIT/Stanford and around 70 over 1500. ~97% had test prep.

Now go to India, take the JEE and find out how fun testing can be because the SAT is not much harder than a driving test. :) (Emphasis on the JEE being a much better measure because it's more difficult and more voluminous so that it would make Einstein feel insecure and inadequate.)

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